Monday Morning Scattershooting

Monday morning scatter shooting, while wondering why they call something 'new and improved!’ Which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it.  If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it, it couldn't be new.

  I don’t like negative compliments.  Negative compliment are like the person that tells you “have you lost weight because you don’t look as fat as you used to” but usually the negative is directed at someone else.  The person that says “the other deacons don’t do half as much as you do” or “That was a great sermon on sin, some people here really needed to hear it!”  It seems on the surface to be praise to you but it really is way to hide complaint and criticism.  (A friend that does gospel meetings tells me he cringes every time someone comes up to him while the local preacher is right next to him and says “We haven’t heard preaching like that in a long time”.)  Don’t get suckered in when people do this.  You don’t need to tear other people down in order to build someone up.  When someone does this to me I respond with “refute praise”, trying to build up what they are trying to tear down. “Oh, I am sure you hear better preaching than each week”, or “If they did half as much as me they would still be outworking me by a mile”.  I rather be off in giving someone undue praise than undue criticism.

  I was doing some research for a radio program on how premarital sex is still wrong in the eyes of God and I ran across some starting statistics.  Now more than half of all births to American women under 30 are born out of wedlock.  Currently, 59 percent of all American births are within marriage.  The only demographic that is not growing in percentage of children born outside of wedlock are those have completed college and are in higher income brackets.  Outside of the educational differences, there are distinct differences in the marriage rates between different races: 29% of white children are born to unmarried women, 53 % of Latinos and 73% of black children. <article here> 

 I still can’t believe those numbers.  I think any problem we are seeing in this country today can be traced back to this. Once our country rejected God’s plan for the sexual union to be between a husband and wife for the sexual revolution, it created a terrible fate for our children.  Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.  In fact 71% of poor families with children are headed by single parents. God way is best not only in a spiritual sense, but in every way, economically, practically, or culturally.

  I attempt to be clever. I love lesson titles that are clever.  A few years ago the preacher at the church I attended did his sermon with a title that featured the two teams playing in the Super Bowl that night.  I thought that was clever enough to copy.  Last year my sermon was on David and Goliath was called, “A Patriot Vs. A Giant”.  This year my sermons were “Those That Seek Gold” on 1^st Timothy 6:9-10 and “Consider the Ravens” on Luke 12:24.  It is funny how a little challenge like that can make you come up with some clever ideas.  A few years back as the associate minister I was supposed to speak at least once every month.  So each one of those lesson I “numbered” them in the title.  In January the lesson was “One” on Ephesians 4:4-6, In February, it was “ Will you leave too(two)?” on John 6:66 and so on.  It forced me to explore some text and ideas I would have never done otherwise, for example the selection of Mathis (“When There Were Eleven”).  As long as you remain true to purpose, I think things like this are a good way to keep you mind sharp.  If necessity is the mother of invention, maybe a unique challenge is the mother of creativity.

  Finally, a mother went to the local preacher to ask for his help in dealing with her two unruly boys.  She explained, “These two are always getting in trouble together and everything I do to get them to straighten up as failed. Could you try to put the fear of God into them? The preacher agreed and had the mother bring him to his office. He decided to talk to them one at a time, so he took the older boy inside and left the younger one sitting in a chair just down the hall.  As the boy set down across from the preacher, he stared at him for a long moment.  As the silence loomed, the preacher eventually broke the tension with a single quiet question, “Son, where is God?” The boy looked confused but said nothing.  The preacher tried again with a little more force “Son, Where Is God?”  The boy began to look more uncomfortable, his eyes darted back and forth and trickle of sweat appeared on his brow but still he remained silent. The preacher sensing he might be on to something, stared even harder and loudly boomed, “WHERE IS GOD?” At that point the boy burst from his seat, and hit the door running. He ran over to his brother and yelled “We got to get out of here! I don’t know exactly what’s going on but I think somebody stole God and they are trying to put the finger on us!”