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As most of you already know, during the P.M. service on Sunday 9/27/09, I was given the opportunity to share The Word of God with my church family here in my home town.   That’s exactly right…I preached for the Lord!

I had done this in the past.  Back when I was a teen, 20+ years ago, we were given the opportunity every so often to lead the evening services.  We being the youth group.  I had preached several times but my last sermon that I gave was horrific.  Horrific because I didn’t prepare…at ALL. I was only given a month to prepare too!  Ugh!

Talk about embarrassment.  My talk may..MAY have lasted 3 minutes and the subject that spoke about was “Not Being Prepared.”  I was able to throw that together in about 2 minutes.  The subject was appropriate considering.  I learned from that experience, no doubt.

I felt like such a failure after that and vowed that I wouldn’t preach or even head down that track, period.  How could I ever show my face in the pulpit there again?

Fast-Forward to a Wednesday at beginning of September, 2009 and I receive a phone call from our minister.  He left me a voice-mail which I promptly returned….on Friday.

When I returned his call,  it was then that he asked if I wanted to preach the following Sunday.  We both decided that I wouldn’t have enough time to prepare.  We did, however, set a date of the 27th for me to preach.

I don’t remember hesitating when he asked if I would want to.  See, I’ve been praying for this door to be opened and I didn’t miss it when it was!

I was nervous, but it was an excited nervous.  Not like nervous as a teen before presenting my lesson.

Needless to say,  I had 2 or 3 weeks to prepare and did I ever!  I had been thinking about fear for quite sometime and had even written a post, Faith and/or Fear, about my on-going thoughts on fear.  I was also able to talk about fear and experience fear at the same time, while I was speaking. 

I fulfilled one vow that I had made as a teen.  I didn’t show my face in the pulpit.  Nope.  I preached down on the floor, closer to the folks that were there.

While I was speaking, it didn’t take long for the nerves to settle and this feeling of the Spirit taking over enveloped me.  I had heard it talked about, this Spiritual takeover, but this was the first time I had experienced it to this degree.  It was so amazing, so awesome, so…there are no words to describe it.  Blessed is all I can say.

I felt as comfortable standing up there delivering my message as I have ever felt doing anything.  That was one of, if not the, most rewarding experience of my life.

Oh well.  If I think of anything else I’ll do another post on it.  But what a blessed experience that was!

I’ve included a link to the audio if you are interested.  Just take it easy on me.  Remember, it’s the first time I’d done this in 20 years.  It will take approx 20 minutes of your time.

I welcome comments questions on the post and also on the sermon I presented.

Because of HIM

SC

Fear

Another Roller Coaster

Like everything else in my life, I suppose it shouldn’t be a shocker that even the thoughts of something like prayer in worship is tied to a roller coaster track.  Suddenly whipped around a 90 degree turn headed toward another loop in the track. 

Oh well, it’s what makes this journey in life fun, exciting, and a challenge for me.  If the roller coaster of life was as straight as the roads in the plains of Texas, what fun would that be?  I’m just glad when God designed this coaster, he made sure that we had the capability to be secure in our ride.

Loosen some of the previous ends

In my previous post I suppose I went on a bit of a tirade about my opinions on what should and shouldn’t be prayed during a worship service.   Maybe to you it didn’t sound as bad as it sounds in my head as I have thought about it.  Either way, I’m going to take a bit of a step back, breathe, and see if I can make this make a bit more sense. 

Hey, I’m even open to your opinions on this as well.  I’m in no way perfect.  Worship, I think, is something personal and maybe what I want during a worship service is totally not what you want.  Granted, it’s not really about us anyway.  I understand that.

The world

I suppose I’ve finally concluded this; what better time to pray for the world than when the body is assembled together?  What better time to pray for our government when the followers of the one true leader, God, is assembled together?  What better time to pray for economics than when the richest of us are gathered together? 

I think maybe my issue was if a subject could be tied to a prayer and that subject could be deduced to “the world” then that is where I start wondering if that’s the type of prayer that I want to be praying during worship.

