Will Vaus

The story is told of a Baptist who moved into a large Catholic neighborhood. On his first Friday in his new home, this Baptist was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill. Meanwhile all his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This pattern repeated every Friday. Finally, the Catholic men in the neighborhood got together and decided that something just had to be done about their new Baptist neighbor, he was just tempting them to eat meat each Friday and they couldn’t take it anymore. They decided to try and convert him to be Catholic. They went over and talked with him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic. They took him to church and the priest sprinkled some water over him and told him “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist and now you are a Catholic”. The men of the neighborhood were so relieved, now their biggest temptation was resolved. The next Friday rolled around and just at supper time when the neig

Listen for God’s word to you from 1 Corinthians 9… Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas ? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”   Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was writt

I have titled this sermon, “How to Handle 50 Shades of Grey”. But I hope you don’t get the wrong idea. Is it alright for a pastor to talk about fifty shades of grey from the pulpit? Well, that question itself deals with a grey area, doesn’t it? I wonder how many more jokes about grey I can get out of one sermon. Well, I don’t want to be accused of being “off color” so I think I will move on!   In this next section of his letter, Paul deals with how to handle grey areas of life. I think we can all agree that there are certain things in Scripture and in life which are either black or white. There are certain things that we know are always wrong and there are other things that are always right. But at some point, even two well-educated Christians may disagree about what actions fall into the black category and what actions fall into the white category. Thus, we talk about grey areas—areas where it is not always clear what course of action we should take.   Some people find this very uncom