Sermons

Summary: It is much easier to criticize than to encourage. Be an encourager!

FOCUS ON THE SPOT?

Wade Martin Hughes, Sr.

Kyfingers@aol.com

I ponder this day, a very sad pondering:

Gal. 5:7 YE DID RUN WELL;

WHO DID HINDER YOU THAT YE SHOULD NOT OBEY THE

TRUTH?

Wish I had the answers! ? ! ?

Maybe losing the focus and seeing the all the bad,

negative, fault finding could be killing our

vision?

Memory Lane is a good place to visit, but she is a poor place to move into permanent resident.

No sadder words of pen or tongue, than the words what might have been?

How sad to hear the words, "ye did run well?"

We lose our focus, and when our focus things become distorted by looking

at people’s faults,

or by things not quiet right.

We head quickly toward rocks of destruction by an attitude of negative focus.

Focus suggest a point at which an image becomes clear.

Out of focus suggest ministry and family have become distorted.

We see the trouble and not the individual,

then all becomes not clear, blurred and smeared.

What can cause a serious worker with a clear purpose and goals to become aimless and drift away from the high calling? YE DID RUN WELL?

I always use a 8 1/2 by 10 piece of paper here.

I draw a very black spot the size of a quarter in the middle of the paper.

I hold up the piece of paper of paper up, ... to the viewing of all the crowd, I asked one person,

"What do you see?"

I have never had a person ever say anything, but a black dot?

I personally don’t understand? No one has ever seen the big piece of paper, every one always sees the black spot.

There are 50 times more white paper than black dot, but the person always focuses on the black dot?

Why? Why see the little? That is where the focus of the eyes seem to want to see.

While pastoring in the mountains of eastern Kentucky,

I was visiting an old lady from church. She told me about this poor young girl that was pregnant and her dad put her out of the house, and I felt so sorry for the girl, I asked the name, I would visit and encourage her.

The old lady said, that was 30 years ago.

The baby was 30 years old, and all that could be remembered was the black spot?

We must teach others, in 15 minutes you can do something that will cause you to carry a black spot to your grave?

What I am trying to say, ...

God loves people with black spots in their life.

So, why not see the whole page?

Ministry is so exciting, until you see everybody’s

black spot.

People love the new church, until they see the pastor’s black spot, that imperfection that really shows our humanness.

Then we search for a new race to work, where that are people without any spots?

How foolish?

God calls all workers to work with people that have

potential, some small, some great.

We must quit seeing people’s black spots, now?

Billy Graham was a snot-nose mean little boy in a Sunday School Class, someone invested in him? Maybe you could teach a young person that would reach to the mission fields?

What happens when ministry focuses on the

"black spot of stupidity?"

We re-enforce the negative?

Faith has to have a telescopic ability that can see

beyond the disappointments of today ...

and see the GOD of tomorrow.

I read years ago a sad story, it is said that when the British and the French were fighting in Canada in the 1750’s, that Admiral Phipps, was the commander of the British fleet.

He had received the order to sail through the Great Lakes and wait for the land troops to arrive outside of Quebec.

When the land forces arrived, Admiral Phipps was to support the soldiers by firing the cannons of the ship to shore and pen the French forces between land and the sea.

As the Admiral arrived much before expected, he and the navy was annoyed by waiting.

The Admiral focused the ships cannons on the great cathedral’s statues of the saints surrounding the towers of the cathedral.

So, Adm. Phipps commanded his men to shoot at the statues of the saints for target practice.

The sailors fired and fired the ships cannons at the statues of the saints, until not one was left standing.

Finally many days later, the land troops arrived, and gave the signal for the ships to fire on the enemy for the complete attack, with great embarrassment the Admiral was no help in the attack, for Admiral Phipps had used all the ammunition shooting at the saints?

To this day, Quebec is under the influence of the French, because one man lost his focus?

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