Cookie-Bakers & Leaf-Rakers

Derrick preached at International Church of Nacogdoches yesterday morning, and he did a wonderful job.  He spoke about what it means to be a witness of Christ - and what our goal should be as the church.  Many times we get really excited about the Gospel (with good reason!) and, out of that excitement, we make a couple of mistakes:

1.  We think wrongly about our role as the church in the world:  "Every person in this city is going to come to know the Lord!"  "All the people in my class are going to get saved!"  Those things just are not realistic - nor are they directly our responsibility.  We are called to be witnesses - Chi Alpha literally means "Christ's ambassadors/representatives."  Our job is to be a credible witness of who God is to the people around us - a credible witness. 

2.  We get that we ought to be a witness, but forget that our witness needs to be credible.  Credible = not freaky.  We do not have to be super-spiritual (i.e. speak only in KJV or scream when we pray) in order to be spiritual.  And we do not have to freak people out in order to share the Gospel.

Derrick summed it all up with this:  Everybody likes cookies - Nobody likes to rake leaves.  So the next time your tempted to do something freaky (even if it's driven by a sincere excitement for the Lord), go bake some cookies for your neighbor in the dorm... or rake up all the leaves in your neighbor's yard for him.

"God, help us all to become cookie-bakers and leaf-rakers!"

 *Also posted at sfaxa.org