Tinney Chapel Today

THESE THREE HAVE THEIR SPIRITUAL ACTS TOGETHER. Tinney Chapel UMC Senior Pastor Duncan Graham, center, accepts the Marvin T. Judy award (for the first time) from Derrick Wright, left, Paris-Sulphur Springs District Superintendent and William Oden, right, Bishop of the North Texas Conference during June, 2002, when this award was presented, and just six months before Pastor Graham preached the Holy Habits sermon below. Photo by Joe Dan Boyd


Pastor Graham's Holy Habits Sermon

December 1, 2004: In today’s Wednesday evening Bible Study Class at Tinney Chapel UMC, the quintessential country church, Senior Pastor Rev. Duncan Graham’s topic was spirituality.

That’s spirituality as in: How’s your spiritual life? Are you satisfied with it? Any room for improvement, or any ideas to make it better? What are some of the most spiritual things that you do?

In other words, it was an open-ended, wide-ranging discussion, even if it was based loosely on a Barna Group survey, which yielded at least a few surprising results. (You can read the entire survey report at http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=175)

By the time the pastor’s Bible Study hour was over, the consensus was that today’s exercise had been very useful, and that Tinney Chapel should consider developing and offering at least one course on the topic.

Perhaps a working title for the course, at this early stage of contemplation, might be something like: How to tap and tweak your spiritual life! Or, How to grow spiritually! Well, we’ll see.

In the course of the hour, the pastor suddenly grinned impishly, and reminded us that he had once preached a sermon on Holy Habits at Tinney Chapel, and suggested that the sermon just might be a starting point for any future Tinney Chapel course of this nature.

As communications coordinator, I promised to make at least a cursory search, by examining my notes of previous Tinney Chapel sermons, and if successful, attempt to develop a Holy Habits sermon post to this Weblog. What you are reading on this blog represents the first fruits of tonight’s research effort.

In a December 29, 2002, Evening Service sermon, based on Romans 8:8-18, Pastor Graham began by saying that Jesus wants to be our Savior and our Lord. “The Law was given to tell men what sin was, and to show men how to live in relationships with God and neighbors,” he explained. “God would not accept any other god or person sharing in His glory. That adoration belongs to Him alone.

“But, loving your neighbor as yourself is a requirement of anyone who wants to belong to God,” added Pastor Graham. “In fact, Jesus reiterated two commandments that had been around a long time. Love your neighbor as yourself, and love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

But Jesus knew we would need the Holy Spirit to desire to do right and also to do it, in part because the basis of sin is greed, pride, selfishness and the like: In other words, those things that make up the basis of sin are things of the flesh.

“We should ask ourselves if what we do is what will please God,” emphasized the Pastor. “For instance, I can choose to live by the flesh or as the Holy Spirit leads: There is always that struggle within us! We should overcome, and be led by the Spirit, as Paul says. How do you become an overcomer over sin, and thus be pleasing to God? Well, Paul says that we are overcomers in Christ Jesus, and to be heirs of God, we must follow Him.

“All covenants put conditions on us,” added Pastor Graham. “The way you live your life in work, actions and such, on a day-by-day basis tells God and the world who you are!

"Everything Christ receives, we are to receive. Gifts of God are very rich indeed. How good it is to be an heir of the family!

“Dying to the flesh, giving up what the world has to offer, and taking what the Spirit has to offer means giving ourselves to seeking Him individually,” said the Pastor. “We can’t ride in on someone’s coattails.

“We are taught by Scripture that this means prayer, feeding on the Word, fasting, giving our goods to worthy causes, deeds of kindness and witnessing,” he declared. “How often we do not practice these things: These holy habits?

"These are the things we do daily that keep us on a Spiritual Plane!

At this point, the Pastor told a story about Paul Villiard, a young boy who lived in the Pacific Northwest a long time ago, when an “Information Please” request on the telephone always brought a courteous person online, someone who actually wanted to help you.

Young Paul had heard his mother make the “Information Please” request on the telephone, so he was clear about how to make the contact.

When young Paul hit himself on the finger with a hammer, he cried, but was home alone and no one was there to comfort him, so he picked up the phone and boldly asked for “information Please.” He was not disappointed, as the angelic telephone operator was empathetic and sympathetic in telling Paul to go to the “icebox," get a small piece of ice and put it on the damaged finger.

From that time on, Paul was hooked, and looked for opportunities to call “Information Please” on the telephone.

He called for advice on his pet chipmunk, math problems, geography, any and everything a young lad had problems with from the age of perhaps six to nine.

Paul even once asked about a pet bird that had died, breaking Paul’s heart, but the “information Please” operator told him that the bird had “other worlds to sing in,” and Paul was very comforted by that response, never forgetting it.

Eventually, Paul grew up and went away to college, but once while there, he phoned his hometown, and asked for “Information Please.” This time, he asked for help with a college problem, but the operator recognized his voice, even though it was more mature now, and she said: “I guess your finger is healed by now?”

Suddenly Paul recognized the operator’s voice: It was his childhood comforter at “Information Please.” He then learned that her name was Sally, and he took that opportunity to thank her for all her time and patience in comforting him as a child, and especially for the “other worlds to sing in” response.

Sally told Paul that it had been her pleasure since she never had children of her own.

Still later, when Sally passed away, Paul received a note from her that she had arranged for family members to mail after her death. It said, simply: “Paul, I still believe there are other worlds to sing in.”

Sally’s spiritual compass was intact to the end!

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