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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

"A Necessary Trip"

Sunday I walked into church to find that one of my pastor's good friends was preaching in his place for morning service. My pastor is a very anointed man of God and so by default, you already know that if one of his colleagues preach, they got a little something going on themselves. Occasionally when things like this happen, you sort of know that a message is bound to 'click'. Confirmations happen so often when people are on one accord-- even if it's the first time you've spoken in years. It's amazing the way the Holy Spirit works, when you engulf yourself in God there is nothing less than exciting in Him. I'm hoping to bring myself to that point too.

The message for that morning was "A necessary trip".

The speaker pulled out Jeremiah 18:1-6, as well as Ezekiel 37:1-14. He also had a scripture from Nehemiah, which I forgot which @___@ (and it's a shame because it connects with what I'm about to say in the next part of the post..)
He began to speak about how there are times in our lives where we feel that the specific path we were brought on was a wasted effort, a 'waste of time', how we may initially regret the decision and was able to put that lost time towards something 'more worthy in our eyes. Maybe it wasn't even an action that was already done, maybe it is something forthcoming and we personally may deem it optional or not important and something we can get lazy on. But regardless of what we think and what we may feel, God is trying to lift us up and show us something in those moments.

In those specific scriptures, the Lord told Jeremiah to go to this potter's house, and brought Ezekiel to a valley full of dead and dry bones and showed them something powerful. To Jeremiah he stressed his desire to shape and mold Israel like the clay on the wheel, if only he was allowed to. Oh, the possibilities, if only his people allowed Him to work in their lives!

To Ezekiel, He brought him to this empty valley full of nothing of dry bones, and asked him, "Son of man, can these bones live?" As the conversation went on, He showed Ezekiel the limitless power of His word, how Ezekiel commanded the bones to once again be put together and covered by flesh and blood, and be given the breath of life, going from a valley full of bones to a living, breathing army.

This message was definitely food for thought. Certainly God tries to catch my attention and bring me to a new place in Him. I know this because there has been more than one time where he tried to bring me to a place and I pushed myself away. If only I could hear him! If only I can sense him better... this is exactly why I want to bring myself to a certain place before the end of the year. I want to develop this sensitivity to him.


As morning service closed out, that "click" moment happened. Pastor announced that we would be on a congregational consecration starting the 4th to the 16th, reading the whole book of Nehemiah. Touching up on the Word that was spoken before, he said that with such limited communication the speaker 'couldn't have known what God had in store for us' and that the sermon was confirmation to what He is about to give us in the next phase. We have our fasting, our Word, our prayer sessions (one on Sunday mornings, one at the church on Tues evening like usual, and then a conference line prayer another time during the week in the evening).

So now, I'm 5 days into the consecration and learning the story of Nehemiah. There are a lot of Old Testament scriptures that you barely hear of, for me Nehemiah is one of them, and as I'm reading (on Chapter 5 today), I'm seeing the place where God wants us as a congregation and how their togetherness is making them this sort of unpenetrable shield, even though they're in the midst of working. Building with one hand while a weapon in the other...
I'll get into this further as I go deeper into the chapters.