Wellington Church of Christ

There are two big inspirations that I draw from funeral services.  I either leave the service inspired by the person’s lack of accomplishments in life – and I leave wanting to do better, or I leave the service inspired by the person’s accomplishments in life, and I leave wanting to do similarly.

I recently became enamored with a new song.  It’s a folk song.  Those style of songs are the ones I have most naturally gravitated towards in the last ten years or so. When I find a new song that I like, I listen to it to absolute death.

In the newest song I like, there’s a really neat, meaningful word progression. The singer is reflecting back on his life and begins with the phrase:

One of my regular, favorite practices is to read great quotes from my heroes in the faith. 

Here’s some quotes by “The Prince of Preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, on various topics, in no particular order- Enjoy!

The dictionary defines stereotype as: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

How do stereotypes come about?  They are typically the result of a singular experience.  For instance, my first experience with a person from the country of Honduras wasn’t great.  It was a grumpy person at the Honduras airport.

One of my hobby horses is to preach that we are saved for the purpose of doing good works.  That it’s not good works that save us, but rather, that we have been saved FOR good works.

I’ve said it so often that even I recognize that I say it often, which, believe me, is saying something because I typically retell stories because I can’t remember that I’ve told them already.

Praise the Lord for a wonderful VBS this year.  We exceeded our number of children from last year with our biggest night having 74 children in attendance.

In addition to the 74 children, we also had 46 adults for a total of 120.

When it comes to following Jesus, sometimes all we can see before our eyes is obstacles.  If this is your experience, don’t be discouraged, it’s the experience of all who have desired to follow Him.

There have been many times in my own life that I’ve wanted to be more involved with the activities of the church in my personal pursuit of following Christ, but it seemed that everywhere I turned, there was only more and more complications.

There are few things in life as satisfying as finding a great shortcut.  We enjoy shortcuts so much, we try to find them for everything possible.

With things like driving and cooking, shortcuts can be great, but are they great for everything?  No. As a matter of fact, they’re not.

Shortcuts are great for things that are not personal or too complex.  When it comes to matters of the heart, or complex challenges, there are no shortcuts to meaningful solutions.

I was confessing something really dumb that I did when I got angry to a few guys, and afterwards, one of those guys said to me, “It does my heart good to know that you sin too.”

I, of course, was shocked by his comment.  My first thought was, “How on earth could anyone ever believe that I don’t regularly sin!”  I then attempted to explain to the guy that he had me all wrong.

When I thought more about what he’d said, I remembered that I once too thought the same way.  When I first began attending worship services as a teenager, I had no doubts that I was the worst person in attendance.

Without anyone telling me the lie that I was only sinner, I somehow believed it.

So where does this kind of thinking come from?

For one, I think that most people attending worship service are on their best behavior, which is good, but may cause a visitor to believe that we’re always on our best behavior, and I know better, speaking for myself that is.

Another reason people may think we’re better than we are is the lack of confession of sin in our culture.  And by culture, I mean church culture. Nobody gets too excited about confession of sin, but this is only true of those who don’t do it.  Those of us who have experienced the healing benefits of confession make it a regular practice.  Of the benefits received, healing is the greatest.

The early church was taught confession of sin by James and we see it practiced most in the Bible by the Apostle Paul who constantly confessed and praised God for His forgiveness given through Christ. i.e.

James 5:16 – ¹⁶ Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

Acts 22:4-5 – ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, ⁵ as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brethren, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.

Romans 7:24-25a – ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

If we’re not careful, our pride might persuade us to allow others to wrongly put us on a pedestal and if pride does it’s work well enough, we might even begin to believe that we are better than others.

Let’s help the church re-gain its mission.  As often as you have opportunity, tell people that the church isn’t a place for perfect people, it’s a place for people who know they’re not perfect.  It’s a place to worship and honor God for healing us of our spiritual disease, sin, which will never be fully healed in this life, but in the next.

But good for us and for all who put their faith in Jesus, though sin will not be completely healed in this life, it can be completely forgiven in this life!  Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus for accomplishing what we never could.

Much love!

Wes LeFlore (918) 607-8489 or huskerwes1@gmail.com