When I first heard what happened, the situation was clear. It was easy to understand what transpired. The words and behaviors at that moment made perfect sense in my head. I thought everything was clear and easy to understand, but I was completely wrong. 

We all want the good guys in white and the bad guys in black. People who have an ugly attitude should do mean things, and seemingly friendly people do good things. Intelligent people should consistently make wise choices, and foolish people will frequently be in trouble. The people we like should always be kind to us, and the ones we don’t are expected to harbor evil intentions. 

Unfortunately, people and their behaviors do not always fit in nice clean categories.

To make things messier, the stories we make up in our heads are usually wrong. 

Our spouse might be trying their best to make us happy, and we assume they purposely try to make us mad. The person viewed as a selfless saint is more narcissistic than we imagined when we hear their motivation to serve. 

Life is messy, even a life of faith. 

Good people will make poor choices. People whose lives are chaotic and unkempt will show kindness in ways you never expect. Some brilliant people will ignore the inevitable events of life and pay the price for them. 

Life is a complex web of emotions, experiences, and expectations. Simplistic answers are rarely correct. Clear and easy-to-understand stories are usually wrong. 

It is easier to caricature people than deal with their multifaceted problems. Christians are called to bring grace, rather than judgment, to life’s messy situations. We do not ignore the troubling questions but embrace them with the forgiveness of Jesus. Even when we don’t completely understand the behaviors, our lives are beacons of love. The followers of Jesus point people living in a mess to the Messiah who can bring hope even to the most complicated dilemmas.   

I am often reminded of the boy scout who asked another pack member, “Do you ever have days when you feel just a little untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, discourteous, unkind, grumpy, wasteful, cowardly, dirty, and irreverent?”

As a Christian, I know there are days that I don’t feel good, kind, righteous, joyful, giving, or loving. So what do you do as a believer when you do not feel very godly?

The answer is, “Keep doing the right thing anyway.”

Allow your actions to flow from your faith and not your feelings. 

Whenever you don’t feel like being kind, do it anyway. Whenever you don’t feel like giving, give anyway. Whenever you don’t feel like being a godly Christian person, stand up and do it anyway.  Everyone has days when they do not feel like being the person God is calling them to be. A sure sign of Christian maturity is when you do it anyway. Soon your feelings will change, and you will be much happier knowing you did the right thing from the beginning.   

There are two types of faith.

The first one I call Sunday faith. This is where the emphasis is on the mind. Believers need to know the right things to believe. All wrong behavior is the result of erroneous beliefs. So the Church has classes, offers sermons, and does everything to help people know God’s word.

The second one I call Monday faith. This is where the emphasis is on action. Believers must take what they are learning and put it into practice. The Church can provide some programs to help you serve and give, but the rest is up to the individual to act on what they know.

Faith in Jesus requires both types. We must learn what Jesus said, did, and taught and then translate that into our actions. Christians are people who follow Jesus to Church but also into their workplaces and homes. True belief exists seven days a week.

When I entered full-time ministry, a lady in the Church asked, “What should we call you.” I responded, “My parents call me Matthew, my friends call me Matt, and my enemies have some ugly names I can’t repeat in Church. You can choose any one of those?”

She persisted in her pursuit of a fitting name. Finally, one day she came out of her Sunday school class holding a book called “An Encyclopedia of Religion.” She told me her ladies’ class had been looking into it, and she thought I should be called “Reverend Harris.” 

I told her, “Please don’t.” I explained to her that Jesus criticized the Pharisees in Matthew 23 for wanting to be called “Rabbi” to show them honor and respect. Jesus said that was hypocrisy because God is our teacher and father. He taught that there is no separation between clergy and laity. The Church is one group of people equal before God, and we each fill our role based on our giftedness. I was called to speak, which puts me in the front, but I am not to be revered; I am still just Matt.

Frustrated, she kept searching and one day told me that the nearby Churches called their preacher a Pastor. And for the first time in my life, someone addressed me as “Pastor Matt.” 

It felt incredibly uncomfortable then. The word pastor means shepherd. I have always viewed my role as an evangelist and not a shepherd. It is synonymous with elder. That word refers to an older leader of God’s people. At 22 years old, I was not an elder, so pastor did not seem like a title that fit me. Yet, somehow the name stuck. 

Today, people who do not know me outside the Church will call me Pastor Matt or Pastor Harris. While I understand why they do it, can I tell you a little secret? I dislike it. I am no better than any other person in the Church, and Jesus says that no one should be begging for our honor and respect; it should all go to God. 

When I talk to other preachers, I know I am in the minority. Most of them like people to know what they do and treat them as a leader. It has just never fit me. My name is Matt or Matthew if you like me. If not, there is a long list of names that people use, and they might be the most accurate.    

I hate fundraisers by any Church group. 

Every time I tell someone that, the immediate response is about how programs need funds and people love to serve, so it is a great combination. 

My response runs in two directions. The first is very practical. It is simply not a great way to generate money. People have to buy supplies, spend time preparing, and then other people have to spend time trying to sell them. All for a couple of hundred dollars. I tell the people in my Church that I will pay them NOT to do it.

My other reason is theological. Believers are called to support the mission of Christ. If we believe something is worthy of our time for Jesus, the Church should support it with its resources. Fundraising is about an exchange of goods or services. The issue for a Church community is not fundraising; it is faith raising. People who believe in what we are doing will pour out their resources to make it happen. They need faith that God will bless them in return by meeting all their needs. 

Recently our Church closed all secondary bank accounts and now has just one. All money goes into it, and all bills are paid from it. There is no fundraising, no special pleas, or auxiliary ways of getting money. The people have responded by giving far more than I could have imagined. 

