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July 12 & 13 1997 Mike Slaughter  |
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 I grew up in a home where my father
smoked cigars. My father is a Christian. Some people
think that you can’t smoke and go to heaven. You can
smoke and go to heaven, you’re just going to smell
like hell along the way.You
know how it is when you grow up in it. You get used to it
and don’t recognize the smell, but everyone else
does. I never realized that until after Carolyn and I
were married and I moved away from home. We had gone home
to visit for a weekend and we had come back to our
apartment and opened up our suitcase. Everything in it
smelled terrible. I said, "Carolyn, what happened,
this is terrible." She looked at me and said,
"When I dated you, you smelled like that!"I
could not hide the fact that I had been with my dad. You
recognize the fact because you smelled the smoke. It is
costly to follow Jesus Christ. There is a real danger for
Christians that we can come into this place and feel real
comfortable, and get inspired. It is safe to say things
in here, but it becomes controversial as soon as you take
it outside those doors.Peter
and John in the 4th chapter of Acts discovered how
controversial it was. They had been taking the message of
Jesus and the story of the resurrection to the streets.
It resulted in their arrest and a night in jail. They
were threatened and harassed. But there was an undeniable
fact about these followers of Jesus that everyone
recognized. Here it is the 13th verse: |
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| Acts
4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they wondered; and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. |
 When
they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that
they were just uneducated and ordinary men, they were
amazed, (they smelled the smoke) and they
recognized them as having been with Jesus, recognized....you
smell the smoke.Recognized! I. Coming Out of the Closet A. A Modern Day Story  Coming out of the
closet. There has been a recent coming out of the closet
story of which many of us are aware. Ellen DeGeneres.
When the producers of the show "Rosanne" were
writing the final story line for the final episode, ( I
don’t know how long "Rosanne" was on TV, 9
or 10 years) they wanted her to do something that would
rival the shock value of Ellen coming out of the closet.
They thought, "Hey, Ellen really did something that
got everybody’s attention and she got a 40% market
share that night on TV. What can we do that will shock
the American public?" Do you know what they had
Rosanne do? PRAY!.....Prayer to the American public is
equally as shocking as Ellen. I say Church, if that is
the fact, somehow we have gone deeply into the
closet!!!!!B. Cost & Risk  It is costly to come
out of the closet. It’s risky. When you expose
yourself for what you really are and what you believe it
eliminates a lot of other possibilities. I don’t
think we’re ever going to see Ellen DeGeneres
playing a lead role next to George Clooney in some kind
of movie. When you risk coming out of the closet, it
eliminates a lot of other possibilities. Now
I have a question. Here’s Peter, who has crossed the
threshold of his comfort zone. Arrested, threatened, now
where did you find him three months before? He was deep
in the closet, BIG TIME in the closet, when someone said,
"Hey, don’t you associate with Jesus?"
What did he say? "Me? I don’t know the
man." Right? Not once, not twice, but three times.
Now, three months later he has exceeded his comfort zone.
What is the difference? |
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