No embarrassment here

When I was a child, there was a halloween carnival at Northeast Lauderdale. I believe I was in the fifth grade, but memory like hair is missing now.

My friend Kenny Suire and I talked our costumes over, and I came out a hobo. I had a painted face, with the dreaded lipstick circled on my cheeks, a fishing pole broken in half (to my father's dismay and disgust) with a cloth stuffed with paper tied to the end of it. Kenny? I don't remember, but he was duded up as well.

We got to the carnival, and I remember distinctly seeing persons going in who were not costumed. At first I was embarrassed for them. Soon, however, I watched and watched with my mother pleading for us to leave the car so she could go and the pinkness in my cheeks began to have nothing to do with rouge. I refused to go out till I figured this out. My mother finally agreed to investigate (for me, Kenny didn't care) and entered the school. She came out what seemed like 30 seconds later with the answer.

This wasn't a costume carnival. Kenny and I were the only ones who had mistaken the message. Well, I was the only one who had mistaken the message for I told Kenny it was a costume carnival.

I discovered on the spot, as I refused to go in, that embarrasment was my greatest fear.

Still is.

I detest doing something that will cause someone to laugh at me without my intention being to gain a laugh. My temper flares most quickly as being embarrassed. The fear of embarrassment has kept me from taking risks from time to time, risks that should have been taken.

I didn't want to be an embarrassment, to myself, to my parents, to my teachers, to my coaches, to my wife, to anyone. Sometimes that was good. Mostly it was bad.

The Bible says in Proverbs, "Intelligent children make their parents proud; lazy students embarrass their parents."

I believe one of the main reasons fewer and fewer people are telling others about Christ is they worry about being embarrassed. They know what they know, but if you ask them how they know, they can't tell you. You know, that feeling that you can't defend an argument of "well, he was born a virgin,uh, somehow" or "he came back from the dead, somehow," or "the sun stopped in the sky, somehow," or even defending creation "theories."

But Jesus spoke to that. He said, "If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels."

If you're embarrassed about Jesus, he will be embarrassed about you. Tough sailing, that one.

Paul understood that it might come to that. He told us,"So don't be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus."

If you don't have a proper defense or the basic tenants of Christianity, and the most basic is that Jesus Christ was dead, and three days later he was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven where he sits at God's right hand, you need to practice till you have one. Not that Jesus needs defending, but that your belief will need defending.

It is okay to say you don't know how some of this works, but that you know it works. I use the telephone app. I didn't know how it worked with a land line, I don't know how it works wireless, but I'm sure it works because I talk on the phone all the time.

Peter told us to be prepared to offer a defense of the gospel, and we should, but not so that we will avoid embarrassment, but so we can offer the gospel freely and securely.

If you believe in Christ's resurrection only among those who believe it equally, what good is that belief?

John Wesley offered the gospel among pub crawlers and the poor who had no church and among those in the fields. He believed so strongly that though he was thrown out of church after church, he continued to preach at the top of his lungs to crowds seeking answers, and on occasion to those who were not.

Don't think that an argument with a know-it-all who has science on his side is a one-sided argument. No, sir. Science can't answer everything. Evolution is a theory, after all. Creationism is given by faith, and no matter what anyone says, evolution must be accepted on faith as well for conclusive proof (a missing link to begin with) does not exist.

I have never seen Abraham Lincoln nor have I seen Jesus. Does that mean Abraham Lincoln didn't exist? No. It means I didn't see him. That is all. I am not embarrassed to say Abraham Lincoln did some remarkable things when he was alive, his life was cut short, and he died an unpopular person who could have done plenty of other things had he lived on. Did I witness any of that? No. I read about it.

I'm not embarrassed to say so.

Do I know how Jesus did miracles, walked on water, ascended into heaven, came back from the dead and on and on? No. Doesn't mean he didn't. Means I'm not privy to the mechanics.

My car runs; I don't know how. Does it means cars can't happen? No. Means I don't know how it works.

I'm not embarrassed to say so.

Jesus saved me, changed me, helped me, taught me, loved me. Do I know how that worked. No.

I only know it did. What once was lost is now found.

I'm not embarrassed to say so.