Andrew’s Mysterious Quote of the Week!
“Would you like an Amber Alert, Mr. Coulette?”
~Explanation to come after December 7th
“Would you like an Amber Alert, Mr. Coulette?”
~Explanation to come after December 7th
Saturday was my second preaching class, and I came (semi)prepared with a sermonette. My earlier post, you’ll notice, I had decided on Jonah 2:1-9. But then Chris brought me back to earth when, last Sunday, he said, “please keep it under 5 minutes”. It actually served as a pretty good lead in to my sermon. (“This sermon was originally going to be a little longer… *holds up notebook*…these are my notes on the book of Jonah, it’s about a third of the notebook pages. But then Chris said keep it under five minutes and I realized I was about thirty five minutes too long…”) So I whittled it down to three points that I drew off of Jonah 2:9, although during the reading of the text I included verse 8 with it. It says:
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy,
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.
I’ll try and give an abbreviated rundown of a 4 minute, 12 second sermon.
When you think about Jonah, just about everyone knows what Jonah is famous for: He was swallowed by a fish and spit up on land. But not a lot of people spent time thinking about what he was doing while he was in the fish: He was praying. I drew three things from that passage that I hope will be helpful to you:
1) We should sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving – When we feel God calling us to give something up for him, we shouldn’t gripe about it, we should be thankful that God is using us to do something and excited to see how he plans to use us. It made me think of Abraham, when God had given him Isaac, his promise seed, and then said, “Oh, by the way Abraham, I want you to go up on the mountain and sacrifice your son for me.” The one thing that you don’t see Abraham do is argue the point with God. Any of you parents, imagine taking your kid and killing them as an offering to God (parents of teenagers need not apply. =). Abraham knew that God had promised to make him a great nation, and believed that, even if God asked him to sacrafice his only son, that God knew what he was doing, and he did.
2) We should keep the vows we make – Basically, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t tell someone, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take care of that,” and then a week later have them come back and “Oh, uh, ooops, forgot about that, sorry.” That’s no way to be. I’m as guilty as anyone else of it, I load myself up with stuff and then let things slide that I shouldn’t, and it’s something I’m working on myself. But Christian, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Don’t flip flop on it.
3) We need to recognize that Salvation is of God – God sent his son to die for our sins, so that we may go to heaven and live with him for eternity. There is no problem that is too big for God, and when life is crashing down around our ears, we still need to recognize, God is in control. When Jonah was in the belly of the whale, in verse 2 he refers to it as being in “the belly of hell”. It was probably not a particularly pleasant form of transportation. But Jonah was in that whale at that time because God had ordained it, and he knew what he was doing.
That’s it for this sermon, tune in next month, for my sermon that I’m planning on John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) titled “Jesus is crying, and it’s probably something YOU did.”
(Believe it or not, that sermon’s not going to be how I’m sure it probably sounds… =)
Me: I think my personal trainer must be a baptist preacher.
Mom: Why do you say that?
Me: Because that man beat the hell out of me.
…and Christmas came early this year. =)
Ladies and gentlemen, had I thought about taking a camera, I could show you pictures of my new best friend… But since I didn’t, I’m just going to say… she’s beautiful. I think I’ll name her Bessie. Just because.
(We got a new sound board at church… =)
I finally feel like I’ve got the chapter that I’m going to preach out of down. Jonah 2:1-9.
I was thinking about this today…
I remember in quite a few CDs I’ve ever seen, be it hip hop or pop, and even rock, the artist has a thank you section in which they thank God for their talent, getting them to where they’re at, etc. etc. In going through my (admittedly limited, but growing) Southern Gospel CD collection, I’ve noticed there is no thank you section and no thanking God for, well, whatever. At first, this struck me as odd. Then, while thinking about it, I realized why.
When you just spent 15 tracks talking about killing cops or humping people, it’s harder to tell who you got your talent from. When you’re singing “Amazing Grace”, it becomes a little more obvious.
I’m actually surprised I didn’t blog about this earlier, since it happened on Tuesday, but here goes.
Tuesday morning, I got up, showered, and got dressed for work. At about 7:00, I went outside to leave for work, and upon going to leave, I was struck with a rather horrid feeling as I thought, “Where’s my car?”
I walked down the lot one way, looking, and saw nothing. I walked the other way. Nothing. I came back thinking, “Wasn’t I parked right…” when it hit me: I was parked in front of the trash pickup, which is labeled as a Tow Away zone between 6:00 am and 2:00 pm Tuesdays.
