Yesterday was an amazing day to be at our church. I have to chuckle at myself. I know in my mind that God is always present but it never fails that I am amazed when God moves in our midst!
I had prepared off and on all week to address the question, “Does God still speak?” I had my sermon wrapped up by Thursday and was feeling pretty good about what God would have me say come Sunday morning. Then on Saturday morning, I got up before anyone else to read and pray and look over my sermon.
As I mentioned, the sermon dealt with God speaking to us. As I went over the outline, I felt the overwhelming sense that God was telling me, “This won’t work.” I sat a minute and responded with resistance – “But God, this is what I thought you wanted me to say. I have been working on this for a while now. Here it is Saturday morning and you want me to start over?”
As I worked through the outline, I began to agree that there was too much there to really try and squeeze it into one sermon – but I could not figure out what to do about it. In fact, I began to pray, “God, if you want me to change this at this point, just show me how.” The answer came through Sunday morning about an hour before the service. Now, for those of you who know me, you know that I don’t like operating by the seat of my pants. But, I felt strongly that if I was going to stand before God’s people and teach about God speaking, then it would be a bit hypocritical if I didn’t listen to the prompting to change the sermon.
I changed the passage, re-ordered the outline, cut some stuff out and prayed through the entire process. To be honest, I could not really tell you all that came out of my mouth on Sunday morning during the sermon, but I can tell you that God moved. But God was not finished. Our pianist had called on Friday to say she had the opportunity to go to Dallas and see family so we were going to be without a pianist on Sunday. A few weeks ago, Andy (our interim worship leader) had asked one of the ladies on the worship team to work up a solo. So Andy called her on Friday to ask if she could do her song on Sunday morning at the close of the service – where we often have a piano solo. The song that Holly had chosen days before, fit perfectly with what God had led me say and was extremely moving. Yep – God moved!
We serve a God who is constantly at work all around us. And it is really cool when we stop long enough to notice!
Now I am looking forward with expectancy for this Sunday when we continue to look at how God speaks. If you are around Littlefield, Texas on Sunday come join us!
Clay in the Hands 