Sunday Sermon and Thoughts
Here's a link to Sunday's Sermon.
Yesterday was my little girl's birthday. She's now three and we tried to explain to her some of the changes in responsibility that come with being 3 years old. No more temper tantrums. No more demanding stuff immediately. No more "I can't go to sleep 'cause I had a 2 hr power nap during the day."
It was all futile. Oh well. We'll wait till next year and try again! :)
Highlights from the worship...
(1) I know my math is wrong in the text of the sermon regarding how many years the Jews had been back from Exile when Haggai does his prophesy. I caught the error before I preached it though. So it says 17 years, but it was actually 19.
(2) I did say "it's not a sin NOT to volunteer. It's only a sin if God is telling you to volunteer and you don't." That's a good rule of thumb in general. If God is telling us to do something and we don't do it, do it wrong, or do it late - those are all forms of disobedience.
(3) I DO use good intentions to excuse disobedience sometimes, do you?
(4) I did play guitar in the evening service. I have avoided that now for 2 years. Hopefully I can avoid it for two more. But with Beatrice and Marion singing - it actually turned out okay. I am SOOOO grateful to them and others who help put the worship in BOTH services together.
(5) I did have someone come up and tell me that they accepted Christ for the first time last night after worship. He said he'd been in and around churches for years and decided to stop PROCRASTINATING about this decision. I love that.
(6) Really enjoyed having lunch with Ray and Air and family yesterday after morning worship. It's always fun to sit with really neat people.
(7) Along the same lines, enjoyed street noodles with Pookie, Rod, Rukshan, Amy, Constance and Phillip after evening worship. Still trying to figure out why we spent so much time talking about smoking. :)
(8) The big surprise from yesterday was the big crowd in the evening. I think we were up at 40 people. It's supposed to be a small, intimate worship service... and it is, but we were pretty packed. Love it.
As the TV Show used to say. Eight is enough. I'm really excited about the sermon series starting this coming weekend. "Keep your coins, I want change." I'm praying that it's a God thing, life changing series for some folks.
This week really looking forward to getting final numbers for the year on how the church did financially. I suspect we gave just under 1 million baht away to different ministries around Thailand! In a church with a total yearly budget of right around 6 million baht, that's pretty good. (16.67% of income) We tithe at 10% of our church income and the other 6.67% is sort of "love offering". I'll update later, but I have a secret goal of having us hit 20% at some point soon.
Yesterday was my little girl's birthday. She's now three and we tried to explain to her some of the changes in responsibility that come with being 3 years old. No more temper tantrums. No more demanding stuff immediately. No more "I can't go to sleep 'cause I had a 2 hr power nap during the day."
It was all futile. Oh well. We'll wait till next year and try again! :)
Highlights from the worship...
(1) I know my math is wrong in the text of the sermon regarding how many years the Jews had been back from Exile when Haggai does his prophesy. I caught the error before I preached it though. So it says 17 years, but it was actually 19.
(2) I did say "it's not a sin NOT to volunteer. It's only a sin if God is telling you to volunteer and you don't." That's a good rule of thumb in general. If God is telling us to do something and we don't do it, do it wrong, or do it late - those are all forms of disobedience.
(3) I DO use good intentions to excuse disobedience sometimes, do you?
(4) I did play guitar in the evening service. I have avoided that now for 2 years. Hopefully I can avoid it for two more. But with Beatrice and Marion singing - it actually turned out okay. I am SOOOO grateful to them and others who help put the worship in BOTH services together.
(5) I did have someone come up and tell me that they accepted Christ for the first time last night after worship. He said he'd been in and around churches for years and decided to stop PROCRASTINATING about this decision. I love that.
(6) Really enjoyed having lunch with Ray and Air and family yesterday after morning worship. It's always fun to sit with really neat people.
(7) Along the same lines, enjoyed street noodles with Pookie, Rod, Rukshan, Amy, Constance and Phillip after evening worship. Still trying to figure out why we spent so much time talking about smoking. :)
(8) The big surprise from yesterday was the big crowd in the evening. I think we were up at 40 people. It's supposed to be a small, intimate worship service... and it is, but we were pretty packed. Love it.
As the TV Show used to say. Eight is enough. I'm really excited about the sermon series starting this coming weekend. "Keep your coins, I want change." I'm praying that it's a God thing, life changing series for some folks.
This week really looking forward to getting final numbers for the year on how the church did financially. I suspect we gave just under 1 million baht away to different ministries around Thailand! In a church with a total yearly budget of right around 6 million baht, that's pretty good. (16.67% of income) We tithe at 10% of our church income and the other 6.67% is sort of "love offering". I'll update later, but I have a secret goal of having us hit 20% at some point soon.