I quickly ran over, jotted down the phone number for the towing company, and then went back into the apartment. It was here that I started barking orders like a Marine drill instructor.
“BRENNAN! I NEED A RIDE TO WORK! NOWWWWW!”
After giving my roommate a jolt unlike any caffeine he’d ever had, Brennan got up and gave me a ride to work (it was his day off and, thankfully, he was getting up in a half an hour anyway). On the way, I called the towing company, and sure enough, my car had been towed. The cost to get it out of impound? 213.00. And they towed it around the mid-point between work and home.
The Lord works in mysterious ways, though. On the way to Citizen’s police academy that night, I thought that I was going to be hard pressed to pay for that, but decided not to worry about it. I got home, checked the mail, and found a letter from R.B Pamplin Corporation. It seems in my time at Christian Supply, I’d somehow managed to be vested in the retirement plan, despite having never put a dime towards it. They owed me 324.00, before taxes, and wanted to know if I wanted to roll it over to an IRA or to send me a check.
Check, please.
When the car gets towed, Andrew discovers his missed calling as a Marine Drill Instructor. News at 11:00.
After talking with a couple people about preaching out of Jonah, the question has been raised, “Why Jonah? What’s so special about that book, anyway?”
Well, that’s the book I’ve felt God wants me to preach out of, and with good reason. I can draw a couple of parallels to my own life with it to better illustrate (and as someone once said, “Preach what you know, not what you don’t.”).
for those not familiar, Jonah was a prophet (oooh, ooooooh), but he really never got it (sad, but true)…
Wait… Veggietales did that one? Well, shoot.
Well, anyway, Jonah starts out with God telling Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city that the Jews were none too fond of. As such, Jonah wasn’t particularly pleased that God wanted him to go there, so he ran the opposite direction.
Comparatively, in my own life I first felt God nudging me towards preaching back in March. We were at men’s retreat, I was sharing a room with the pastor’s father, and during a late night chat, seemingly out of nowhere, he says, “Have you ever thought about preaching?”
I suddenly found myself scrambling for excuses. “No, never. God wouldn’t use me for that, I’m sure he’s got many people far better qualified for that out there somewhere. I’m a lousy public speaker, no one would bother to listen to me.” Now, granted, greater than these have tried these excuses before (See: Moses). But God wasn’t finished with me yet.
The next Sunday, something in the message hit me on that same calling.
The Sunday following, it hit me again.
This continued up through June before I finally said, “Okay, God, look, I get it. You want me? Fine. But you’re going to have to drag me in kicking and screaming.” Somewhere at this point, it was as if God said, “Well, you asked…”
In Jonah, as he’s fleeing for Tarshish, Jonah’s sleeping below decks, and out of nowhere a storm begins to toss the ship, and all the sailors start running around in fear. This brings me to parallel number two: The storms.
In July, I discovered one of my two roommates at the time had decided (rather randomly, as was his custom) to move to Reedsport to be with his “girlfriend” (I use quotes there because they were no longer together by the time we’d officially moved out). As if that weren’t enough stress, the apartment complex was jacking our rent up. By August, it hit me that where I was in my job wasn’t where God wanted me. In fact, I didn’t really know where God wanted me, but by September I was unemployed for a three week stint. And by September, relationally Jenn and I both came to the conclusion that neither of us was where God wanted us, and broke things off.
It was around September 9th, end of the first week unemployed, that Robb Foreman preached a sermon titled “Be Ye Steadfast”. If you’re interested, the sermon can be found here. It was that night that I finally bowed my head and said “I get it now, Lord. Whatever you want from me, however you plan on using me, I’m yours.”
I’m not saying, “Trust Jesus and you’ll be employed,” or “Trust Jesus and you’ll never worry again.” But when I finally got to the point where I had to rely on him, it made me realize how truly insignificant my problems were. I landed a temp job during September by week three, and permanent, gainful employment starting October 8th. I’ve been able to throw myself into more things around church to help out as we’re getting into the building. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m getting where God wants me. I’m still not quite there, but I’m getting there.
Jonah had to trust God, too. When they figured out God was angry with him, he told them to throw him into the sea. Getting thrown out in the middle of the ocean during a storm took a bit of a leap of faith that God would provide, and when God provided the fish that swallowed him, Jonah prayed to God for deliverance. The inside of a giant fish is an excellent picture of having to rely on God’s guidance. After all, how much control did Jonah have in steering it? chances are, not much.
Anyway… Not trying to give the full sermon (because God only knows, this isn’t it), but there’s the explanation. God knows why. =)