Theology is an exciting topic, but one can sometimes overdo it. When invited by someone’s question about the peculiarities of one’s faith, many believers go beyond a simple answer and offer up instead a complex, 30-minute sermon before taking another breath.

While that can be fun, it’s usually not what most people with a simple question are looking for, and if done to the wrong person at the wrong moment, it can quickly drive people away from a new church they are checking out. And if that happens, they won’t return.

So, for example, if someone asks about Sabbath versus Sunday worship, a good response would be one that takes no more than a couple minutes. A poor response would be one that starts off with an explanation of the Council of Nicea, anti-Semitism in the early church, and even credit repair services before finally getting around to saying, “But basically, the point is that we know the Sabbath is on Saturday because the Jewish people worship then and have never changed their day of worship, whereas we can trace the point at which Christianity abandoned the Biblical Sabbath for Sunday worship… and Sunday worship isn’t supported or endorsed by a single Bible verse.”

Better to just use the last couple sentences, I think, and save the listener a lot of pointless showing off of how much one has learned. Give those new to the faith a chance to grow into it, just like you were given.

I’m growing excited about my latest assignment; I’ll be adapting one of my rabbi’s sermon series into a children’s curriculum. This will be a great chance to get a look at how much research went into a twenty-sermon series; what was used, what was left on the table and how that material was incorporated.

Maintaining his “voice” in the teaching will be important, but so will adapting the material to the target age group; too often, children’s curriculum are either aimed for the teachers exclusively and written well beyond the understanding of kids, or they are so over-simplified, only pre-K kids could gain anything from them.

While it may seem to be a simple task, from browsing the sources cited and deciding what to keep and what to toss, to even something as obscure as deciding if a Symbol LS2208 is a typo or an integral part of the teaching, it’s sure to be a demanding task from which I’ll gain a great “behind the scenes” perspective on formulating a long teaching series.

As I look forward to Rabbi Stan’s new study on prayer and intercession, I’m reminded of a fact he shared from the bema once. According to some research study, the national average for the amount of time a pastor or rabbi spends in prayer each week is… about five minutes.

Not per day. Per week.

Now, to do prayer correctly, it takes time. At least an hour a day. Sometimes more. And that’s just to run out of words so that you can spend some time waiting for the L-RD to talk back to you and direct you toward His will, rather than your own.

So if the average pastor or rabbi spends only about five minutes a week actually praying, how “anointed” are his sermons, really? How God-directed are his messages?

Is it any wonder more sermons are “ripped from the headlines of today’s newspapers” than they are “inspired by the whole word of God?” The average pastor or rabbi probably spends more time browsing the day’s newspaper, or news Web site, than he does speaking with the L-RD! That means a believing sales guy selling commercial fitness equipment could easily spend more time in prayer than the man behind the bema.

Do I need to improve my own prayer life? You bet. By a lot. But I am relieved to know that, as much as I need to improve it, I am already a healthy margin better than “average.”

When I started putting everything on my flash drive last summer, I thought I was protecting myself from my PC hard drive crashing again.

Unfortunately, flash drives can crash, too; now I have both my PC’s hard drive and my flash drive, plus my latest acquisition, a portable external computer hard drive that looks like a big iPod with no screen. It’s way faster than my flash drive and stores an impressive 250GB!

Hopefully that means, if I sync everything up once a week, that I’ll never have a catastrophic loss of data again, without having some way to get it back! That’s important for an aspiring Messianic rabbi or minister!

Some people think security comes from whole life insurance or a tidy nest-egg in the bank; but those who believe in ADONAI realize that real security comes from a close relationship with the L-RD.

That’s why I’m going to attend Rabbi Stan’s series on Prayer and Intercession which starts next Shabbat. I want to improve my prayer life so that I can hear God’s calling on my life clearly, distinguishing it from my own hopes and ambitions, so that I can know what God would have me do next in my life.

It is the L-RD who calls and ordains Messianic rabbis and ministers. I’m ready and willing to serve, but I have to know … really KNOW … that the L-RD is going ahead of me before I can pursue that goal. If I do it on my own, it will fail. If I wait on the L-RD, there’s no way it can.

