My Dad’s Coins

I didn’t feel that I did enough for my Dad this past Father’s Day, and in the early hours of the Monday that followed that Sunday I had a dream about My Dad’s Coins that, it seems to me, was connected to that feeling. Having awakened from that dream, I was having a hard time getting back to sleep. I was thinking about the dream and about the advice that my good friend Denny Burk had given me about incorporating more personal illustrations in my sermons.

So I got out of bed and typed up my account of the dream, then went back to bed and got right to sleep.

Following Denny’s advice, I talked about this dream at the conclusion of my sermon this past Sunday. You can hear it here: Jeremiah 25:15–38, The Cup of Wrath.

Then I edited the written account, added some, and it’s now posted over at Christianity.com. Here’s an excerpt:

There I was in my dream, holding those coins in my hand. They had become priceless to me because of what they signified, and I was horrified that I had almost thrown them away on a cola that wouldn’t have been good for me anyway.

This is how our ignorant, wayward, and weak hearts find their way to sin. We forget the gifts our God and Father has given us. We become unmindful of what his mercy means to us. We neglect the mementos, the testimonies, the stories and songs of the Scriptures.

And all too often we are prepared to cash in our relationship with the living God for filth, filth that would ruin our lives and destroy everything precious and sacred to us. We are ignorant, wayward, and weak enough to throw away the world to come in exchange for a syrupy mixture of caffeine, sugar, and fizzy water, or worse, far worse: shameful things not to be named. God help us get hearts of wisdom.

You can read the whole thing.