Lessons learnt from a sermon I attended yesterday

While I was at a Christian fellowship service that a friend invited me to go for your yesterday, I listened to a sermon given by this woman who was sharing her testimony of her Christian walk and how God has impacted her in her life. She said something about how when she was just a new believer, she was worried about her falling away from the faith, that she prayed for God to hold tightly on to her and not let fail and go to hell, otherwise she would put the blame on God and hold God responsible for her failure.

That is the kind of prayer that I would pray as well, although I would not go to the extent of putting the onus of the blame for my faith on God. And in church, I have heard song with lyrics like, “hold me, never let me go”. I suppose we are trying to acknowledge here the fragility of a person’s will to keep the faith. And I know of people who were Christians formerly, but who have renounced the faith. This includes pastors as well. I was thinking, can God be said somehow to be responsible for their turning apostate, especially if they were fervent Christians before that?

Another thing that she talked about was how she found herself very critical of a traditionalist Methodist service that she had accompanied her husband to, so much so that after the service, she wanted to approach the pastors to voice her criticism. She herself had a Charismatic background, while her husband was Methodist. But right before the service ended, a song featuring lyrics from the book of 1 Corinthians 13 was sung. It was the passage about how love is patient, love is kind, does not envy, does not boast, and about how one may have various gifts and talents, but if he does not love, he gains nothing. It hit her that it was ironic that she had so much criticism about what she perceives as the traditionalist coming up short, and she couldn’t find herself having love for these fellow Christian believers. I can identify my sentiment with hers, except I come from the other way round – I have a traditionalist Lutheran Christian background, and I find myself critical of Charismatics! But it is a good message from her that we shouldn’t be so focused on our criticism that we forget about the more important point about loving another person. Applies very much to a relationship as well I think.