Many jobs never see their work reach maturity. The fruit of their efforts will not be fully known for thirty or forty years or more.

It is hard to tell if you are making an impact. You don’t start a project like building a house and then see it finished, and a family moves into it one day. Instead, you labor day in and day out with very few visible signs that your work is accomplishing anything. 

Today the encouragement is that whatever good work you do – never give up. Even when you do not see any results for your labor, keep working hard. You are doing far more good than you will ever realize. Forests are being planted, people are being educated, and the gospel is changing lives.

Whoever is trying to change the world and help people live better lives, you need to know that your work is essential. Stay to the task even when you want to give up. 

Immediate results are seldom seen when the work is significant. You have to keep doing the right thing and let someone else enjoy the fruit of your labor. Just know today; you are making a difference. 

A preacher I know will often stop while preaching and say, “Amen?” 

It is not a shout of exclamation, rather a question of, “Do you think what I just said is true?”

What that preacher wants is a response to the words he is using. He wants people to affirm that he is saying the right things, and it is resonating with the congregation. He longs for feedback that his sermon is effective. 

I have never been one to say, “Amen?” This may be because of my upbringing or possibly my college training. But I am also convinced that the best “Amen” you can give me is going out and doing what I said. If I preach the truth and touch your soul, the best response is action.

It is nice to get positive feedback on Sunday, but the biggest compliment you can give me is to live my teaching on a weekday. 

My youngest son and I recently went to watch the new Batman movie. Before going, I checked the runtime, and it was almost three whole hours. When you add in all the previews, our theater experience lasted for nearly three and a half hours. I knew this before ever paying over $20 for both of us to watch it on the big screen. 

Apparently, most of the people in the theater had no idea what they were in for with this movie. Throughout the entire time it was running, people were getting up and down to go to the bathroom, get refills on popcorn and soda, and back to the bathroom again. In a theater with about 75 people, I estimated that over half got up at least once. As a result, some of them missed large sections of the movie, which they paid to watch. 

If you knew it was that long and wanted to watch the entire movie (like I did), then should you not have been prepared for what you knew would happen. 

For example, before I left home, I ate some food. Then at the movie, I went to the bathroom right before it started. And I never had to leave my seat once. I enjoyed all the previews and the entire movie with my son. 

While sitting there pondering the people’s behavior in the cinema that day, I began to make a connection to faith. The Bible teaches in Hebrews 9:27 that all people are destined to die once and then face judgment. If you do not believe the Bible, you at least know we will all die, and something will happen after that. And yet, most people are not preparing for it. They are walking around as if they were going to live forever, entirely unprepared for the end, especially not God’s judgment. 

The Apostles were once asked they would quit following Jesus along with the crowds. Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” One reason I am a person who follows Jesus is because I am trying to prepare for what I know lies ahead. 

If I had one wish for every Christian, it would be that they would read their Bible before developing their convictions. 

Unfortunately, the structure of our faith communities usually works against this. We invite people to listen to a sermon or teacher before knowing what the Bible says. Granted, a preacher should walk us through what the Bible teaches first and foremost, but I know that is not always the case. The result is people having preconceived ideas before investigating what the Bible teaches. 

Before developing your ideas about the end time, please read your Bible first. 

Before you discuss creation and evolution, please read your Bible first.

Before you make statements about the necessity of the Church, read your Bible first.

Before you pronounce your convictions about faith – please, please read your Bible first. 

I am not saying that reading the Bible will eliminate all our differences. There have been great people of faith who disagreed about what the Bible said.

If you have read it, then at least we can have an intelligent conversation about what the scriptures teach. I will gladly dialog with anyone who starts with the Bible as the authority for life. However, I cannot tolerate people who want to argue with me about something they heard another preacher or teacher say and have never read it for themselves. 

Read your Bible first. Then draw some conclusions. Finally, listen to sermons, lessons, lectures, and podcasts. Read books, magazines, articles, and blogs. Good teachers are vital for the life of faith, but they are no replacement for actually reading your Bible. 

It is the time of year when everything is starting to turn green. Spring is in the air with warmer temperatures and beautiful sunny afternoons. This is also the time of year that the outdoor work begins at my house. 

The flower garden needs weeds pulled, old plants trimmed, mulch replaced, and new plants inserted. The yard needs raked to gather all these awful prickly balls that fall from a sweet gum tree planted out front. This tall decorative grass grows on the northeast side of the yard that needs to be cut down and burned. The bushes scattered around the house will need to be trimmed and cleaned for another year. Finally, we plant tomatoes in pots behind the house, and those need to be purchased, planted, caged, and fertilized. 

There is much to do around our house to get the garden going and look lovely again. But it will not end after just a month of work. This will be a summer-long project. Pulling weeds, trimming growth, replacing mulch, getting rid of moles, and watering. This simple garden located around my house will require hours and hours of work.

