I shared with you last week that I was going to be preaching
yesterday at Hope Missionary Church in Bluffton. What I didn’t share with you was the fact
that at that point, I had very little voice.
I had been struggling with a very bad cold and it had left me without
much volume and nothing I was doing was getting it to improve. Knowing that time was of the essence and that
by yesterday I needed to be able to preach three times in a row, I resorted to
calling my doctor and asking for steroids to see if they would make a
difference. I had been in this situation
once before where I had a series of speaking engagements coming up and no voice
and steroids had done the trick that time.
So back on the meds I went and friends ramped up their prayers and by
yesterday morning, I was able to preach in each service and never even
coughed…a true miracle indeed!
What I didn’t know, nor did anyone else have a clue, what would
be faced once everyone arrived at church.
If something could go wrong with the technical component of the first
service…it did go wrong. I felt so sorry
for our Worship Pastor because he was being hit with one thing after another
while having to lead the service, but he handled it like the professional that
he is. He kept his cool and just kept
making the necessary changes to keep things rolling. He told me after our final service that in
all of his years of leading, he had never had that many things go wrong in a
morning. In the end, all three services were
accomplished and we all have interesting memories of this particular Lord’s Day
J
I believe what kept everyone “going with the flow” yesterday was
the fact that it WAS the Lord’s Day. Not
ours, not those who came to worship but His day and His day only. Whatever detours were thrown in our path were
just frustrations and I was so impressed with how everyone on the platform,
along with everyone working behind the scenes, refused to let anything stop
what we were there to do. We were there
to do two things: first to worship the King of Kings and secondly to point
those who entered our doors to Jesus.
We know of course that Satan doesn’t like us doing either one of
those objectives. He never wants us to
worship the Lord and he surely doesn’t want us pointing anyone to Jesus. As a result, it is not out of the ordinary
for him to work overtime on Sundays to pull us off track, to get us to lose our
focus and to make us want to give up. When
this occurs, we have a choice to make.
We can either let him win or we can make sure he loses and I am confident
that in our services yesterday he lost.
I think the thing we all need to remember is that we can also
have the same focus Monday through Saturday.
If we go through every day determined to worship the Lord and point
those that we meet to Jesus, we can make sure that Satan loses on a daily
basis. But it is a choice that we will
have to make each morning as we begin our day.
I have a feeling that if we consciously live with these objectives in
mind, we will see God’s power at work in a mighty way Every. Single. Day.
Will we have detours?
Yes. Will we have
frustrations? Yes. Will we be tempted at times to give up? More than likely…Yes. But as long as we keep our eyes focused on
the One who is worthy of our praise, we will always be on the winning team and
oh, what a victory that will be!
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