I was listening to a popular preacher’s sermon (via slick android app). Here’s the line that stuck out to me:
People coming to Christ on your couch, transferring from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light–in your living room, is the reason God gave you a couch.
Well now, there was no reason to punch me in the metaphorical teeth, preacher man.
Get this, though: The couch applies to nearly every situation imaginable.
- The reason God put you at that job, in that cubicle, is to be a part of bringing his kingdom to bear on the folks with whom you work.
- The reason you are raising support right now is to bring God’s kingdom to bear on not just people’s lips, but their wallets.
- The reason you are going through this tough season of life is to bring God’s kingdom to bear on the people with whom you are forced to spend your day.
The couch might be in a different type of room, but the reason it’s there is the same.
Too often, I build my life around some phantom concept called “security” for me and my family. The reason God gave me a couch is to sit on it, to give my family a place where the big bad world can’t get in to mess things up. Here, on my couch, I can control the content that they see, hear, and read. I can do things the right way, the family centered way. Just the way satan would like.
God gave us couches to invite people to sit on them. Messy people who might spill stuff on the couch, or track dirt through the living room. Single parents who are no good at setting boundaries for their kids and end up breaking lamps and drawing on the walls. People without good manners, people with different cultures and skin colors and values.
LOUD PEOPLE.
Awkward people.
Smelly people.
People who didn’t vote the way we did last election and won’t in the next. People with all sorts of brokenness, without their lives put together.
People who need saving, just like us.
Jesus, by your grace may all of our couches be outposts of peace where God’s kingdom is brought to bear.