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Apr 26, 2006
the momentum shift I still don't get momentum. But, it seems to get me. Tonight I taught at FOCUS. Over the past few times I've taught, my teaching has raised to a new level. I don't say that to pat myself on the back or anything. It's just part of a shift that I've been aware of. I've been fairly comfortable speaking in public for a while, but I haven't been as confident as a teacher. As my confidence as a teacher builds, I've noticed a shift in my teaching style. It's kind of fun to be able to tangibly see yourself grow. Anyway, something I've heard from veteran teachers is that when you are going to teach on a certain topic, you will be tested in that area throughout the week. I haven't really expirenced that to this point, at least not in a sense that I was aware of it. And, that wasn't so much the case today. However, since I was assigned this topic over a month ago, I've really had a feeling that this message was going to be important (I was teaching on James 3:1-12, taming of the toungue.) As the time has gone on, I became more and more excited about this night. And it's not like it's a fun topic to teach on. But, I felt that it was going to be a key night. And, throughout the day, there was a lot that convinced me that tonight was going to be important. Because, while I was not tested on taming of the tongue, I got a severe beatdown in the spirtual warfare department. As I stated last post, momentum was really good over the last week. This morning that ended. Pretty much first thing in the morning. I walked out to my car, and I noticed some glass next to it. As I wondered why there was glass next to it, I noticed my rear passenger side window was busted. I looked inside, only to find that the only thing missing was a crockpot. That's right, someone busted my window to take a crockpot. Not my cd player. Not my cds. Not the 5-10 dollars worth of change in there. Just the crockpot. And, then there were little things, such as a copier jamming, spilling water all over my pants, and dumb stuff like that. But then, another biggie. I can't go into details, but I'll just sum it up by saying that maybe I should start looking into a new job. Something to pray about. On top of that, I didn't get a chance to eat lunch, so by the time I got home, I was really hungry and really weak. So I started eating. Only, because I was so hungry, I ended up eating too much, which made me kind of sick. So, I take a 30 min nap, and when I got up, I was a bit cranky and wasn't feeling too well. The thing is, I was convinced that Satan was trying to stop me. Which fueled the fire. So, I got to the church and took care of a couple of details, and then went to do my runthrough. Whenever I speak at FOCUS, I always go down into the toddler room and do 2 practice runs. So, I do the first practice run, and it goes pretty well, other than a rough spot toward the beginning. So, then I go upstairs and take a break. I go back down to do my second runthrough, but I stop and pray for a few minutes. Here's the thing: I'm not really good at prayer. Seriously, I'm not. I'm just 14 months removed from writing a post about how I wasn't praying anymore because I don't know how. I'm still not much better at it. But this prayer was one of those where every word flowed like I was reading it right out of Shakespear (not with the Victorian language or anything like that.) Some people have a spiritual gift for prayer. I don't, but for this moment, I had a spiritual giftcard for prayer. It was pretty amazing. So, I go and do my second runthrough, and after I made it through the part where I had stuggled earlier, I stopped. I felt at peace, that I was ready. So, I went upstairs. As the service started, we started having glitches left and right. We had trouble with the audio on a video. There were some worship cues that got missed. It was several things right in a row. So, as it came time for the teaching, I felt that the battle was on. So, I paused, and shared much of the story that I am chronicling here. And then, I led the group in prayer, for God to seize the night. Again, it was like I still had some balance left on my spiritual giftcard, because it flowed so well. After that, I went into the teaching time. It's hard to gague how these things go. Sometimes it seems like a disaster but people connect. Sometimes it seems like you are on the top of your game and it connects with nobody. At a service that late, body language can be difficult to read. With that said, my thoughts are this: I think it went so well that I wish I had done better. What I mean is this: the vibe I got from the room told me that people were engaged. I had their attention like I've never had it before. And while what I said was good, with that kind of engagment, I wish I had said more, expounded better, and so on. Then again, one of my prayers over and over was for God to edit my message, to make it His, and for me in this role to be like my role in my job--to simply deliver the message. At work, I don't write the mail. I only deliver it. So, while it's hard to trust the human element of preaching, I am convinced that what I taught tonight was what I was supposed to teach. It was an important night. Our attendance was the highest of the quarter after a steady decline. I'm convicned the message was an important one. And the fact that so much had to be overcome to pull it off makes it more rewarding. What struck me the most in all of this is this acute awareness of the spiritual realities of what was going on. And it's something that has hit me in two other services, on I was the worship leader in those, not the teacher. I keep feeling like something major is going to happen. I don't know how, because I don't have gifts of prophecy. All of this adds up to what Tommy and I were discussing at the end of the night . . . God is awesome, and I still suck. Which makes it even cooler that I get to be involved. posted
by Unknown @ 11:44:00 PM |
