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Come On Church – Let’s Make People Feel Special
Our 10-year-old granddaughter Amelia recently asked her mom about getting a new dress because they were having a picture taking day at the school. To the store’s credit they treated Amelia with kindness and patience and not like some 10-year-old that was wasting their time. Amelia picked out a beautiful dress. She told her mother when they were leaving the store that loved coming to shop at this store because the people there treated her special. I thought about this situation a lot. The church could learn a lot about the way that we treat people. Many times, we make it difficult for people to even get into our churches. We do all kinds of promotions and advertising to get people to come to our church and then we don’t always treat the visitors like they are special. Let’s start with the parking lot. All of the regular church attenders (Including leadership) usually take up the best parking places nearest the building(s). That means that the visitor has to search for a place to park and then walk a farther distance just to get to the building. Strike one. Next when they do make it into the building instead of greeting them and directing them to the classrooms, nursery etc. the supposedly friendly Christians will gawk at them like they have 2heads and six eyes. Strike two. And Heaven forbids if these nice folks sit in “MY SEAT” that I have been sitting in for 20 years and singing, “I shall not be moved”. It doesn’t matter that the new folks didn’t know that was “your seat”. It’s still my seat and by God I ain’t giving it up for any of them "new people". Strike three. The visitors seem to enjoy the music and the preaching and as soon as the service is over all of the regulars go to their cliques of familiar people and leave the visitors standing alone like they have the plague. No one invites them to take them to lunch or invites them to come back and worship again. Strike four. My 10 -year- old granddaughter likes to go back to this store because they treat her special – even though she is only 10 this store is making a customer for life. You may say, “Yes but they are trying to sell something, so they have to be nice.” Come on church. We can do better in treating people special. We do not own God’s church or His love. We need to share it with everyone freely. We are not “selling” anything but are giving away the free gift of salvation and God’s love. So as His ambassadors we should be loving people into the Kingdom instead of running them away. We can do better. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs
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A friend that is my regular fishing partner and I were on a pond during White Perch (Crappie) season. We had found the fish in a certain part of the pond. There was an old stump sticking out of the water and the fish were around this old stump. The funny thing was that if you threw on the right side of the stump you would immediately get a bite and most of the time catch a nice fish. If you throw on the left side of the stump you may get a bite or you may not. It was a lot slower fishing on that side of the stump.
My partner was seated in the boat in such a way that it made it easy for him to throw on the right side of the stump and thus catch more fish. Being the good friend/fishing partner that I am, every time that he would catch a fish and leave the spot on the right side of the stump vacated, I would throw it there and catch a fish. That’s just what good friends do. LOL Besides we were in my boat and I could have moved the boat so that I was in a better position but I didn’t. This incident reminded me that it is important to be in the right spot if you want to receive the biggest blessings. The “right spot” spiritually is to be, first of all, to be saved and all of your sins confessed and forgiven. There is no better joy and peace than to be forgiven and on the way to Heaven. The Bible describes this as, “The peace of God that passes all understanding to guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus”. Another “right spot” to be in spiritually is the center of God’s perfect will for your life. When you walk in obedience to what the Holy Spirit guides you to do you feel a peace and joy that is like any other. But if you are not in obedience to the guidelines that the Bible gives us and the guiding of the Holy Spirit, then it can be a miserable existence. Nothing seems to go right, you feel like you are empty and missing something and there isn’t the Joy of the Lord that you usually feel. To use my fishing story as an analogy, when you are saved and in the center of God’s will you are throwing on the right side of the stump. When you are not in the center of God’s will you are throwing on the left side of the stump. There may be success every once in a while, but you know that you are missing out on the greater blessings. You see others getting blessed by being in the right spot and it makes you want some of it. My advice is to put your life in the right spot to receive all of the blessings that God has for you. If you are not saved, ask God to save you and put you in the position of now being a Child of God. Trust me when I say that God wants to and can bless His children more than you can imagine. If you are a Christian but you are not in the center of His perfect will for your life, then ask God to help you repent and become obedient to what He is calling you to do. Things go so much better when you are in the right spot – the center of His will. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs I remember growing up hearing my grandparents say that they were going to put on their “Sunday Go To Meeting Clothes” as they prepared to go to church on Sunday. For them that meant getting their best clothes cleaned, ironed and ready on the Saturday before Sunday came. Since they didn’t have all of the modern conveniences for doing laundry, the task took a good bit of time, and they wanted to be ready.
