I Smell Like a Protestant

One of the things we are encouraged to do is give a fifteen minute presentation on a passage in the Bible at our house church meeting (mine being on Wednesdayn night). So I prepared a talk with all its bells and whistle. I made observations regarding John 13 (Jesus washing his disciples' feet), made some points and gave some cross-references. Finale! I threw down an application and closed with Philippians 2. Wala!!! It was a beautiful talk and would have made any seminary professor tremble a little bit. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I really prepared for this talk and I thought the delivery went pretty well.

However, upon assessing my talk, Kuya Willy was very encouraging about my thoughts; however, he said something that was pretty great. "You Smelled Like a Protestant." I think this phrase pretty much conveyed his thoughts to me as clearly as possible. It's not that my talk was bad or anything like that, but in serving the Catholic community, I was too confident in what I was familiar with. Protestants are known to love reading the Bible thoroughly, so making a lot of cross-references and closing with something outside of the message's passage made my talk kind of overwhelming for the community. I feel like there are lessons brewing from this point, but there is only one thing that is grabbing my attention right now. Strengths are only skin-deep. As well or as much as I do matters only if a number of factors are right. In the wrong social context, cultural understanding, moods, emotions, ambience, communication (all of which is pretty different in the Philippines), my greatest intentions and preparation can be reduced to mean much less. My strengths are only skin-deep. All else is grace.

Praise God He sustains our life by His grace.