Sermon Tone Analysis

I’m sure that some of you will agree that this year has been flying by.

In many respects it is almost as if each day that passes-a whole month has gone by.

It seems as if it was just yesterday that I stood up here and was granted my license to preach-yet more than a year has passed.

This past year has been full of so many events for us.

So much has happened, so much has challenged my family.

It has been hard to come before God with Thanksgiving in our hearts.

Looking back we see in April Lisa’s father passing away.

Many of you were there in some part through that ordeal.

What some of you may not know is that during his last week of life we were all supposed to be on a big family vacation in Disney –the three of us, Lisa’s parents and sister.

So how could we thank God for this?

Because God showed us that even in the Valley he is good.

We got to see a miracle.

As some of you may recall I preached about crystals miracle several months ago.

And how through God’s hand she was delivered from a serious car accident where she lost her memory.

While Lisa’s father lay on his deathbed crystal had the sense that it was imperative that she see my father-in-law.

We brought her in to see him, and being there next to him she had her first childhood memory returned to her.

Thanks be to God.

The next hurdle we had to face involved my preaching in Peru church.

I had received word that the congregation had issues with my preaching style, but more importantly with my preaching content.

We sat down together and talk over their concerns.

It was with a saddened heart that we learned that this church, as they called themselves, wanted nothing to do with the Bible.

They wanted to be a social club.

They wanted feel-good sermons.

They wanted to censor the word of God.

They wanted nothing that the Holy Spirit could use to convict them.

They want nothing that would point to Jesus Christ as the person of all their hopes.

They wanted children stories.

They did not want to be weaned off of their steady diet of milk.

They wanted nothing to do with the meat and potatoes of God’s holy Word.

It was in some respects a disheartening experience.

But I think what saddened me the most is what Jesus said to his disciples in Luke 10:10.

He said “but whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, the very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you.

Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.

But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city… he who hears you hears me, he who rejects you rejects me, a and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me”.

We still found a way to be thankful though.

This meeting gave me a chance to really use God’s word according to God’s plan-as a defensive weapon.

What I am really thankful for though is that God answered our prayers in closing this door of ministry in Peru.

I had asked God that if it was his will for me to be a pastor there, in Peru church that he would line everything up for me; but if Peru church was to be a sort of training ground for me and not something permanent, he would have to show me very bluntly that it was not his will.

And this he did.

He closed that door of ministry as an answer to our prayers.

Thanks be to God.

Back in July we were faced with a dilemma.

Our minivan was due for inspection that month.

But it had issues.

It had several things going wrong with it that would make it impossible for it to pass inspection.

What’s worse is that we still had another year to pay off the car loan.

To the sum of $4500.

When we brought it into the garage to be fixed they stopped estimating after the price tag got over $1500.

The van was seven years old with well over 100,000 miles on it.

It was that point where the repairs were more costly than the value of the vehicle.

So we went back to the dealership and looked for new car.

We realized that we would have to downsize that wasn’t the issue.

It was our finances.

We went in there and told the dealership that we did not want a payment larger than what we had with the minivan.

Mind you we still had $4500 from our old loan to roll over into the new one.

We found the vehicle that we have now but the financing looked like it was going to be for six years, 19% interest, and a higher payment.

But the dealership had to get the numbers finalized over the weekend, but they needed some cash.

We were able to borrow $1500 from a relative so everything seemed like it was going to be okay.

We prayed over the weekend that everything will come out in the end.

We would have a higher payment but at least we’d have a vehicle.

But when Monday rolled around we went in and they told us they checked out a different bank.

They got us a five-year loan, a 13% rate, an extended warranty, and gap insurance for $15 less than the amount we had told the dealership in the beginning.

It is written in James 5:16 “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”

God takes care of his own, and we are his.

Thanks be to God.

Now the real challenge that we face over this past year begins in August “our house”.

This has been one of if not the most emotionally draining, discouraging experiences that we have gone through probably in our entire lives.

Our downstairs rooms are our only bathroom, and all the bedrooms.

For years there has been moisture under the sub floor down there.

We were fighting a losing battle with moisture, mold, mildew, and some creepy Crawley things.

We got off to a great start.

We gutted the majority of our downstairs within a week.

There was myself, Lisa, her mother, Lisa’s sister, Crystal, and her friend.

Oh, I almost forgot, Nancy was there too.

We fully expected this to be a straightforward project.

We knew that things had to be done.

We had access to enough resources to get them done.

We figured that by the end of September, beginning of October everything would be done.

But that was not the case.

We had everything gutted and washed down.

We had started to put down the floor in September.

We had several contractors come in to price certain jobs that needed to be done that were beyond my ability, such as electric, heat, and removing an old sliding door where I had seen the water coming in from underneath its rotting sill.

Nobody got back to us with estimates.

We did manage to line up one guy who promised us that he be able to do the Windows and reframe and wall where the slider was.

He never showed up.

Mind you this whole project had to have things done in a certain order otherwise, it would just cause a bigger mess.

And winter weather was fast approaching.

He stated that he’d be back the following week and again didn’t show.

We are now looking at the end of September and still only a little bit of the flooring has been put down.

We have no bathroom which means we have no toilet and no shower.

We knew we had a water problem.

I had seen where the water was coming in.

All we would need would be a drain running away from the house where the water was coming in.

That was not the case however; the day after we had that first big rain back in October, the contractor running the drainage saw the water in our cellar.

He explained to me that the work he was doing was not addressing what the real problem was-that the water was seeping in from underneath the house-the drainage around the house wasn’t correct.

In order to fix it he would have to dig about 6 feet down all the way around the house and install a proper drainage system.

That way the water would stop collecting under the house and would stop seeping in.

This prospect alone cost half of the budget we had for the entire remodel.

But the guy can’t come back for a couple of weeks.

In which time we got to watch all the rainwater seeping in and seeping out of our basement.