good sermons...

Before getting back to Haiti on Tuesday, I spent a few days with some friends in California. a couple of my friends and I were feeling super spiritual and went to two churches on Sunday.  First, Copperhill Church , where Brian Howard challenged us to pursue purposefully relationships with non-believers. Yes, we need Christian friends. We need their fellowship, encouragement and accountability. But if we aren't friends with non-believers-- what's the point? Why are we still on earth? Wouldn't the best thing be to shoot right up to heaven after we become saved? But that's not what happens. We remain on earth to be the salt and light to people that aren't saved. Brian gave this example: a guy comes before your church and tells you he is going off to be a missionary in the jungles of Africa. You ask what he will be doing there. He excitedly tells you about how he will be spending time all his time in church, doing bible studies and hanging with other missionaries. Your church probably wouldn't see the point of supporting a missionary if that's all they did. We send missionaries out to reach the lost. Brian's point was that everyone is a missionary. We need to follow Christ's example of serving and loving the lost. 

Next church service. Francis Chan at Cornerstone Church. A very convicting message. And yet the part of his message was that it doesn't matter how convicting a message is if you're not doing anything about it! He gave a good illustration: you tell your daughter to clean her room. she says "Oh, that's a great idea!". And then she comes back to you later, "Well, I really like what you said about cleaning my room. I thought a lot about it. I got some friends together and we talked about it. We even prayed about it. Cleaning my room would be a really good thing." Would you be pleased with your daughter?? No... because she never actually cleaned her room. 

And I'll leave you with a short video clip of Francis. This was not from his message Sunday, but I recently watched it and it has stuck w/ me.