It's hard to express the burden I feel with the responsibility of teaching truths like in today’s parable. Important concepts, but I know many won’t be very exciting, and I worry I won’t make it compelling enough. It would be easy to avoid tough passages; except we go book by chapter by verse at GraceLife and it would be obvious. Have you ever experienced anxiety over God’s Kingdom in one of these ways: Am I part of It? How do I get others into it? I remember as a young preacher, hearing and reading stories of people that were great “soul winners.” People with a special gift of “selling Jesus” to imperiled souls, convincing them to make a decision that saved their souls. I wanted to be a great soul winner! But early on I felt like a failure if a sermon didn’t end with people making decisions. Like today, I felt I needed to sharpen my message for a higher response rate, more humorous anecdotes, cool pictures. Somehow, I needed to outsmart sinners and make Jesus compelling, comforting, familiar, relevant, and welcoming.