The choice, really, is a no-brainer. But my prayer life needs to be deeper than its ever been, if I’m to hear Him clearly.

OK, here’s the reason why my last two sermons at Beth Yeshua aren’t up yet: when my flash drive crashed a couple weeks ago, I lost my only copy of my sermon on the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Ruler. And it was a lengthy sermon, coming in at over 4,000 words.

I had a print-out, so I was able to deliver it just fine; I even have the audio file uploaded and ready to rock. But I have to re-type it out, which is long, boring work and I just haven’t had the time, since the only reason I’d be doing it is for the blog.

Fortunately, in addition to a new flash drive, I also have a new back-up hard drive, so I should soon be better-protected against data loss than ever. That wouldn’t have helped in this case, though, since I had only just finished the sermon and printed it out before the flash drive crashed.

I’ll get to it eventually; but please be patient with me in the meantime. Take some time to peruse some insurance quotes or something, and eventually I’ll have it up.

I haven’t been using any weight loss products in my effort to drop 80 pounds, and I’m proud of that; all I’m doing is calorie-counting, and so far I’ve lost about 20 pounds, meaning I’m 25 percent of the way toward my goal.

However, it’s a bit tough to watch the scale waver on my week to week. I’ve stalled in dropping weight the past several days and have even gained a couple pounds back.

I wish it were a clearer path toward getting back down to about 170-175, but it wasn’t a quick, clear path reaching 252, so why should dropping it be any different, right? Hard work ahead; glad I have Yeshua as, among other things, my weight loss counselor!

Can you believe what some people surf the Web to find? I mean, there’s a site out there with eczema pictures! C’mon, discussing Messianic theology just HAS to be a bit more pleasant, right?

Anyway, in the end I wrote five sermons on the parables of Yeshua; that’s a pretty good basis for a series on the parables. Trouble is, I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to complete it, unless I just do them without delivering them.

But the truth is, it’s more important for me to pray and seek the L-RD and his direction on my life, right now. Ministry is hard enough when the L-RD is with you and leading you; it’s just about impossible any other way, at least if you want to do it in the right, appropriate and God-pleasing way.

Not all churches or pastoral/rabbinical careers are handled that way… but I want mine to be one that is.

Finding a remedy for acne is fortunately no longer a concern for me. These days I’m more concerned with stuff like getting my teachings up on this site in a timely manner.

Such is the case with my last two messages at Beth Yeshua.

My penultimate sermon was on the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Ruler. Shortly after I printed it out, my flash drive crashed and I had no backup; so to put it on my blog here, I’m going to have to retype it. Not fun work. But I do have the audio ready to upload.

Then there’s my final sermon for Beth Yeshua, on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus; in this case, I have the text ready to go, but want to wait until I put the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Ruler up, to keep things in order.

Decisions, decisions…

Some people worry about death and taxes. Others worry about trivial things like how to get rid of blackheads. Yet the imperative from from Yeshua is not to worry, since each day has “enough trouble of its own.

Worry and stress can and do shorten life, so I don’t believe Yeshua was sharing a facile piece of advice here. He was speaking a kingdom reality. And a very practical one at that. Why worry and stress out over things that haven’t happened yet, about mere possibilities?

Far better, I believe, to deal with each day as it comes, exactly as He tells us to.

Closing a congregation down isn’t fun work, but I do think we did well during our final service at Beth Yeshua this past weekend. Sure, sometimes it might be more fun to regress to the stage of life when finding effective acne products was my biggest concern, but hey, one has to grow up sometime.

My final sermon (and I feel blessed Stan entrusted the final weeks of Beth Yeshua to me in terms of sermons) was on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazerus, and although a very convicting parable, we somehow managed to end things on a very upbeat note, with the “Horse and Rider” praise song.

It was a great fourteen months. I hope I get a chance to be part of things when Beth Yeshua is relaunched in the future. In the meantime, I’ll have more time to seek God and improve my prayer life now.