Vacation Bible School is upon us! I love seeing all the children and excitement in the building during VBS, but it can also be a bit overwhelming. This morning as I got up and prepared myself for the day, a nagging and annoying thought came into my head, “Do I really need to be there?” I have worked with teenagers for over 15 years but little children overwhelm me. During VBS I believe I gain a real understanding what the soldiers at the Alamo must of felt like when they saw they were outnumbered by Santa Anna’s army.

All kidding aside, I know what it is like to do something outside of your comfort zone for the greater good of God’s kingdom. This past Sunday we began our sermon series, The Apostle’s Tale. In the first week of this series we looked into the context of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome and how he was encouraging a church split by tradition to unify themselves by the “law of the Spirit”. The major point we took from Paul’s message to the Romans was that the “law of the Spirit” is selfless.

Selfishness keeps us from being who God has called us to be. One young lady that I have had the fortune to meet at one our North Texas Bridgeport children’s camps shared recently that she was going to Junior High Camp this summer at Bridgeport because she promised some girls that she would. In a picture she took she was wearing a shirt that said, “Because I said I would” and that was why she said she was going, because she said she would.

In our membership vows in the United Methodist Church we make a promise to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. This means that when the nagging and annoying thought enters our mind and asks, “do I really need to be there?” The answer is yes, because we said we would.