I’m blessed beyond all reason in that week in and week out, I feel like God meets me somewhere in the process of prepping the Weekend Message. Sometimes I’ll look over old messages notes and be amazed that I came up with that (knowing that I only kinda did). Usually this is kind a steady semi-predictable process in the course of the week. But every now and then it’s more sudden and direct. That’s the case with the message from last weekend. It actually started as a retreat talk for the High School ministry of my friends at Brookside Church in Omaha, Nebraska. I was flying out early Friday morning. I was up late packing and getting everything ready. I was finally ready to hit the sack and I drug myself into bed knowing that alarm was going to sound all too soon.
As I’m drifting off to sleep I start thinking of John chapter 11 and the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Not my usual last thoughts of the day, but pretty cool. Then a talk kind of materialized in my head. I felt like the Lord was saying that THIS was the talk I was supposed to do instead of one of the ones I had already sent them (complete with discussion questions). So I got up ran downstairs and wrote up some notes to the talk the main point being – GOD DOES WHAT HE DOES BECAUSE OF LOVE.
It was clearly a God-thing. It totally landed on the retreat. But even as I was sharing it with these High School kids 2k miles away, I sensed it was also a talk for Journey.
Right now at Journey we have 2 things oddly and wonderfully juxtaposed: Lots of people going through excruciatingly difficult things and great joy, faith and hope from those same people. The beauty of this continues to cause me to gape and marvel.
I couldn’t have seen it that Thursday night / Friday morning last fall, but it really was “His Word” for us! I love it when it happens like that!
