Sermon Central
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At The 1st Church I Served, I Was Visiting With ...
Contributed by Sermon Central on Jun 18, 2007 (message contributor)
At the 1st church I served, I was visiting with a husband and his wife. Lela, the wife, was the most gentle women you could ever encounter. Her husband Marvin wasn’t a bad guy either… but he rarely showed up for church. Couldn’t be bothered.
Well, here I was – just trying to get acquainted – when in walks their daughter and son-in-law. These folks went to church in another town… and they didn’t much like our church. The daughter and her husband began to try to engage me in an argument over baptism… but I wasn’t there to talk about baptism. I was just there to visit.
It was almost embarrassing. Try as I might to turn the conversation to something else, they were insistent on making me defend our position on baptism. But I repeatedly made it clear that I had no intention of getting in to that debate.
In spite of my best efforts, I could sense the whole tenor of the evening going downhill fast…
and as I got into my car, I apologized to God for my failure.
Then, the next week, Marvin was in church. And he was in church the week after that… and the week after that. Then one day, he called me and asked me to come out and talk. He wanted to get baptized.
What had stopped him from doing it before???
Well, every time he got around church people, all they seemed to want to do was argue.
I was the first preacher he’d ever seen try to stay out of an argument… and that was purely by accident.
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