This principle is true of all gardens. It might be the spiritual garden of your soul or the relationship garden of your heart. Each one needs continual maintenance. Your walk with God and your marriage needs your careful attention to keep them growing. This will require time, work, and sometimes sheer determination. 

Like every beautiful garden, you only see results from people continually working on it. The same is true with people who have a mature life of faith or deeply connected marriage. You never move beyond taking time to work on things. The moment you do is when things start to go wrong. So much of life is maintaining things so that the natural beauty will show forth in all its glory. Great gardens do not just happen.   

Is me. 

And that is humbling to write or say. 

Because my spouse has flaws and issues too. I could probably list them and make myself feel better. 

Because I am a better spouse than many people I know. Compared to others, I am doing well. 

But the truth is that I am the trouble with my marriage, and it is okay. 

I can fix myself. I have the power to change my behavior, my words, my attitudes, and my actions. 

I cannot fix my spouse. 

The first step toward a better marriage is admitting that I am the problem, and I can do better.

One problem with preaching without notes is that sometimes I make an error in my sermon. These mistakes are not theological blunders that alter people’s views of God. Instead, at least once a month, I will get some small fact wrong, misuse a word or make a misstatement that I never intended to make. 

For example, recently, I said that the pool of Siloam was about 1600 yards away. Then in my mind, I wanted to say that is 16 football fields. Instead, I said that it is more than three football fields away. Another time I said Jesus went to Nicodemus at night. When the Bible story clearly states that Nicodemus went to Jesus at night. I had it backward. Both times I knew I was wrong the moment I said it, but I also knew that neither was of major significance, so I kept talking. 

Statements like these always bother me. I thought I should post on my blog Sunday afternoons about the clarifications, corrections, and controversy from the morning sermon. These things haunt me and can keep me up at night, even when they are seemingly insignificant.   

I want to remind you not to be shocked when preachers make mistakes. Also, please show us grace and kindness in our blunders. If we are misinterpreting the Bible, we should be confronted and corrected. But when we make minor errors in our words – be kind – or next time, I might mistakenly say your name in error in a way you would not like. (I’m kidding, of course … well …)

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, in New York City, apartment buildings were built with the same floor plan. One story of the complex was put directly on top of another story, and so on. That left bedrooms directly beneath one another. At night, someone would crawl into bed and fall asleep when they heard a thump directly above them. Their upstairs neighbor was taking off their shoes as they prepared for bed. Dropping the discarded shoe on the floor seems like nothing significant unless you live directly below the thud it creates. 

Once awakened, the person on the lower level would “wait for the other shoe to drop” before attempting to fall back asleep. Over time this became an American expression. It was shorthand for saying that you are waiting on something inevitable to happen, usually something unpleasant. It was used in print as early as 1921 and was engrained as an idiom by the 1940s. 

Numerous people spend their lives waiting for the other shoe to drop. They committed a sin, and now they are waiting for something terrible to happen as God’s way of punishing them. Some of them even walked through the initial pain of their mistake being made public, and now they know something else bad will happen. A few have even confessed it to God and possibly a trusted friend, but they are still convinced that future pain is inevitable. 

Today I just want to remind you that as a follower of Jesus, we believe that Jesus’ death on the cross was to pay for all of our sins. He died and took our punishment on himself. He is our substitute which gives us atonement with God. 

One challenge in the life of faith is to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. God is not an angry upstairs neighbor waiting for you to get comfortable in your life before he rattles you with some loud event. He is a gracious and loving God who deals with sin directly through the death of his son. He punished him in our place, and now we do not have to punish ourselves while we wait for the jarring thump of God dropping something else disruptive in our lives. Shoes drop in apartments in NYC, not in your life with God.        

God wants to use your worst experience to bless someone else. 

The former addict can turn and help other addicts find sobriety. Someone who has been through an ugly divorce can help another person through theirs. A person who has experienced a lot of pain can overflow with compassion to ease others’ pain. 

Paul writes in the first chapter of his second letter to the Church in Corinth and says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

God comforted Paul in his troubles so that he could comfort other people. 

It is a simple concept; God wants us to take our ugly experiences and use the lessons we learned to bless other people. 

 A past hurt is not wasted, even if we feel regret, as long as we allow God to use it for his good. 

A question was asked in the men’s group I attend, and I was amazed at the wisdom of the answers provided. The group responded with penetrating questions, insightful comments, and biblical truth. 

Immediately this thought went through my head, “We are smarter than me.”

Sure, put an odd collection of people together, and bad things can happen, but usually, there is something positive. There is the scriptural teaching from the spiritually mature, the experience of the aged, and the lessons of multiple lifetimes available to guide us. 

Today, it is popular to think that faith is a personal matter best experienced privately. Nothing could be further from the truth. God puts us together with other believers for a multitude of reasons. One significant advantage of being in a community is the wisdom we have available by connecting to other people.