Yesterday in church my pastor spoke about evangelism. Oh yeah, that topic is right up there with Giving as far as most popular subjects in a sermon. 🙂 As usual, though, I not only learned something but was blessed by the teaching.
The topic was especially interesting to me as I’d just sat in on a teaching video the night before on the same subject, quite by coincidence. One of the areas both the sermon and the taped workshop had in common was to stress the importance of relationship. Not just preaching my faith, but encouraging interaction and friendship so a faith conversation would not only be more enjoyable, but more effective. How exactly do you go about showing God’s love to someone if you don’t . . . well, love them?
During the course of the sermon, my pastor said evangelism can get messy. Few people feel really confident about talking to others about faith, and you can put me in that camp. But just because something’s messy doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
So I was talking to my husband about this and he realized evangelism and engineering definitely have this “messy quotient” in common. When his engineering students are building a robot, it’s a given that they’ll make mistakes at first. Putting together a robot is a bit more complicated than a Lego product or soldering a few parts together, as the students quickly learn. They succeed, but not before a few messy attempts.
Writing is like this too. I’ve been taking my time putting my new project together. It’s set in 1848 Chicago, so the research material is close by (I live in the Chicago area). But as with each new story I create, there is always an initial period where I’d almost rather do anything than write a first draft. I don’t yet know my characters, so I tend to pile on more research rather than just sitting down to write and get to know these fictional people. Once I finally do sit down to write, my first drafts are always messy. I take one avenue only to find out I’m not happy with that direction; I may salvage parts of it, and happy if I can. But my beginnings are always rewritten more often than any other part of my novels because they’re especially messy.
And so it is with many other things in life, too. As a parent, especially of a handicapped child, it’s easier for me to do everything for him than to let him to do things for himself. I can put his shoes on him much quicker than he can do it himself . . . and yet it’s hardly fair to him if I do for him what he really can do for himself. Who is going to put his shoes on for him after I’m gone? So I’ve had to let that get messy, too. Sometimes the Velcro closings on his shoes don’t work over a shoe tongue that’s all bunched up. And it looks messy. But hey, the shoes are on and that messy tongue just doesn’t bother him, so why should I complain?
This week I’m not going to be afraid to let some areas of my life get messy. If I have to rewrite my beginning again, that’s okay. And if I invite someone to church and they say no, it may feel like I messed up. But that’s okay.
So if you find yourself in a mess today, maybe that’s right where you’re supposed to be.
PS: If you’re looking for the winners of last week’s contest for a free Advanced Reader Copy of my upcoming title All In Good Time, click here for last week’s posting with the names of winners listed on the Punchtab graphic. Congratulations to the winners! If you’d like a chance to win a “real” edited version, I’ll be holding more contests as the release date draws nearer and once the final copies are available. So keep in touch!
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