Selective Hearing

I preached a sermon from the book of Acts today on Courage. One of the things I shared was that we need to quit caring about what people think and start caring about what God thinks.

After I preached that at first service, I had one person (who seems to have a nack for delivering little barbs of discouragement) tell me that my usage of the pronouns "you and I" are in poor sorts.

How crazy is that? I preach on not caring about what people think and instead caring more about what God thinks and then this person THINKS that I would give a Crap what they think. Interesting.

You and I both know that I don't give a rat's rear end about how I use the words "you and I." BUT, I do care about what God thinks about what I say. And I am pretty sure He isn't grading my pronoun usage...but He is grading my handling of THE MESSAGE.

Acts unscripted

I am currently preaching through the book of Acts. I remember when I was in Junior High one particular night while I was staying over at my grandmother's house, me and my Uncle Scott (who now preaches at Crown Hill Church in Seattle, WA) stayed up into the wee hours of the morning reading through the book of Acts.

Honestly, it is something I will never forget. He would read a chapter, I would read a chapter. He would explain stuff as we went along. And I remember being so moved by what I was reading. I got emotional and so full of passion as I read about the courage of those disciples in the first century.

I wish I could replicate that experience. I don't think I have ever read Scripture like that since that time. In those moments I felt so close to God and my faith was so deeply encouraged that it is really hard to describe.

Nothing snazzy, no frills. All we did was read and talk about Acts. It was a profound moment for me in my faith journey.