Preaching to the Toes

 

I grew up in a context where the preacher was expected to “step on toes.” If you didn’t step on toes, you weren’t really preaching. However, I started to understand that stepping on toes was nothing more than behavior modification.

I found that it was easy, sometimes sinful, to step on toes - it allowed the preacher to get away with bitterness and anger towards his people because, after all, they needed their toes stepped on. So, preaching this way is became kind of a weekly scolding instead of a time of worship.

The results were distressing. Instead of addressing sin at the heart level and seeing true Spirit-empowered transformation, the outcome was a works-based outlook that resulted in people saying “I will try harder” or “I need to do better.” I think we need to stop “stepping on toes” and start addressing hearts. If I step on your toes when I preach without presenting Christ and Him crucified, I have aimed too low.

I must preach to the heart, not the toes. God looks beyond external behaviors and sees the internal condition of our hearts. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mat. 6:21). When the heart finds Christ as its greatest treasure, the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors will soon be captured.

Yes, some are guilty of aiming for the toes just to see certain behaviors change, but others are guilty of aiming at the head only. Sermons should be filled with proper exegesis, doctrine, and truth. Yet, to have one’s head filled with facts does not equate to a love for Christ. And to have people adhere to a few moral standards does not either.

Only when the entire body is considered, from head to toes and especially the HEART, do people find Christ more glorious, satisfying, and beautiful than whatever else they are grasping onto.

So, when “preaching” using acts of service as well as words - from the pulpit, from our homes, work-place, school, gas station, grocery store,  etc. - stop stepping on toes. Start addressing to hearts.

My "It's Not Complicated" Mother

 

Question: What these four people, Bill/Melinda Gates and Justin/Carole Smith have in common?

Answer: They are all using the “it’s complicated” argument. The billionaires who are divorcing after long years of marriage because “it’s complicated”. And the churchgoer couple from the Chicago suburb who didn’t visit their mother (who lives less than an hour driving from their home) in three years now. Because they live a busy life and, of course, “it’s complicated”.   

Life can be busy, I agree. But the 5^th commandment is not complicated at all. There is a touching moment in Romans 16 that chokes me up nearly every time I think about it. Paul is sending his personal greeting to his friends in Rome.  He says, effectively, “Say hi to Rufus…and to his mother who was a mother to me.”  (v. 13)

We know who Rufus was - the son of Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ on the last leg of the Calvary ordeal. This means that Simon (probably) went home from that experience a changed man. And he shared the power of that moment with his wife who then, likely, shared it with her sons, Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21).

Are you not moved knowing that she and her sons heard from her husband about his close encounter with Jesus? And then, in a remarkable intersection of faith and providence, she shared it with Paul.

 Paul may have learned about the final moments of Jesus’ earthly life from the wife of the man who carried the Lord’s cross, Simon of Cyrene. She was like a mother to him. And he’s honoring her in his remarkable document-letter that is know part of God’s Holy Word.

 Her care and Christlike love toward Saul, the murderer-turned-missionary, should inspire us all. Without knowing who he would become, she was a mother to the most significant convert in the history of the church. Glory to God for mothers like her. For my mother, Olga and mother-in-law Vivian, for your mothers, soft or severe, living or dead, who’s influence is going to last forever.

 I’m sure, it was complicated for my mother to raise me. 

Very complicated. 

But she did it. 

Thank you, Lord, for my mother!