As I mentioned before, a top ten of my ten blog posts was almost pointless but it does perhaps shed some light on what sorts of things interest the people that are reading my blog. On the other hand, I have been posting sermons on the web for much longer and the audience for that is, surprisingly, much bigger. If you don’t know the back-story, this whole Internet ministry is all a series of accidents anyway. It never would have occurred to me when I began two years ago that I would have 49 online subscribers, two or three dozen email subscribers and that some of these messages would be ‘read’ (or at least opened) almost four hundred times. It is still simply amazing and the only way that I can make any sense of it at all is to remember 2 Corinthians 12:8-10. There, God spoke to Paul saying
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I began typing out manuscripts of my messages because I lacked the skills and the confidence to speak for twenty minutes from a few notes on a card. I’m doing better but most of the time I still wouldn’t want to if I didn’t have to. From my weakness and insecurity God is doing something amazing and his word is going out around the world in ways that none of us can ever know. In any case, (as you might suspect) this year, some messages were far more popular than others. Just as obvious, the sermons from the end of the year didn’t really have the same chance as the ones from the beginning of the year. In any case, here are…
Your top ten sermons for 2010
This is a message about how we can find safety and comfort in a scary world. Obviously a lot of people were looking for that.
This #2 was actually the fourth in a series that I preached on the Five Quests of the Christian life and the first of several that made the top ten.
It was interesting to see how this became popular with readers. It was our introduction to our new church and contains a part of our family testimony. If you think that it is interesting, you can’t imagine what it was like to live through it.
The first Facebook inspired sermon (at least for me). I had far too many of my online friends reading and posting horoscopes and it occurred to me that a lot of other folk were probably just as unaware of how stupid and dangerous they can really be.
Last year’s Epiphany message (The Sunday we remember the Wise Men). We fall short when our mortal and finite minds try to explain the immortal and infinite. That’s why we call it a mystery.
A message dealing with failure and how Jesus tells us to see the world when life slaps us down.
The second from the series on the Five Quests of the Christian Life.
A precautionary tale that we don’t always know what God is doing from the lips of Peter, who, like us, also tried to tell Jesus what to do.
Just as #3 was our introduction to our new church, this was our goodbye to our friends at the Johnsville and Steam Corners churches after six years of ministry there.
God answers prayer but he is not a genie in a bottle. What does God require of us?
Honorable mention:
As I mentioned, the year is short and sermons from the end of the year hardly have a chance against others that had many more months to accumulate ‘votes.’ These messages wouldn’t have won any awards last year, but would have made the list this time… if they hadn’t been from 2009.
God invites Joe Average to change the world.
Doom and gloom are everywhere. What do we to do in the face of disaster?
How well do we wear Jesus’ coat?
What obstacles must we overcome to be the people God has called us to be?
Who is worthy of your trust?