After all,  it’s the world that we so need to reach don’t you think?

politics

I’m still not a big fan of bringing politics into prayer during worship.  I think you know what I mean when I say politics.  Each family is composed of Republicans, Democrats, and everything in between.  Sure, we don’t want it to be that way.  We would rather just be Christians or at the very least Americans and leave the rest of the labels out of the church, but it’s not going to happen, in my opinion.

So, it stands to reason that when I am called to lead a prayer and if I start praying for political issues then most likely half of those in the family are not going to be agreeing with what I’m praying for, start getting aggravated, smirking, and completely missing the point of what we are doing at that very moment…praying.  Make sense?

So, if I had my choice when it comes to politics and public prayer in worship, leave it very generic. 

the family

I still think when we are gathered together in worship, this is the time to be praying for us as a body of believers.  For those we know are struggling.  For those we don’t know are struggling.  For the shepherds as well as for the sheep of the flock.  This is the time for praying for the service that we have entered in and for those leading the service.

Conclusion

I’m expecting some lashing or what not.  Understand though that I do understand that this is still just a matter of opinion.  As long as our hearts are where they should be, maybe it shouldn’t matter what is prayed for, I don’t know.  Maybe I’m splitting hairs and need to quit worrying about something so minor as this. 

Have an opinion?

Because of HIM

SC

I’ve had some trouble getting this post together.  I’ve thought about this subject for several weeks.  I’ve had to think about how to present it because the terminology that I use can be taken and stretched or skewed and pointed back and put to me in the form of another question.  I’m going to try to head all of that off before I get into my main point.

Worship

Let me start by showing you that word “worship.”  When I use that word in this post I am using it to mean that special time that I set aside on Sundays to pay special honor to God and to my savior Jesus, for what they have done for me.  A time where I don’t have to worry about the world and can be surrounded by my brothers and sisters who are there to hopefully do the same thing that I am.  We meet together to lift one another up, to praise God, to focus on Him and to please him as a family.

Today when someone says I’m going to worship there are all kinds of questions such as “Is that a special time or a way of life? Is that something you do or how we live?” kind of questions thrown at us and I understand where you are coming from. So I have done some quick research prior to writing this and found that worship as it’s used in the Bible, was used in a “special moment” kind of situation.  Having said that, I do also think that it is a way of life.

Prayer

No gotchas there.  Prayer is what it is.  I define it in this post as a time to hold an in depth, serious, talk with God.  Where I am still and focused and intent on listening and speaking to him.

I do pray throughout the day, several times.  I will often talk to God but I may not necessarily stop what I’m doing to have a conversation with him.  The same as I may be talking to you while fishing.  I may not stop casting the line while I’m talking to you, but I’m still having this conversation with you.  Same with God.  I’m going about my daily routine at the same time praying, having conversation, with God.  It’s part of how I build my relationship with him.

The World

The world is everything outside of the doors where we are worshipping.  It’s the thing that I finally get a reprieve from while I am at worship.  It’s the thing that I have had to be conscience of that has been berating me and tempting me and beating me down the entire week until worship time.

The Loose Ends

Let me see if I can tie these together the way that I wanted to.

In our worship services we have set aside special times of prayer.  During each of those times there is one who stands before the family to lead the prayer to keep it in some form of order.  The church in attendance doesn’t have to pray the prayer that this leader is praying and it’s sometimes a great thing this is so.

I don’t want you to think that I have no concerns for the world when these next few lines scroll across your eyes.  I do think there is a time to pray for the world, for the politicians, for the economy for all the mess that is outside of our doors, the world.  When I am worshipping though, I really don’t think that is the time that I want to pray for the world.

I really am not a big fan of the political prayers because nine times out of 10, my politics and your politics aren’t in agreement so I’m going to counter your prayer with one of my own.  I heard someone call this a prayer block, similar to a shot block in basketball.

I think when we are gathered together as a family in worship that our prayers need to be for our family and family related.  For our hearts, our souls, our strength, our minds.  For our relationships.

For this one hour in worship, let the world take care of it’s own.

Just my opinion

Because of HIM

SC

Prayer in Worship – Update