Author: Allan

Allan
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More Awful Animals

What do cats like to eat for breakfast? Mice Krispies

 

What do you get when you cross a dog with a telephone? A Golden Receiver!

 

What did the dog say when he sat on the sandpaper? Rough! Rough!

 

MERGER ANNOUNCEMENT: Polygram Records, Warner Brothers and Keebler: New company will be called Poly-Warner-Cracker.

 

 

Awful Animals

How does a farmer count a herd of cows?

With a cow-culator

 

What’s a cow’s favorite moo-sical note?

Beef-flat

 

Why don’t cats play poker in the jungle?

Too many cheetahs

 

Three birders walk into a bar. The fourth one ducks. (Get it?)

  • Birder 1: What kind of bird is that?
  • Birder 2: A gulp.
  • Birder 1: A gulp? Never heard of it.
  • Birder 2: It’s like a swallow, only it’s bigger

Prayer In Threes

This option has worked well at congregational prayer times, like a Sunday evening service, or prayer during a congregational meeting.

For a specific topic, have three people pray, with slightly different assignments. Three has a good Trinitarian feel to it!

Some examples:

Pray for the Youth program, asking three people to pray, covering the children, the teachers, the leaders. Or possible the Sunday School, the Youth Group, and Vacation Bible School.

Or pray for a college campus, covering the students, the Faculty, and Evangelistic Groups.

Pray for your church: Thanks for God’s past blessings, For Current Needs, Future mission

Worldview Decision

One day, the zookeeper noticed that the orangutan was reading two books — the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of Species. In surprise, he asked the ape, “Why are you reading both those books?”

“Well,” said the orangutan, “I just wanted to know if I was my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”

Wind Blows Where It Will

I recall my early training on bible teaching:  Be prepared, know the material, and expect deviations from the lesson. Be alert to students’ responses, insights and questions that may require tangents from your script. That’s why you prepare broadly so that maybe you have some answers, and that’s why you remember the lessons is about God, not you, so that you can admit when you don’t know the answer.

Two experiential results convinced me. First, if you ask any group which verse in the passage caught their attention (or made them think, or “spoke” to them) there will be a variety of responses. Second, If you did the same lesson a year later and asked the same question, most people’s response would be different the second time around. The Word of God is living and active, teaching each what they need to know at that time.

It turns out that same principle applies when leading a prayer time. It’s good to prepare a list of topics or guiding prayers, but don’t hold too tightly. One morning recently we were concentrating on the joy of the gospel and had printed out the first two questions and answers of the Heidleberg Catechism and the first four from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. After taking turns reading the questions and answers, there were five main topics / directions to consider:

  • Praise God for He is holy
  • Confess sin because we are not holy
  • Give thanks for the gospel, including sanctification and forgiveness of sin
  • Pray for God to work in specific people who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior
  • Bring Prayer requests for our church, brothers and sisters, and others’ needs

I expected the Praise, thanksgiving, and requests sections would be most lively. But not today. Confessing sin and praying for specific unsaved people was where we spent most of our time.