Awesome SonDay!

Wow! We had a powerful Sunday AM service! Here's how my week went leading up to then:

I started the week in fine spirits, but I had one of those "all of a sudden" moments when everything seemed to be crashing down around my ears! I worked hard to keep from letting The Enemy get me down, but I ended up being rather sullen the rest of the week.

Wednesday is my Sunday prep day, but try as hard as I might, God wouldn't give me anything to preach. Not even an idea or an outline. I wrestled with my thoughts and even pulled out some old sermons I haven't preached in Bangor yet, just to look them over. One looked good, but I just couldn't bring myself to finally settling on it. Through it all, I had a hunch that God had something special in mind.

I kept striving the rest of the week- right up through mid-Saturday! Then God "let" me use that old sermon and put together a program. But I had another hunch that I wasn't ever going to get to that sermon. And that's exactly what happened.

The meeting started out as usual, but after our worship time, we did some listening like the Quakers: whatever you feel God telling you to say or do- go ahead. I know some of you are getting nervous- I was too, but I just couldn't ignore God's prodding to go this direction.

Our time started off with Danny singing the new version of "I'm in His Hands." The Spirit showed up before he even got to the words. I was overcome by His presence and began to cry silently in my seat. God was speaking those very words to my spirit comforting me and I knew it. It was good!

Mary then read some scripture and gave a quick "message" about our need to get saved. I was still crying; God was still working on me. Then (I later learned) a new guy leaned back to Mary and said, "How do I get saved?" So Gene took him to the altar and he got saved!

Then Bobby gave a touching testimony about how he should have died with cancer, but God had other things in mind for him when the church prayed for him. That led to Barbara (tearily) saying she had a friend with her that had cancer and we needed to pray with him. We gathered around him, prayed and anointed him with (I believe) powerful results. I was good to see Mary using her gift of healing!

I must admit, it was way too long since we let God take over in our service like that. For me, my funk disappeared as I realized God had it all under control. I guess I should have trusted him to know what he was planning- even if he didn't tell me before hand!