Thread by @footstooled

I was excited to “share” my first “message” with the students. At 20 years old, I found myself leading a ministry, feeling ready to take on the world. I was going to figure out what generations before had not.

🧵1/8

#men #bible #examples #itsgoodtobeaman

I was going to bring a “fresh” understanding of the text when I taught and engage the hearts and minds of the youth with clever understanding that gripped them deep in their inner being. 2/8

I finished my “message” which centered around some odd (heretical) illustration about God revealing our “true” selves as we “look in a mirror dimly”, scribbling words like “lust”, “low self-image”, and “popularity” on a big white piece of paper with a Sharpie... 3/8

...and then crossing them out “with the blood of Christ” to reveal that they had made the shape of a face all along! Our true self!... I wish this was a joke, but it’s not.

Feeling very confident, I asked for feedback from my boss. 4/8

Expecting praise I was too ignorant to see how grievously in error my message had been, how devoid of the text it was, and how riddled with postmodern assumptions that I’d picked up about the world, myself, others, and most dangerously God and His relationship to all things. 5/8

Instead of berating or giving up on me because of my utter failure, my boss invited me to breakfast every Wednesday morning. The bait was a country-fried chicken breakfast at Cracker Barrel. 6/8

But the real meal was God's word and the 3 or 4 godly men who walked through scripture, passage by passage, with me until I learned to prepare a spiritual meal for myself. 7/8

I'm thankful he invested time, money, resources, and wisdom in a young buck full of pride. Thankful for that MacArthur study bible as well. It introduced me to a depth of theological tradition that I’d not considered. It changed the trajectory of my life and many others. 8/8

Note that I upgraded to a Reformation Study Bible a few years later. ;) No fight here, but...

Covenant > Dispensation fr fr 100 no cap.