I love visual illustrations! Tim (one of our church piano players) has a real gift of being a cartoon style artists. During that long, drawn-out season of Covid a few short years back, many of my sermons were in front of a camera and the only audience was online (I sure hope to never go back to that again!). But one of the funny things that emerged out of that time was that after every sermon that I delivered, Tim, after watching online, would send me a text with a photo of the cartoon drawing he made as he tried to visually translate the main point of the sermon that I had just delivered. It was quite entertaining, and we got some good laughs out how he had translated the point into a picture. Sometimes he was spot on in his visual translation, and sometimes I was disappointed in myself for not quite making the point in a way that it could be drawn. This past Sunday Tim again drew out a cartoon of a point I made and we got some laughs out of his visual drawing after Church in the lobby.
Pictures often help us make sense of life. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words as they say. I have come to believe that some of the most impactful messages can be drawn or painted so we can see and understand the point with greater clarity and application. Jesus himself was constantly teaching great eternal truths and painting word pictures in His masterful way. He would say… ‘look at the birds of the air…’ — ‘ look at the flowers of the field…’ as He was speaking of spiritual truth.
This coming Sunday the message I will be bringing might be one of these strong visual stories from the Bible.
I am teaching a series of messages this spring and summer about how the Gospel is found and needs to be applied in every chapter of our life. The sermon this Sunday is for those parents who are in the chapter of life of raising teenagers and young adults in their home. The actual Bible story is not about raising teens, but instead about building a much needed wall around a broken down city. In the story the building team was concentrating on the actual building of a physical wall, but they were constantly distracted because the enemy was attacking them during construction. They couldn’t stop construction so they had to be prepared to build and to fight at the same time. I want you to catch this visual in your head, because I have come to discover that this is exactly what it feels like to be a parent who is raising teenagers in this world. You build up and you do battle all at the same time.
In order to read ahead for this coming Sunday, you will find this story in Nehemiah 4:15-23. Many Bibles put a heading above this story that is something like “A Sword and a Trowel.” The trowel was a tool to build. A sword is a weapon for battle. One hand on the trowel, and the other hand on the sword. This is what it feels like to raise teenagers.
I’m excited to tell this story and apply it.
I’m also excited to see what drawing Tim comes up with to illustrate it!
See you Sunday.
