"But Even If He Doesn't" (Guest Speaker Michael Uhler)

I’m getting this Sunday Morning Update out early this week, since Wendy and the kids and I will be taking our vacation starting on Monday.  Poor Wendy is starting her vacation with a nasty cold/flu and fever, so she didn’t join us this week for our worship service.

Actually, we were missing at least half of our normal FCCers this Sunday.  I know that several people are off traveling this week (so we pray for traveling mercies for you guys), but I know that there are tons of our FCC family who are home with some level of physical illness -- many of whom shared a nasty bug that they picked up at our Vacation Bible School.  So please keep your fellow church family members in your thoughts and prayers as they work to rest and get over this thing.

Alex and Megan and I are already praying that we don’t all spend the next two weeks coughing and sneezing instead of resting and re-energizing. :)

The Elders and Deacons made fun of me a bit this week for seemingly starting my vacation early, since Michael Uhler actually shared the message this morning.  To be fair, I just opened up the opportunity to our people to potentially share during the weeks that I knew that I’d be gone this Summer -- it’s not my fault that so many of them felt called by God to take me up on that offer that we had to let them bleed over into weeks that I’m here as well...

This week, Michael shared what he told me he considered something of a “coda” to our recently-completed series on James -- that in order for us to be able to roll up our sleeves and do the work that God has for us to do, we really need to step out in courage to do it.

But Michael was careful to define “courage” as being a bit different from how many people define it today.  It’s not the lack of fear (as some naturally assume), nor is it simply the willingness to take a stand (since that could come from anger or outrage or hatred rather than true courage), nor is it even really just trusting God (since it doesn’t take courage to stand on ground that you have absolute confidence in).  Instead, Michael took a quote from “To Kill a Mockingbird” -- courage is “when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”  Daniel had courage to open his windows up wide and pray to God like he’d always done, even though it had suddenly become against the law in Babylon.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had courage to refuse to pray to the king’s gods, even though it meant that they’d be thrown into a furnace and burned alive.  These guys didn’t just do the right thing because they had confidence that God would protect them -- they took a stand to do the right thing, even knowing that God might not protect them... simply because it was the right thing to do...

Do you have the courage today to step out, knowing that, even if life gets hard, you really can trust God?  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego trusted that He was always with them -- it’s just that, in the fire, they could finally see Him standing there...