Rev Bill

I have posted my sermon for today on my sermon blog. It’s the second in my fall series on “touching Jesus” — today’s sermon based on Matthew 6:5-15 and entitled “Touch Jesus: Pray”.

Here’s a portion of it:

My truck had a dead battery the other day.
I’ve already made a note to myself that the next time I buy a used vehicle – especially from my brother in law – I need to make sure the battery is good!
Well – I knew what I had to do – I had to get out the jumper cables – jump start the battery – and take it to town to get a new battery.
I was hoping that when I went to the store that morning in Sally’s car and explained that mine had a dead battery and I was going to have to “jump it off” that someone would volunteer to help.
No such luck.
I was going to have to do it.
When I got back from the store I pulled Sally’s Explorer up to the tuck – and pulled to lever to raise the hood.
Now – I know that you have to pull a lever on the inside of a vehicle to raise the hood – then pull a lever under the hood to get it up the rest of the way.
I know that much about cars.
The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to pull the lever under the hood of the Explorer.
What was I going to do?
I did what some men would never do – called Sally on my cell phone (she was in the house and I was out in the yard) – and asked her to come and help me.
When she took over, she couldn’t figure out how to get the hood up either.
So what did we do?
Again – what some men would never do – we got out the manual and read how to raise the hood. It turned out that on most cars you push up on the lever under the hood – on the Explorer you push the lever to the left. Once we did that, the hood went up nicely.
So – we got the hoods on the Explorer and my truck raised – put the jumper cables on the batteries – red to red and black to black (I know that much about it!) — cranked the Explorer – then cranked the truck. I then drove it to town – got a new battery – and – as they say – I was “good to go”.
It took some instruction – it took reading the manual – for me to figure out how to get the hood up on the Explorer.
Now I know.
The point I’m making is this:
Sometimes we have to have some instructions before we can figure out how to do something.
You can probably think of situations where you needed some instructions on how to do something – but once you got the instructions you could figure it out. A little instruction can make a huge difference. Even if we have a lot to learn, just knowing where to begin can be a big help.
In our text this morning, Jesus gives us some instructions about prayer.

You can read the entire sermon here.

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