5 The Fully Awakened Overcomer Series

This is a sermon about “The Goat and The Frog & The Colon.”

When I was growing up, my uncle would drive the stock truck by our house to pick me up and take me along with him to Lugbill’s Farm Auction in Archbold, Ohio. We would haul the choice animals over to the gate, unload, then go inside to the auction house where animals seemed to be constantly streaming in. The first live streaming of my days. For me, as a kid, there was this special moment that happened during one of the auctions that became somewhat like a clown show at a rodeo or an entertaining intermission.

All of a sudden the doors would open and a heard of sheep facing the opposite direction would be just standing there not even moving. But then their heads would turn in the direction of this one creature, who had the same ears and even the same face, but the rest of his body was different. Whereas the sheep were wooly white, this creature was brown and black. The animal trainer would have THE GOAT walk into the arena right in front of the auctioneer then around the entire ring and those sheep, as if they didn’t want to be last, or finally thinking, “Hey! There’s somebody who knows what to do and where to go. I’ll follow him!”

Once inside the ring, the fence would be brought around to join the other fence and coralle this herd of sheep, and just before the fence was latched, that goat knew right when to pop its head through and walk out solo to the trainer where he’d get a handful of oats or sugar cubes. It was a pretty good racket they had going there. Have any of you seen this? Or is this just an Ohio thing?

Listen to these words from Jesus, NASB Matt. 25:31-33(-46)

31 “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left.

What is the key idea here? Jesus is like the trainer and will be the one who separates all the peoples. Some to his right and some to his left. Do you know there are some people who actually believe everyone will be on his right? Hold that thought.

In college I learned about a process that came to be known as the FROG IN THE KETTLE. It isn’t hard to understand but it is hard to apply to yourself. You will see why. But it goes like this: If you drop a frog in a pot of hot water, it will seek to get out of it right away.

But if you place it gently in a pot of comfortable water and turn the heat under the pot on low, it will float there rather nicely. But here is where things get interesting. If you turn the heat up at a slow rate, perhaps a degree ever couple of minutes, so the key is gradually, the frog will warm up to the idea of never leaving, sort of like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death and never seek to jump out to save its life.

The Frog in the Kettle cautions people to be aware of how gradual changes can lead you more easily into eventual undesirable consequences and suffering. It is the slippery slope vs the creeping normality. Think about it: the "boiling frog syndrome" describes the failure to act against your problems usually by sweeping them under the carpet, until the problem increases in severity until reaching destruction. It describes the barely noticeable impact of shifting baselines. It is the popular dumbing down effect gone rampant until what is to be achieved is a bar set way too high to ever be reached.

And we do this with God. Do you know there are some people who actually believe everyone will end up on Jesus’ right?

Hold that thought.

When I turned the ripe old age of 5-0 I had an interview with a certain doctor. It was less an interview as it was a lengthy discussion about why I NEEDED a colonoscopy. We finished the first part of the discussion and came to the part where we discussed anesthesia. There were two choices, one that led to a. A Fast recovery, or b. A Slower recovery. The faster recovery brought you back from being under the influence of the anesthesia quicker and with less grogginess; the slower recovery took longer with more grogginess. I mentioned my wife had a program that night of the procedure and I planned on attending it, and he said, “So the faster one then.”