I enjoy speaking in church

I really like the days I get to preach. There is the totally selfish aspect of it...I get to spend time in the scriptures. Now don't get me wrong, I spend time reading daily and I think that is an important part of my time with God. But there is a difference when I get to preach. I have an excuse to not just read the scripture, but it stays in my brain. This past Sunday I was able to wrap up our series on Fruit of the Spirit from 2Peter 1:5-7. For weeks before I spoke on it, I was thinking about the scripture and what each week of the series has meant to me and what I can take out of it. I was able to sit down and just spend hours looking up other references in scripture to these fruits and how they can be used in my life. And then I was able to look through materiel I like and try to find a video that showed it.

I was able to use a Good Eats DVD I had. In this one, Alton Brown decides he needs to get over his fear of all things French and make crepes. The snippet I showed was about 3.5 minutes long, but it started with AB in a shop purchasing the trappings of being French...the beret, keychain, flag, bumper sticker and his tape of "French for Stupid American Chefs" and it didn't work...he's sitting in his kitchen with failed crepes and batter and slop all around him calling Shirley at the "Suicidal Chef Hotline" telling her how it didn't work. Shirley asks the important question "Did you follow the recipe, Alton?" And he has to agree he didn't. Scene changes to him making crepes with a recipe now. Three blenders and three different crepe batters. All have the same basic ingredients...the basic crepe batter is just that...the basic ingredients, the savory crepe batter adds some herbs and the dessert crepe batter added some vanilla and sugar.

I loved this illustration because the idea behind the fruit of the spirit was that if we can apply this recipe Peter gives us to our lives we can end up with good character. The same process occurs for us in our lives...we put on the trappings of good character and eventually fail spectacularly. Then, once we realize there is a recipe to follow, we can then add these ingredients to our lives in the proper proportions and whamo we have good character! I really enjoyed AB making three different types of crepes with the same basic recipe. It's just like we are...we can take this same basic recipe in 2 Peter and apply it to us (whether we are basic, sweet or savory) and still have a crepe in the end...we can all have good character, it will just be flavored with who we are at the same time.

Anyway, that was fun. I'm looking forward to February when I get to speak on Proverbs, but I'm also a bit nervous. There is a TON of information contained in every verse in Proverbs and I could spend a lot of time deep ending there, so we'll see!