Sermon Tone Analysis

I need to share with you a happening to being what I believe God desires me to share with you today.

It might be tough to follow and I encourage you not to jump to the end or get overwhelmed by each event but to see if you find yourself feeling the feelings I felt as I share with you what I was going through.

You see my uncle asked me to BBQ.

He asked me through his Texas accent, “Billy” yes, my elder family members including early church family from my days in Union City are allowed to call me Billy.

Will you BBQ this, It was a big slab of meet, ribs, huge chunks already ready to go but as I looked around there was all kinds of food everywhere.

We were already eating a lot of food and he was asking me to BBQ and did I mention my Uncle is a Texan.

That’s like Ms. Frances asking me to make torillas.

I can’t do what experts do.

Ever get asked to do something you knew you were going to fail at by someone and totally want to back out but feel like you can’t.

He said, the BBQ is all ready and I looked over and it was hot but weirdly there was a rack with coals on it that we’re already hot and I was supposed to take this other rack that the ribs were already on.

He said in his drawl, “That’s how it’s done, just put er on it, and get cookin.”

They left and I went to work.

I had to use tongs because the coals were already hot, I could get easily burned and like I said I have never seen a BBQ set up like this but when in Texas do like the Texans.

So I picked it up but I couldn’t get the stupid rack to sit right, It started to lean and caught the metal lip it was supposed to sit on.

It was super heavy, Texans like their meat and everything is bigger than Texas you know.

So I tried, I pulled back on my right arm, and thought I got it.

I pulled up with my strength, and clank, bam, I fell back on the ground but the ribs flew into the air thowing BBQ sauce everywhere.

My uncle’s little dogs came running and my uncle came walking up.

I had already started attempting to clean up the BBQ sauce as it coated the counter tops to the floor.

The dogs were already cleaning on the other side of the room.

He looked at me with the saddest look.

It wasn’t anger.

It wasn’t frustration.

It was despair, it was being sad but with total loss.

He said, “well, we have other food.”

I felt the utter complete failure of a person.

I couldn’t even put ribs on.

Here I was in the midst of a great family meal and I screwed up a great opportunity and my Uncle was just sad.

I looked for the ribs to try and make this right, but they were gone.

I got up and began to walk across the hall, back to my room, alone and began to cry.

And then I woke up.

I woke up but instead of realizing that this all a nightmare I began to think about all the people who I have failed.

As a pastor there are many who I know I fail or failed, or I know they believe that when I called them they didn’t hear the right words; I wasn’t a big enough influence in their live, they actually told me how I wasn’t enough and I began to really cry.

Then I began to realize I don’t have to own those truths.

God has given me a pathway through.

The dream wasn’t true, did you notice the BBQ was somehow inside a house, come on dream that’s just dangerous and toxic.

But the things it brought to mind right after I woke up where definitely true.

You know what it’s like though.

You’ve failed.

You’ve been in charge of something and broke it, lost it or just didn’t do it.

We all have said the wrong thing, we all have done wrong.

Sometimes purposefully and sometimes I just failed in not being excited enough for someone or showing them whatever emotion they wanted, just not being someone we are not.

There are truths from God that made me realize the hope, but we aren’t ready for them yet.

See, you ever get comforted by someone and they are telling you just nice things to make you feel better but you know it’s not true.

“You’re pretty in your own way.”

“We will get them next time.”

What if there isn’t a next time?

What if I want to be pretty in the way that the person I want likes me.

These nicey’s are just talk, there is no hope there.

I mean in my dream the ribs disappeared.

Gone.

Sometimes when we fail, there is no fixing it.

It’s just gone.

Another clue it was a dream.

Texans BBQ brisket not ribs.

Perhaps today, you come completely aware that you failed.

It’s big in your life.

It is eating you up.

You keep trying to be better but it isn’t going away.

There is some huge failure or more likely a lifestyle.

Perhaps someone or some place in your life is reminding you over and over of how you much your life in addiction, or your bad response to hard times, the way you robbed, cheated or just went after others to get back at them.

Any adult in this room can realize that we have done wrong.

If you follow Jesus, than you aren’t going to lie to yourself and say it was ok.

You aren’t going to lie to yourself and say that you were in addiction so it wasn’t your fault.

You aren’t going to lie to yourself and say you just didn’t know.

I have failed.

I know that.

I repented of my failures.

I give my life to follow Jesus.

Then there is this

No condemnation - No putting down, no judgement from God, no ripping apart.

No yelling at you, no fire, no kiling off and removing things you love because of how you failed.

No canceling.

Nothing like others have done is from God.

For those in Jesus.

When I accepted the love Jesus has for me, that He, God himself, came to us, lived showing the way to actually love God and love others, and showed us that He loves us so much that he died on the cross for my sins, and then he rose again.

I know that and I chose to follow His call on my life, because of that all of that anxiety, all of that past is a forgiven.

Not because of me but because of Him.

My brain was lying to me in my sleep about a silly failure that never ever happened, and then brought up all the people who blame me and those I really did fail.

I am sure your brain can do it to you too, but you know what,

If you believe in the Lord Jesus there is no God who is seeking to punish you.

People may have opinions about me, but they don’t know me.

They don’t know you, they don’t know why you did what you did.

But God does, God knows exactly why you did it.

How much responsibility you actually hold with it.

And God actually says to you, I chose to remember it no more.

There is no condemnation for you.

Yet, you might feel that everyone is like that, people are often quick to forgive their own sins.

That is true.

They minimize sin.

Say it wasn’t all their fault.

Point to how much worse other people are.

Right, wrong, good, bad, the fact that you are horrible.

I have friends who say, “I know right from wrong.”

To define right and wrong takes something bigger than just what people say.

It takes a government, or parents saying that is right and that is wrong.

Parents can fail and all call wrong, right.

But even governments can set up laws that are wrong.

People know this, we recognize something like slavery is wrong, but laws said for a long time that it was ok.

Because we know it’s wrong and we come to know it’s wrong means there is a God.