Getting ready for a great Sunday...

     I am looking ahead and planning and it seems to me that we will be able to get through Matthew 15 by the end of the year.  15 chapters in 52 weeks so we should be able to get through the final 13 in 2013 with some room to spare.  I am so enjoying going through this gospel chapter by chapter and verse by verse.  It is enabling me to walk "slowly" with Jesus through His life.

     Something that I will be doing again this Sunday that I have found myself doing in the past but not really realizing it is to make an invitation right along with Jesus.  When I come to a passage of scripture where Jesus gives an invitation to follow Him or to be apart of His family that I just extent that invitation.  It is not me making the invitation, it is Jesus and right along in the text that we are studying.  I don't know why I had realized this earlier as a practice but I am sure to continue and encourage other pastors to do the same.  It makes that time more natural, more logical, and more of what the Scripture is asking us rather than the pastor.

     I can sure relate to the mixed crowd that Jesus is speaking to.  He has some that are disciples (deeper committed) and then He has some followers (getting committed) and then He has some dissenters (Pharisees and scribes that were throwing mud at Him).  I don't know if I have any dissenters but on any given Sunday morning I stand in front of a mixed crowd and relating to them all is pretty tough, also impossible.  With the text in chapter 12 I think I am learning something from Jesus' teaching style that He speaks to different groups within the group.  You see Him addressing the Pharisees and scribes and then you see Him addressing the others with more instruction and teaching.  Maybe that is a practice I should do especially when a point is pointed toward a certain group.

     Double duty this weekend - singing and preaching - so I will probably be in line for a Sunday afternoon nap!!!

Adam
A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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