The Life Behind the Sermon...

Something that I don't talk about enough but that is by far one of my biggest passions is my calling to preach God's Word.
One of the things I've always enjoyed and considered one of the biggest adventures and joys of my job is preaching. I love it, and it's such an honor to have the opportunities. Having since moved back home to Arkansas and now being a pastor in my home town, it's one of the greatest opportunities of my life.

But, for me it goes much much deeper than just the fact that I'm home. The reality is that I feel like I work on the best church staff there is. I think a lot of pastors say that, but I mean it. I'm not trying to encourage anyone by saying it, because I doubt that our staff even has the time to read this. But I think it's true. I am a part of one of the best church staffs, period! Everybody strives for the best, and challenges each other to do the same out of love for God. It's one of the most Biblical and at the same time, non-legalistic staff teams as well. I say all of this because we clearly work as a team, and I think the love that we have for each other (as almost family like) flows over to our congregation and they are able to see us fleshing out what we teach. It's amazing! What does that mean for me? It means that I'm on a preaching team that does the same thing. We get together and work on these sermons. It's a beautiful thing to be a part of and at the same time, one of the toughest and most challenging, yet by far the most rewarding.

One of the things that we know as teaching pastors here at Community is that the beauty of the process of preparing the sermon is that it first becomes so real and heavy in our hearts that the congregation is truly able to understand where we are coming from because of How God has worked in us to reveal His message through the Spirit.

This past Sunday, I was preaching in Greenwood on Luke 3, the genealogy of Christ. How God specifically used the imperfect and normal people in the lineage of Christ and how this should encourage us, that if God can use normal people that we don't even know much about, surely he can use us. I also said that our main purpose might be to never fully see or understand how we are serving that greater purpose because it might be how we influence God's people down the road or how our kids will or our grandkids because of how we raised them. It was such a blessing to me to preach on this idea because I love the stories throughout the Bible and the way we see it all come together and we see the "Fullness of Time: (Gal. 4:4) unravel before our eyes.

Once I finished the sermon and prayed and we had a last song from the worship band to really reflect on the message and God's work in our lives, my grandma came over to me to talk. I was really suprised that she was crying. She said, "I'm going to say something that might offend you, but I think you should know..." I was a bit concerned but I was ready. She said, "You know how you said Rahab was a harlot who God used to bring Christ... well, you're grandpa's momma was a harlot in this town and she knew that that was the only way she could provide money to take care of your grandpa."

Isn't it just like God to reveal more of the story to you... more of His story of how He has worked in your life to bring you to where you are? He loves to show how He works in your life if you will just let him! How has he shown you lately?

Blessings,
Frankie