In Great Britain there was a tough old miner named Collin. Collin was a real hard driving, hard drinking, bitter, tough old miner. But his drinking got worse and worse. He was a fanatic for his beers after a hard day in the mine. He would get a whole case and slam them down. It got to be pretty expensive on his family. His wife and even his little children would hide from him because they were afraid of Collin and his beer-fueled temper. His children would hide behind the furniture, run from him but pretty soon they didn’t have anywhere to hide because eventually old Collin would take the furniture and he’d sell it so he could have more money to indulge his habit. He was turning all his furniture into beer - and turning his family into a nightmare.

Jesus healed a lot of bodies. You can read about that throughout the entire gospel accounts. But you know what? He not only healed a lot of people on the outside, He healed a lot of people on the inside. I think that’s often a lot more important. The stories are innumerable in scripture about that. A woman comes to Jesus with a hemorrhage, a bleeding disorder and she not only has a physical problem in her body, she’s got a great problem in her spirit, in her emotions

There was a church that was conducting a national poll surveying people’s views of the church. So they were asking people all sorts of questions. Who do you think Jesus is? What’s your experience with the church, etc? It’s said that one guy when asked “what is your church preference?” he thought about it for a while, a good minute. He was pretty confident in his answer and he responded boldly, “My church preference is red brick.”

Bobby and Johnny were the evil twins of the parochial school. They were always getting in trouble, always picking on people and it always seemed wherever they went things turned up missing somehow. They were creating all kinds of trouble. So finally one day the old monsignor had had enough. He grabbed Bobby by the ear, towed him into his office, and leaned over upon him, hoping to shake some fear into him, about the way God knows everything. He said, “Bobby, where is God?” Bobby shook himself out of the monsignor’s grasp, ran down the hallway and shouted out, “Johnny! Johnny run! God’s been stolen and they are trying to pin it on us!”

Well, I did see the torch pass once! The real Olympic torch! I was a youth pastor and Christian education director back in California in the mid eighties, and one of our youth group members, Tommy Forletta, got chosen through a lottery system to carry the Olympic torch for the 1984 L.A. Olympics. A bunch of us from church went up there to watch Tommy carry it for his designated mile. I will never forget the gleam and fire in his eyes, as he carried that fire for the great games. But the gleam and the fire weren’t just there for Tommy the carrier, the gleam and the fire were to be passed on: for the goal of the great games!

Well, I just never seemed to be able to get along with her at all. There was this gal in my Christian college fellowship - back in the day - and she just seemed to me: well, I just saw her as kind of stuffy, rigid, and a kill joy. She organized a square dance at our college one evening, “her” square dance. I got kind of bored so me and some bros grabbed a guy and threw him out the window (first story). Hey, c’mon, I was bored! She felt like somehow that “wrecked her square dance”. She had the gall to complain about that! I just thought, “well la de da!” We just could not get along. Then we were both elected to the leadership group of our college fellowship, so I had to hang around with her: Miss Fussy!

There are many good things in the world that can be misused. That doesn’t mean they can’t be used! What I want to raise up for us this morning as a church is the real possibility of hearing the voice of God! Not necessarily as an audible voice but as thoughts inside of us, voice that comes through spontaneous impressions, visions, pictures, the vast kaleidoscope of the ways that God speaks to us. Folks, it can happen, and it does happen! It happens to me and you. We may not always recognize it!