It also meant that they were taking the best clothes that they owned to wear to church. No work clothes or anything that wasn’t modest were permitted. They have a genuine respect for God and His house. They may have not been wealthy, but they believed that God deserved their best. Noble thoughts that we should consider going back to. A good question in this “Sunday Go To Meeting” idea is who were they going to meet? Of course they were going to meet with their church family. But more importantly they went with the expressed purpose to meet with God. They expected to have an encounter with the living God. He was their focus and the desire of their heart to meet with Him. Somewhere along the way we have lost the respect for God’s house in the way that we dress and more importantly, in who we expect to meet in God’s House. I know that you can encounter God anywhere but there should still be an expectation that when you come to God’s House you welcome and even intentionally seek a supernatural encounter with Him. I have seen people come to church to make business contacts, seek a mate, meet with their friends, show off new clothes, out of obligation, and even take a good nap. We have forgotten that the worship of God is all about HIM and not about us. I like to say that we are coming to God’s House, on God’s Day, to worship God’s Son, with God’s people - so we ought to do it God’s Way. How much different would our worship experience be if we intentionally start on Saturday to prepare for Sunday? What if we laid out our clothes on Saturday to prevent conflict on Sunday morning. What if we studied on Saturday the Sunday school lesson and looked at the text that the pastor will be preaching from on Sunday? What if we purposely prayed over those scriptures and asked God to prepare our heart and mind for Him to work before you got to church? What if we invited friends, relatives, and even strangers to join you in worship services? What if you arrived early and actually fellowshipped with your fellow church family? What if we came to church fully expecting God to show up and show out? Many people don’t get anything out of Sunday services because they don’t put any effort into preparing to receive the blessings that God has for them. So put on your “Sunday Go To Meeting Clothes” and come expecting God to meet you there. In love with Jesus - Gary Mimbs Leaving The Holy Spirit Behind
My wife and I were going out to eat with some other people at a fish restaurant. When I eat fish, I have to have a glass of sweet tea. Since I am a diabetic one glass of sweet tea will take my blood sugar level from in the 80’s to well over 260 in just a couple of minutes. I found a solution to the problem. When we went out to eat with these folks I left my diabetic monitor at the house. I have one of those monitors that works because I have a patch inserted in my arm and it sends my glucose levels to the monitor that I wear on my side. When the level gets too low or too high the monitor will start beeping to let me know that I need to take action. Every time that I drink sweet tea the monitor starts beeping. The easy solution – leave it at home when I go to eat fish and drink sweet tea. Do we treat the Holy Spirit that way? When we know that we will be doing something sinful or harmful do we try and leave the Holy Spirit behind so that it won’t convict us of the sin? When I leave my glucose monitor behind and it isn’t beeping then I must be okay. When I try to leave the Holy Spirit behind or I try to ignore His power of conviction then I reason that I must be okay. BOTH of these are wrong and dangerous. When I intentionally leave my glucose monitor behind because I don’t want to hear the results then I am endangering my health. I could go into a diabetic coma, have a stroke, and other bad health issues because I chose to not want to hear the warnings. When we try to ignore and avoid the warnings of the Holy Spirit then we put not only our bodies in danger but also our soul if we ignore His conviction long enough. God only wants what is best for His children. That is why He sends the Holy Spirit in such roles as the encourager, comforter, guide, and intercessor. But God also sends the Holy Spirit as a voice of conviction upon our heart. He does this in order to help keep us from sin and the dangerous consequences that it brings. So don’t intentionally try to avoid the Holy Spirit’s conviction. It is a deliberate sin that you can’t claim ignorance. You choose to sin despite the warnings and convictions of the Holy Spirit. Instead of leaving my glucose monitor at home I need to make an intentional choice to have water with my fish. It will help me live longer and enjoy a healthier life. We also must be intentional about choosing to obey the Holy Spirit’s conviction and warnings so that we can enjoy a better Spiritual life. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs While trying to make an illustration during my Kingdom Kids moment (Children’s teaching moment) in the sermon, I got a pearl of wisdom from a small child. I had a pencil and an electric pencil sharpener for the illustration. I tried with great effort to sharpen the pencil on my own without the pencil sharpener plugged in. Then I showed them how much easier it was to sharpen the pencil when I plugged in the sharpener. It provided the power to get the job done.
This was to demonstrate the idea that no matter how hard we try to solve our problems it works much easier when we pray about things and plug into God’s power through prayer. The kids were all getting it so to end the demonstration I did it one more time. I unplugged the sharpener and pushed and twisted every hard to try and sharpen the pencil on my own and then planned to once again to plug it in to show the kids how much easier with the power applied. While I was doing the final twisting on the pencil (Without the power on) one little perky 5-year-old girl said these words of wisdom, “If you don’t quit trying to fix it on your own you are going to break it”. And just like that the ah ha moment occurred for me. How many times do I keep on trying to fix a problem on my own rather than turning it over to God through prayer to fix it? How many times do I keep on trying to fix it on my own and wind up breaking it – making it worse instead of trusting God to take care of it? This 5-year-old opened my eyes to spiritual depth and insight that I was making it too complex to see. The Bible reminds us that out of the mouths of babies comes strength and wisdom. So many times, we expend so much unnecessary energy, fret, worry, and fear trying to solve a problem that, if we would just pray, God has a simple easy solution? I was trying to demonstrate the power of plugging into the prayer power source and yet I was missing the point – I have to stop trying and start trusting for the power to best be utilized. WOW. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs |
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