The Lord loves cheerful givers (2 Corinthians 9:7), and I believe he loves churches filled with giving people.   

Ministry does require funding, but I am not a fan of fundraisers. 

Beneath my exterior behaviors lies a full range of emotions. Under those lie my heart and soul. Inside them, there are areas that I never share with people and a few dark spots that are completely hidden. Only God and I know they are there. And I like to pretend that God doesn’t acknowledge they exist.

These hidden places include my shameful experiences, sinful thoughts, and personal pain. It is dark and cold inside there, and I feel guilty when the doors accidentally pop open. It is like a junk drawer of pain and shame containing a conglomeration of ugly things that do not fit in my life. 

This is also the place I find it the most difficult to let Jesus enter. I have judged these things myself and know they are not worthy of being in the heart of a Christian. Surely Jesus will judge me for even having a hint of these ungodly things in my life. As a result, I carefully position myself in front of the drawer so that Jesus will not see it, open it, or look at what lies inside. 

After forty years of being a Christian, you would think I could let Jesus take a look, but I find it is too embarrassing. I should not have these things in my life anymore. I know it, and he knows it. 

One challenge for every believer is to be honest with God about our darkest secrets. To drag our ugliness into the light of God’s love and allow him to remove it from our lives. It won’t be very comfortable. It will be scary. But it will also be freeing. 

Cleaning the unseen places is always nasty business, but I am thankful that Jesus is someone who washes his disciple’s feet as a part of his love for them. The things you never see are where I need his grace the most. 

I have a box full of supplies I purchased on clearance. I thought they would be perfect for the job, but I discovered after several attempts they were inadequate for my purpose. So now the box sits on the shelf staring at me every time I go into my storage area. Each time I see it, I think, just maybe, there is something I can do with that stuff. 

Recently I stood there and thought, it is time to admit I made a mistake and move on with my life. I need to take that stuff and put it on Facebook marketplace or possibly give it to someone else who might be able to use it. 

It was then that I realized how difficult it can be to simply admit you made a mistake and move on, even with a box of junk. That would mean admitting I wasted money and time. It would also mean I wasn’t as bright as I wanted people to think. It means admitting defeat. 

If that is how people think over a box of cheap materials, imagine how hard it is to admit we were wrong in some critical arena of life? 

Often, one of the most freeing activities in which we can participate is admitting we were wrong, throwing away the junk of our lives, and moving forward into something better. However, every time I see that box, I realize it is much easier said than done.      

Sometimes I like to give some practical teaching that is nothing overly spiritual. Today’s topic is also one of the biggest things I have to explain every summer – especially at Church.   

In a home or church building, an air conditioner only blows out the cold air at one temperature. 

Let me explain further. If there are several people in a room and the temperature goes up from 72 degrees to 74, and you want it to be a comfortable 71 degrees in the room – turning the thermostat number to 62 degrees does NOT make it any colder any faster. The air conditioner did not suddenly start blowing out air that was 62 degrees. 

When you adjust the temperature in your car, it has the ability to add a little heat to make the air come out at your desired temperature, so turning it down will get it to the coldest setting. Your house simply blows air in at the coldest setting all the time. It is not like your car! When it is set at 71 degrees and gets to 73, it blows out the coldest air until it reaches 70 and shuts off. If you want a room to be at a specific temperature, set it at the desired number and walk away.    

If you want to make your Pastor or maintenance man or spouse happy. Please do not turn the thermostat way down – EVER! Because when the event is over, you will forget, and the system will run for hours and hours after you are gone to get the room down to 60 degrees before it shuts off. Then electricity is wasted, bills go up, and the room will be too cold for the next group to use. 

If you do not understand anything I have just written, please never touch a thermostat, especially at Church.  

The time before and after worship is crucial to your spiritual growth. 

The auditorium is where we spend time worshipping God, and the lobby is where we build relationships with people.

The call of faith is to love God and love other people. The Church building is designed to help you in both of those endeavors. 

There is only one drawback to this system. It requires that people be willing to show up early or stay late. A person must be present in the lobby and have time to shake hands, talk, listen and pray. Often these conversations require people to step into another room so they can have time to cry, pray together and share from the depths of their souls. Other times these interactions are carried over to lunch, where people enjoy fellowship over a meal. 

My encouragement to anyone who wants the Church to feel like an extended family is to plan an extra hour every Sunday. Give yourself free time so that you can connect with the other people who attend worship each week. The relationships you start there can grow to be the ones that help guide your life of faith.   

Most Church lobbies are too small, including ours, but their impact is anything but insignificant. Numerous great friendships have started with a simple handshake and asking, “What is your name?” 

The bush continued to get bigger with every passing year. It had been planted in a small garden space right in front of the house. It looked perfect when it was small. Now that tiny shrub had turned into a small tree filling the garden. The limbs were pressed against the house and had no green sprouts where they touched the brick. 

The tree was leaning out into the parking lot. It was planted in the space between the sidewalk and the building to give shade as it grew. Now it was a full-grown tree and was leaning out away from the building as it needed light that was being blocked. 

A large but half-dead bush and a tree that will most certainly fall soon because it had grown awkwardly resulted from not having enough room where they were planted. 

Whenever you put a seed or small plant, there is the potential for growth. One crucial question is, “Is there adequate room for this?”

This is true with the seeds you plant in your flower garden, walk space, or in the figurative places in your life.

As your business and career grow, do you have enough room in your life for it? As your family grows, have you created enough space for it to grow properly? Will your faith flourish or flounder as it grows? 

Too often, we plant seeds that will later die or cause problems because we have not thought through the growth of what we have started. Many things in life will keep growing and growing, whether we like it or not. Planning and thinking through the final result will often keep us from unnecessary pain and frustration.