speaking this weekend

I get to speak at our church again this weekend, which is great. This came about because our pastor had to change his travel plans to Lebanon at the last minute because Hezbollah shut down the airport in Beirut (click on the link to see some updates from his time in Beirut).

So Pastor John called me and asked if I would share something one week while he was in Lebanon, specifically talking about following Christ, expecting big things from him, stepping out in faith and believing the impossible, all that sort of thing. Which is, you know, my favorite sort of things to talk about. My "life message" I guess you would call it.

I'm teaching essentially the same thing I taught last summer at the Stint Briefing... a message about when Jesus came to Simon and the other fishermen and said "Follow Me." Although I think I'm leaving out the funny comic book story from the intro, even though it's hilarious. Not sure it would go over as well with the 8:15 and 9:45 crowds.

I never used to do the same talks more than once. I've given this one a lot now. I remember I was praying once about this not too long ago, just telling the Lord I felt weird doing the same talk, and was that okay and I felt that the Holy Spirit said to me, "What if I have you do this talk the rest of your life? Could you do that?" Oh, yeah. I would be thrilled to do it. I love talking about this--the beauty of Christ, the reason people have desired to follow him, the amazing challenges and unexpected blessings of following Christ--I would talk about it every day for the rest of my life if Jesus just provides the audience and the Spirit empowerment.

And if Jesus doesn't provide the audience I suppose I could go all "Saint Francis" and preach to the birds and animals. Ha ha. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten that I have thoughts to share with you all about St. Francis... it just takes me longer to write my serious thoughts out.

And in closing... if you want to come hang out tonight or tomorrow at our church and see me pretending to be a pastor for a couple of hours, you're very welcome to join us. I'll put a link up when the talk is available online.