JR. Forasteros - January 20, 2019
Good News to Them
More From "Good News for a Change"
Powered by Series Engine
What’s good news for a coffee snob?
My last church was pretty into coffee – we operated a coffee shop on a college campus as one of our ministries. And in order to ensure we had the best coffee around, we brought in some professional roasters to teach us the ins and outs of coffee – what makes good coffee good?
I walked out to the foyer to meet them, and when I walked up, they were all laughing and snapping pictures of our coffee station.
Our church gave away free coffee on Sundays, but it wasn’t good coffee. It came in a big bag of black liquid coffee concentrate that we loaded into a big machine. And it was really gross – it took a good bit of cream and sugar to cover the taste of the coffee sludge.
These guys, being professional roasters, had walked in and spotted the coffee machine and recognized it immediately. But what made them laugh was the sign painted over the coffee station. In big, cursive letters was written the verse from Psalms, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
They saw our sign and laughed, took pictures to send to their coffee friends. Because they couldn’t imagine anyone who knew anything about coffee drinking that sludge water and having any thought that God was good in any way.
Coffee sludge in a bag isn’t good news to a coffee person.
That might seem like a strange connection to make – between coffee and God (unless you drink coffee in which case you know exactly how good the coffee news is).
But I’d like to suggest to you that if we want to be serious about talking with people about Jesus, we have to start with what is good news FOR THEM. And what we’ll see today is that HOW God is good news for us is an almost infinite variety. It could be coffee or science or even wine.
This is all grounded in God’s love for us. Because God loves us, God is working around us all the time.