Jesus' Power Pulls Us Through

SERMON TITLE:   “Jesus’ Power Pulls Us Through”
SERMON TEXT:    Isaiah 40:28-31
PREACHER:           Rev. Kim James
OCCASION:           August 7, 2022, at First UMC
 
 
INTRODUCTION
 
                Vacation Bible School was a lot of fun this week.  The children, youth, and adults who participated all had a great time learning Bible stories, playing games, singing and dancing to some great music, and making some interesting devices in Imagination Station.  We laughed, we talked, and we prayed.  And, throughout the week, we emphasized over and over again the theme that “Jesus’ power pulls us through.” 
                Some of you may have wondered why we used a railroad theme to convey Bible stories.  After all, there aren’t any trains in the Bible.  The train metaphor was a method or technique, a side story that helped illustrate the fact that all of us have problems sometimes.  Our train engineer played by Chris Hicks had the very appropriate name Cam Track.  Get it?  Cam like Cameron, Track like railroad Track, and Cam Track that rhymes with that other train line we’ve heard about. 
                Every day, as we gathered in the sanctuary, we heard about some new problem that Cam was working on.  The first day, some big rocks had fallen onto the train tracks.  Cam and his workers got those boulders removed, but then on the second day, Cam had to repair the railroad tracks that had been damaged.  On day three, Cam was scared because he had never driven a train up and down a steep mountain before.  On Day four, Cam had run out of coal because he’d used it all up by driving the train too fast.  On the final day, Cam was having trouble with one of his employees whose constant chattering was driving Cam nuts.  Cam didn’t seem to appreciate his worker’s jokes like, “What do you call a train that likes bubble gum?  A choo-choo.”  Personally, I think that’s kind of clever.  But Cam was annoyed, and every day Cam had to learn the lesson to trust Jesus--that Jesus’ power pulls us through.
                As a good review to all of us who participated in VBS, and to bring all the rest of you aboard the Jesus train, we’re going to go through those daily lessons.  As Isaiah 40 tells us, when we feel weak and exhausted, God renews our strength.  We never need to worry about feeling faint or powerless because we can trust that God and God’s Son Jesus will give us the power we need to pull us through.

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