Sermon Tone Analysis

Hey does anyone here remember Where’s Waldo?

Those were fun games weren’t they.

The idea was you would be given a really busy picture like this...

And then asked to find Waldo who looks like this...

In case you’ve been living under a rock since 1987, that’s right Waldo is the same age as my wife and Sidney Crosby, but I’m not gonna tell you how old that makes them, you will have to do the math yourself.

I know you all want a chance to try.

Ok I’ll give you 60 seconds while I sip my tea.

And go

Found him yet?

I’ll give you a hint.

He is right here.

The thing that make’s it a little challenging is he always wears that red and white top and hat and they make sure the there are lot’s of red and white misleads, red and white herrings if you will.

Which is why I always enjoyed the sub game.

The sub game was they would also give you an assortment of different items hidden in the picture you could find.

let’s look back at our picture.

In this picture they might ask you to find a crab or a sword.

These other finds can be tricky, but in some ways they can actually be easier.

Because they are less obvious there are less red herrings to distract you.

For me these are the hidden treasures of the larger picture.

That is what I want to talk to you about this morning.

If you were here last week you heard me introduce this years focus on becoming more effective in all we do.

The idea is we will be looking at different areas of our Christian life as individuals and as a Church and asking a simple question.

How can we be more effective in this area?

I won’t keep reminding you of this but I did want to make sure you got it.

Last week week I told you before we could start looking at ways to increase our effectiveness there was something I needed you to know.

Does anyone remember what that was?

It’s not about comparing ourselves to others, it’s about self improvement.

This morning there is one more thing I want to make sure we all know before looking at increasing effectiveness in different areas.

So what is it?

Not all good fruit is Obvious

Me: What do you know about Canola?

Well let’s learn something together.

First Canola was first developed by Canadian plant scientists in the 1970’s.

It is Canada’s 3 largest grain export with 15.3 million acres harvested each year in the prairie provinces and Ontario. the first two being wheat and barley.

But what is really interesting is what it is used for.

43% of the plant is oil.

Low in Sat.

fat and a relatively healthy choice for cooking.

For this reason Canola oil is the third most widely used vegetable in the world, after soybean oil and Palm oil.

And for most people this is all they know Canola plants to be used for.

Canola oil is by far the most obvious product or fruit if you will of the canola plant and although its primary most obvious use is cooking the Canola oil has some non cooking benefits as well.

It is also used as biofuel and bioplastics.

These uses are becoming more common and therefore more obvious as well.

But did you know that if 43% of the Canola plant is oil that means the majority 57% of the plant is not oil.

And what a lot of people do not know is unlike say potato tops which are killed then disposed of farmers have found good and less obvious uses for the left over byproduct.

I first learned about this when working on my fathers farm, when a salesman came to try and sell my dad some new feed.

Turns out after crushing the seeds to extract the oil they can then compress the remaining product into a high energy pellet that can be used for cattle rations.

Not to mention the plant can also be harvested much like hey and is quite palatable to cows much like alfalfa or silage.

The byproduct can also be used in pet food as well as fertilizer because like anything else that is living as it dies and breaks down it produces nitrogen, which is also why if you stop racing up your grass clippings you could also stop having to put chemical fertilizer on your lawn.

Just saying.

What I want you to see here isn’t just this Canadian made marvel.

What I wanted you to see is yes this plant has obvious uses and benefits but it also has many less obvious uses and benefits.

We: Likewise when we talk about raising effectiveness in different ministries in the church or different areas of our lives like parenting or marriage or in Worship and prayer, it is important for us to understand some fruit or benefits are going to be obvious but some less obvious.

And it is important that we learn to identify, increase effectiveness, and celebrate these less obvious fruit as well.

God: The passage I want to read is 26.

It is a familiar passage.

I picked a familiar passage because as I read it I want you to see if you can identify some of the less obvious fruit in this story.

This is the story of the man being lowered through the roof to be healed by Jesus.

So before I read let’s identify the obvious.

The obvious fruit of this story is

Healing, and Forgiveness of sins

So let me read and if you take notes see if you can identify some less obvious fruit.

:17-26

So what was some of the less obvious, but still really Good fruit produced by this encounter?

You may have seen even more than me but let me share some of the less obvious fruit that I see in this story.

There was good solid teaching

Strengthened friendship

Increase in Faith

Proof Of Jesus claims and authority

Worship and Praise of God

And

Someone got a free skylight

You: So why do I want you to know this.

In your life as you pursue greater effectiveness in every aspect of life know that there are many ways to increase in effectiveness.

We: Yes we want to see the obvious fruit increase, but we also want to see the less obvious fruit increase.

So that we are focusing as individuals and also as a church on growing in effectiveness in a more well rounded way.

Next Step: I want you to pick an area of your life.

Maybe your marriage, or work, maybe you devotional life or prayer life.

And what I want you to do is first identify the obvious good fruit in that area.

Then spend some time identifying the less obvious good fruit.

By identifying all the good fruit we will be better equipped to grow in effectiveness as we know better what we are working towards.