Realizing the Real

So I’ve preached a few times over the years. Once in high school, here and there in the years following, but never really giving it a real ram until 2009 when I embarked on the outreach phase of the whole reason I live where I do. Yes, it was my Discipleship Training School However, I had no idea what preaching REALLY was until this past week. Goodness oh gracious.

In the past month, I’ve had the privilege of being asked to preach twice at my small international church here in Targu Mures. I enjoy preaching, so I graciously accepted both invitations (These were the 3rd and 4th times I’ve preached at my church here). All the other times, I sat, thought, reasoned and puzzled out with what topic I should “bring the preach”, but this time was different. As I sat and got a bit lost in thoughts of possibility, an interesting thing happened. God said, “Hey, don’t preach on this, that, or the other.” Naturally, I responded, “O.K., since you’re so smart (God=smart, remember that one), what should I preach on?”

Meditation

Hmm, ok, first off, my very own mother delivers a dynamite teaching on this very topic…. I do not. However, I couldn’t deny the feeling towards this topic whenever I thought about preaching this past week. I’ll be honest, for the first time in my short yet exciting preaching “career”, I was nervous. I didn’t know much about the topic, I didn’t have any major stories of my own concerning said topic, heck, I didn’t hardly know where to start!

Luckily, as I mentioned early, my mother is pretty much the coolest mom ever, and I just so happen to have the very teaching referenced in the previous paragraph on my iPod. So, that’s where I started. The next days were filled with…. oh gee… yeah… bada bing… bada boom… BANG! I read part of a book by Richard J. Foster called “Celebration of Discipline”, I watched a fascinating  and VERY scientific film called “What The Bleep Do We Know” (NOT own the rabbit whole, in case you’re curious, that one is longer). I also got my hands on a film called “The Secret” which may seem a little “new agey”, but most of it is solid and incredibly found in the Bible of all places!

I could get into what I learned, but writing a book isn’t on my list of things to do today. Instead, I simply want to point out one of the most simple, yet easily overlooked truths in our daily lives. God is always right. No matter how smart I am, He’s smarter. Without His direction in something that I probably could have pulled off on my own (barely), I would have missed out on an incredible…. INCREDIBLE start to a journey that I feel will never end. I’ll post another time some of my findings, but for now I’m simply in awe of what God spoke to ME through what I preached yesterday at church. I couldn’t even fit everything into 3 sermons if I tried! “Preaching from the overflow” came to life last week.

Even today, I walked into the house lounge where my other house mates sit and guess what I heard….

“Doug, your preaching yesterday is making us think.”

That is stand alone the biggest complement I could have ever received. Thanks God

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