Thinking tonight about Sunday morning and pondering what goes on……

Does it seem reasonable that at our myriad iterations of Friendly Bible Church that our focus should center on the Bible? It is, after all, the central word in the name; and the central WORD in our faith.  

Seems like there are alot of things central to church services today…..hip music, cool graphics, sexy sermon topics, activities for every perceived segmentation of the potential church-going market.  I just wonder if central to what we do when we do church shouldn’t be cracking the Bible open and explaining what it means in an unadorned way. Doesn’t that have merit? 

The purpose when we gather is to Make Much of Jesus. Simply put: to worship God. History records that teaching of scripture has always been central to worship; teaching that ostensibly is to produce a response from the learner—a life-changing conversation between God and man.

So I go off to church tomorrow wondering whether there will be  Bible teaching, or will we be entertained with another drama, a cool slide show, or maybe an amateur rendition of the latest pop song? 

If you are headed out the door Sunday morning to go to a Baptist Church, may you witness baptisms; at the Bible Church, may it be central; and may Christ be central at the Christian Church.

It’s imperfect, but it’s a start.

A generation ago my statistics professor at the University of Missouri explained “average” this way: If you put one foot in a bucket of ice water and one foot in a bucket of flaming gasoline, on average your crotch is just right.

Yeah, but………

And that’s the thing about stock market averages, they are worthless except as marketing propaganda.  I’ve quoted a lot of averages over the years and regret it. But, at least I’m willing to admit it. There are still educated idiots on CNBC who continue to blather about such drivel. They haven’t learned yet. My guess is they never will. The TV lights, the big important sounding words, and the ego trip of being an “expert” on international television is just too much to give up in order to tell the truth.

Over on Mark Batterson’s blog he wrote….

Soren Kierkegaard once told a parable about two thieves who broke into a jewelry store, but instead of stealing the jewels they simply switched the price tags. They put high-priced tags on cheap jewelry and low-priced tags on valuable gems. For several weeks no one noticed. People bought cheap jewelry for exorbitant prices and rare jewels for spare change. Kierkegaard’s point is pretty obvious: sometimes we have difficulty discerning between what is valuable and what is worthless.

John 10:10 says, “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.” But here’s how he steals. Very rarely is it overt. He uses covert means. He switches the price tags. He wants us to place supreme value on worthless things and no value on things that are invaluable.

A relationship with Jesus Christ is of infinite value. To settle for anything less is literally robbing from yourself.

Now, that’s a good word. Worthy of repeating. Obviously.

What is there in our lives that has the wrong price tag?

If you are looking for strippers, sex and drunkenness you’re in the wrong place. Move on. (Well, actually, there are strippers and sex….you’ll have to read on to get the rest of the story.)

Your heart may be in the right place, but you can still fail if you don’t have the right tools. In order to illustrate that principle I need to tell you about my bachelor party.

Twenty-four years ago I got married. On the night before the wedding, my best man and I had a party. It was a wild one; out of this world you might say. After the rehersal we went back to my little one-bedroom apartment number “A” at 401 N. Ann Street in Columbia, Missouri and had a prayer meeting. Oh, we talked some, and I’m sure we drank some lemonade or ice tea (not the kind that comes from Long Island, either) but mostly we prayed about my upcoming marriage. Same goes for the wedding night. I knelt beside that bridal bed and asked God to bless our union.

Fast forward nine years and you’d have found me in the abyss of the greatest and only significant failure in my life as I signed the papers allowing a judge to dissove that marriage. I still reflect on that today—15 years later. Most recently it occurred to me that you can have the best, most honorable, and most noble intentions (and I promise you I did) and still fail if you don’t also have the right tools (and obviously I didn’t).

Today, my life and work is really about helping people find the right tools to succeed, in business and in life. In the process we buy, rehab and sell hundreds of properties, while also designing financial plans, loaning money, making an occasional speech, leading a couple of small groups, and a variety of other things. But the focused intention of that effort is giving people the right tools for success.

I got to this little parable by thinking about a friend of mine. His marriage is on the rocks. A quarter of a century ago his bachelor party included strippers and all that comes with that. Hmmm. Mine started nobly, his in sin. But the result was the same. Neither of us had the tools.

I know that you largely have good intentions. But do you have the tools to deliver on that intention? If you don’t, what are you doing to get those tools? Somebody said “You are who you are because of the books you read and the people you hang around with.” What are you reading? Who are you hanging with?

The road to Hell is paved with good intention. You’ve got to proactively reach out and grab the tools for success.