Face to Face with a Facebook Friend

This past Sunday I had the cool privilege of preaching at my home church. Cook Baptist in Ruston is a great place. The people there have always loved me and supported me. They are absolutely awesome.

I had two bonuses on the trip, too. That Sunday was my mom’s birthday. She is an absolutely amazing woman of faith. My mom was up at 4 AM on a Sunday morning for her own birthday cooking for college kids’ lunch and loved it. She rocks. I hope hearing me preach on her birthday was better than hearing me sing for her birthday all these years. (Although it would have to be one awful sermon to be worse than hearing me sing,) The other bonus was getting to deer hunt with my dad. He rocks, too. My parents are great people who love Jesus. Another cool thing was that I got a spike, but what I really want is to kill one of the 8 points my dad kills all the time – like last week. He must still be living better than me or something.

Anyway, the title of this blog is not really about any of that. It is about the sermon I preached at Cook. That was the title of it – Face to Face with a Facebook Friend. Facebook is a great site to catch up with old friends. In so doing many of my old friends have been a tad surprised to find out I was a pastor.

The sermon I preached was about why I always hope that people on Facebook might see that I am not who I was. The truth about my life is not that I got saved and God changed my life, though. I was already saved. I just was not living like it. I shared a truth out of Romans 12:1-2 that God taught me many years ago now that I believe is the real reason for the change I have experienced in my life.

It was this. We always need to see God’s mercy. We often think about the part in this passage that says “offer your bodies a living sacrifice” or “do not conform to the pattern of this world” or “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. What we must realize is that all of that truth begins with these words, “in view of God’s mercy.”

The question I have to ask you is this, “Do you see it?” I do. I now see it every day. And it is new every day. His mercy is fresh in my life every morning. That is what changed my spiritual life. I finally realized I was not responsible for the condition of the living sacrifice. The mercy of God made that sacrifice holy and pleasing, not me. That truth really set me free.

Stop trying to sacrifice enough to deserve the mercy of God. Stop trying to quit conforming to experience the mercy of God. Quit trying to transform your mind so that you can understand the mercy of God. Just stop and see it. See the love of God in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Understand that his mercy is already yours.

Then, get up and live your life in response to Jesus. Allow him to give you the power to no longer conform to the world. Allow the mercy of God to transform your mind.

Never lose sight of God’s mercy. He has never lost sight of you.

That is the confession of a Facebook friend. I am not who I was, because Jesus is more than I knew He was. And that my friend, is the mercy of God.

Do you see it?