This Sunday my church saved me a lot of money while giving me the opportunity to be generous. As I prepared to preach the final message (on prayer) in our long series on Armed and Dangerous, I had the same feeling that I did when I was preparing an earlier one in the series on the word of God. I thought of all that I would not be saying, all that I had previously taught but which could not be fitted into the one hour of that particular message. My heart went out to all the new people who had joined us in the past three months, mostly new believers who did not know the things I had taught before on the importance of God’s word and on prayer.
I decided I would make them a bold offer. If they would pick up one of the two teaching cds ‘The word of God’ and ‘Prayer’ I would personally pay for the second one as a gift for them. Of course it was for the newcomers only, I know one person who is so hungry for the Word that they would have been the first at the table had I not specified who was eligible. Well later I was none the poorer, for no one had chosen to avail themselves of the offer, save a person who was visiting temporarily and would be returning home.
It did serve one purpose, it showed me my team and I have been totally unsuccessful in communicating the value of listening to the teaching of God’s Word. It pains me, but I am determined to keep at it. In precedence I have some consolation, the earlier crop of arrivals for months seemed to turn a deaf ear to all encouragement to pick up teaching and listen, to listen online, seemingly ignored all efforts to make teaching cds easily available for them, but, when it finally hit home, the head of the teaching department was flooded with requestsalbeit for special treatment, special offers, special cds, special…
I have hopes yet.
Shalom!