Lost in Translation

I preached my farewell sermon at La Gracia today on 1 Corinthians 13 and the gospel. We looked at 1 Cor 13 through the lense of the gospel, noting that the gospel equips us to love. For example, love is patient (a verb in Greek), and God has shown his patience with us (we looked at the parable in Mt 18 of the man who owed 10,000 talents and wouldn´t forgive the one who owed him 100 denarii... it uses the same verb as we see in 1 Cor 13).

As I pointed out this morning, 1 Cor 13 is beautiful but doesn´t tell us where we get the strength to put it into practice. But in the gospel (which Paul focuses on in chapter 1-2 and 15) we are freed to love.

I didn´t see what the attendence was, but it was the fullest the building has been in a long time. Pastor Daniel has a lot to learn, but I trust that God will bless him and the church.

A group from one of José´s supporting churches is here, and they´ve been an inspiration. On Sunday we went to Zipaquirá to do street evangelism and pass out flyers to the new Baptist church that´s starting there. We went to the main plaza in the city and the group started singing. José preached a short five-minute message and we started to talk to people about Christ, using the Evangecube. Wow, people were really open and several people made professions of faith in Christ.

We did something similar but even better yesterday here in Chía. The team brought their huge Evangecube (www.e3resources.org), and they starting making free balloon animals for kids and painting faces. While the kids got their gifts, José preached the gospel using the huge Evangecube various times (I did it once). We estimate that 300 people heard the gospel in about 2 hours as we gave out 200 balloons and about 1,000 tracts. The amazing thing was how many people were interested in learning more. In fact one of the teachers in Lucas and Eliana´s daycare was really interested. We going to have her over to our house next week to share more with her.

My biggest regret: Why didn´t we do thing sooner? I would guess that at least two new people will come to church on Sunday because of our outreach. If we had done this every week, how many would have come to Christ by now? But no, instead we got wrapped up in church problems and missed many blessings. Oh well, in Cali!