Sermon

I was asked to write the sermon for today's church service, so I did, and I shouldn't leave you guys out. Enjoy :)

Would you put God on hold? Maybe you all ready have

A Scout is Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
Reverent
A scout is reverent, the last line in the Boy Scout law. Lord Baden Powell the founder of Boy Scouts said “Believe in anything that you want to believe in, but keep God at the top of it. With Him, life can be a beautiful experience. Without Him, you are just biding time.” When a Boy Scout says this law, he is pledging that he IS reverent. One of the most important words in the Boy Scout Law is the word “is”. This year Boy Scouts turned 100. 100 years of being reverent, of doing Sunday morning services on their campouts, and helping out their local churches. On my honor, I will try:
To serve God* and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
One of Juliette Gordon Low’s favorite poems say “God made for man an earthly habitation, the body soil in which the soul may grow, this little life is but the preparation the soul must know. And then some day man’s errors overcome him the body fails, the soul alone is wise; and then the God that takes one small world from him gives him the skies.” Juliette Low started Girl Scouts to make a heaven on earth, and to help girls grow in Godly ways.
Today we celebrate the scouts in the area, and how they have lived the Boy Scout or Girl Scout Law in their life. If you have been a Girl Scout or Boy Scout in the pass years, can you please stand up, we I’ve been a Girl Scout for 11 years, my mom triple that, my father has been in Boy Scouts since he was a kid, J has been in Boy Scouts since he was 7, and Z is just beginning his journey. Our family has revolved around scouting since I was born. We had a Scouting Sunday at United Churches of Durham, and my dad with help from Reverend Lynch has decided to introduce it here. Being a scout isn’t just hiking, camping, making fires, learning how to be safe, it’s about living the law, to be everything that you promise that you are, it’s about being reverent and believing in God, and spreading God’s word. Since today is Scouting Sunday, I was asked to write the sermon today, okay more bribed by my father, but you get the idea. So I decided to talk about religion, and how to have a stronger relationship with God. With today’s technology we kind of forget about God, forget about the Bible, we don’t spend the time to read that one chapter in 1 Samuel, or in John, we don’t take the time to find our favorite book in the Bible, or that one passage that makes you think for days, but what if we did? How would it change the way that we live our daily lives?

What would happen if we treated out Bible like we treat our cell phones?

What if we carried it around in our purse or pocket?
What if we flipped through it several times a day?
What if we turned back to get it if we forgot it at home?
What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?
What if we used it when we traveled?
What if we used it in case an emergency?
This is something to make you go...hmmm where’s my Bible?

And unlike our cell phones, we don't have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill.

Now doesn’t that make you think?
If we spent the extra time out of our day to read the Bible, or pray at dinner, how would it change your family? It’s changed mine tremendously, at dinner one night my dad challenge the five of us to see who could stay the quietest the longest, of course I was in the middle of saying something, so I said “Ok, I lose” and continued on in my story. Jake won, but then Zeke said that God did, this brought up a question, was God really being quite or are we just not listening? In my confirmation class, Elven, the teacher and the minister of the church, told the class, that when you pray you should wait for God to answer, because God doesn’t like a one sided conversation. The whole class looked at Elven, if he grew three heads or something, so Elven, kind of had to explain. He said after you’re done praying don’t say “Amen” be quite, don’t think of anything, just empty your mind, and close your eyes for a couple of minutes, but make sure you don’t fall asleep! When you’re quite and listening, that’s when God is talking, we just need to be open to listen to him. We always know that God is listening to us, but does God know that we’re listening to him? 1 Samuel 3:2-10 shows that God can talk to us, and we can and will listen to him.
“2 One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple [a] of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called Samuel.
Samuel answered, "Here I am." 5 And he ran to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."
But Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down." So he went and lay down.
6 Again the LORD called, "Samuel!" And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."
"My son," Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down."
7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
8 The LORD called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."
Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.' "So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!"
Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."”
God called Samuel that night, and it wasn’t that Samuel wasn’t listening, he was, but he wasn’t listening to God. Samuel put God on “hold” sometimes we get caught up in this age of technology, and forget about the simple things like the Bible on your nightstand collecting dust. If we step outside and forget about our cell phones, laptops, PDAs, i-pods, TVs, if we forget about all of the electronics that we have in our life, what’s left? The trees, the hills, the sun, the outdoors, God, your family, we really need to step back from everything once and a while and see what we have. I never really thought about holding a conversation with God, but he does respond, in his own way, that aren’t as clear as me going up to you and saying “Happy Birthday” or answering a question. With moving here, I became closer to God during the move, it was the one friend that I knew that I would always have no matter where I was on life’s journey, weather it was moving out of state, going to high school, going to college, visiting relatives, getting a job, having another sibling, I knew he was always there, I also started reading the Bible, and when we missed that one Sunday of church, it felt weird that I didn’t go to church and it threw my whole week off. Having faith and living faithfully are two different things. You could have faith and believe in God, but then you could live faithfully. You don’t need to live faithfully to have faith, but you do need faith to live faithfully. And living faithfully isn’t just praying to God, or listening to God, it’s reading the Bible, spreading Gods word, having more than just a connection with God, but having a relationship with him. Sure God doesn’t call us like he did to Samuel, and we don’t have our own Eli, that tells us “Caelyn, it’s God, go talk to him,” but he does call, and we need to make sure that we don’t put him on hold, because he’s been on hold too long already.