Pandemic Preaching - Real Joy Part 4
"Faith assures us of things we expect and convinces us of the existence of things we cannot see. God accepted our ancestors because of their faith.
Faith convinces us that God created the world through his word. This means what can be seen was made by something that could not be seen." Hebrews 11:1-3
In the first part of this message, we talked about joy, in the second part we talked about peace, in the third hope.
Now on this fourth segment, we will continue to touch on those three, as we talk about faith.
In this series, which started off like a stand up comic piece (about joy) has slowly turned serious in the succeeding two. And it will even be more in this 4th installment. This is God's sense of humor in play.
Natural
Some preachers employ this, without them being aware of it. God made them naturally funny, with that innate ability to make people laugh, or even smile without them trying to be funny.
People gets disarmed when something someone says makes them to crack up (burst out laughing) or at least crack a smile. The great ones make people laugh because they are either laughing at the speaker talking about himself/herself or something about them. When we start to laugh at something about ourselves, that opens us up even more (cracks us open).
Warms The Heart
There is just something about laughter that makes people's hearts to open up. This is why we call laughter, warming someone's heart. Something that gets warmed, opens up. As the heart opens up, our ears are opened, our eyes as well as we are able to see something that wasn't there before, we start to remember things we've forgotten about or haven't thought about in years and we begin to listen with an open mind.
I mean, think about it, earlier none of this is making sense and I would not be even listening to this (reading this) but now I want to.
Inborn
As a baby we instinctly did this, when we laugh, we instantly made the person looking at us fall in love with us, even just our smile will do it. But because we couldn't communicate with words yet, we quickly learned that crying, yelling or throwing a tantrum will get people to understand us or at least get us what we want and quicker too. Everyone wants instant.
It's a shame, I believe everyone was a born comedian, like God.
Then through life we just lost track of who we really are. We got lost along the way.
Ironically, we got lost trying to find who we are, perhaps as we've gone looking at all the wrong places.
Joy
Who we are is embedded in our heart. Laughter normally will unlock that heart that has closed up in time, through everything we have gone through. What is funny in a way is that everything we have gone through (the bad included) will lead us back to a path to finding ourselves.
In this life we learned that to see is to believe. But God gave us a little measure of faith. At that moment that we open up to the possibility of an invisible God who made me, that small seed of faith sprouts up and what was once invisible is seen.
Everything we see around us did not come from nothing. It came from something. And Someone made those things.
Hebrews 11:1-3 The Message Paraphrase
Faith in What We Don’t See
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.
Inborn
As a baby we instinctly did this, when we laugh, we instantly made the person looking at us fall in love with us, even just our smile will do it. But because we couldn't communicate with words yet, we quickly learned that crying, yelling or throwing a tantrum will get people to understand us or at least get us what we want and quicker too. Everyone wants instant.
It's a shame, I believe everyone was a born comedian, like God.
Then through life we just lost track of who we really are. We got lost along the way.
Ironically, we got lost trying to find who we are, perhaps as we've gone looking at all the wrong places.
Joy
Who we are is embedded in our heart. Laughter normally will unlock that heart that has closed up in time, through everything we have gone through. What is funny in a way is that everything we have gone through (the bad included) will lead us back to a path to finding ourselves.
In this life we learned that to see is to believe. But God gave us a little measure of faith. At that moment that we open up to the possibility of an invisible God who made me, that small seed of faith sprouts up and what was once invisible is seen.
Everything we see around us did not come from nothing. It came from something. And Someone made those things.
Sounds From the Center of the Milky Way (NASA)
Hebrews 11:1-3 The Message Paraphrase
Faith in What We Don’t See
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.
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