more fuel

I am weak in the area of assessing the success of a worship service based on the visible response of the people. When people don’t come to church, I assume they were not changed by the message I preached. When people sleep in church, I assume that they were bored. When they slump down and roll their eyes and look at their watches, I ascertain that they would rather be somewhere else. Thankfully, the last two of the three don’t happen very often. But yesterday, something on the other end of the spectrum happened that really got me charged up.

I told you last week (Thursday, Feb. 11 post) about a young man who is new to our church and new to a relationship with the Lord. He and his fiancé are planning to get married this week. So in our 10:45 services yesterday, they had an entire section of chairs filled with people from their families who were in town for their wedding. This was incredibly inspiring to me. They had such a great excuse to miss the service. Every week, we hear from people who can’t make it to one of our services because they have out-of-town company. Like their families and friends have them tied up at home and won’t let them out of the house until it is time to go to the beach or out on the boat.

This brand new believer gets it. He took the non-typical approach. Among his family are spiritual backsliders, an atheist and several who are curious about a relationship with Christ. They were in our worship event yesterday and heard a Gospel message about hope in Christ! This was, in my estimation, the best thing that happened all weekend.

This fuels me. I hope it spreads.