Sun, July 15
... Preacher babe
I got to preach at the Well tonight... very awesome. I love it when I do my planning and preparation, but leave room for God to work, and he fills in the blanks. That's totally what happened tonight. I had my outline, my Scripture passages I was going to use, and the basic idea of what was going to happen, and that was all God-inspired during the week, of course, but God filled in all the blanks tonight. I got up, started to talk, and it must have been 1/2 an hour, but it felt like 5 minutes. It was so great--I was in "the zone," and everything I was saying was coming out of my mouth, but I knew that they weren't my words. It was God using my mouth to say what he needed to say to everyone. It was such a rush to know that I was being used in such a powerful way... afterwards, I felt completely drained. I'd put so much of myself into it emotionally, and when I was speaking, I was giving it everything I had, giving God everything I had, and when I finished, it felt like I'd given so much of myself to the people I was talking to.
Craig asked me to speak on what God's been doing in my life lately, or something like that, and when I was praying about it, the thing that kept coming back was the fact that He's been teaching me so much about his forgiveness. The biggest verses that hit me were alwyas Psalm 51, where David's repenting to God, and Psalm 103, where he's praising God for his forgiveness. That's the coolest... so I preached on those. Basically, I talked about how David messed up big time, but God still forgave him and helped him deal with the consequences. That's kind of the cornerstone--I went off on a lot of other things about how we really have no power or authority to preach the risen Christ, except by the power of the risen Christ; it's God's forgiveness that makes us worthy to be his messengers; our sin doesn't define us--God's forgiveness defines us; and the only proper response to his forgiveness is complete and utter praise. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. If you want more, email me. :o)
I'm so pumped for SEMP. I really can't wait till Saturday! It's going to be so great... I can't wait to see what God's going to do.I've been getting more and more excited as I get more and more on track with God--I guess that's the way it goes, hey? The more time I spend with him, the more excited I get about spending more time with him. It'll be a good week. :o)
infinite || abyss
posted at 11:30 p.m.
