This has certainly been an action-packed and revelation filled third day of my "7 Days of Praise" celebration and I cannot wait to share with you all, or most of what God has been doing in me this past three or so hours.
Once again I managed to clock up another three hours, almost, in worship & ministry exploring many things and once again waiting for the point where I would be broken down into a crying wreck.
What I got instead though, was an amazing God-encounter unlike anything I've ever had before, proving that this "7 Days..." was indeed a correct celebration to follow after the events of Sunday!
Shall I tell you if I succumbed to emotion though...?
The Cracks in the Sky Appear
Well I did.
But it took longer this time and, thankfully, didn't last as long. I'll get to that in due course.
First up it was the first preach of the day, from Pastor Steven Furtick (again!) of Elevation Church, North Carolina with his message "How to Deal With Disappointment": -
I fortunately managed to make it through the whole of the first worship session without shedding much of a tear... sure I could feel the urge coming on, but it was not until Steven concluded his message did I start to crack open.
Before that though, let me tell you about the message from Steven as he referred to the parable of the fig tree that Jesus told: -
And He told this parable: “A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He told the vineyard worker, ‘Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it even waste the soil?’ “But he replied to him, ‘Sir, leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. Perhaps it will bear fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.’” Luke 13:6-9 (HCSB)
I'll quickly give you a snapshot of some of the pointers that Steven pulled out of this (and I say a snapshot because if I wrote everything down you wouldn't need to watch it for yourself!): -
Bad leadership corrupts possibility (if you're not leading well, you're leading everyone down paths they shouldn't go down!)
God doesn't pick what He has never planted!
Quit trying to do things that are never your gifting in the first place.
Sometimes there are some tools that God doesn't authorise us to use because that's now how He made us (then Steven told a comical story about how it's taken him something like ten years to get used to the fact that he'd be hopeless with a toolbox in his hands but if you put a microphone there...!)
Where the problem in your life shows up isn't necessarily the cause of it, you have to sometimes check the root cause of the issue;
Sometimes the root of your disappointment is your own dysfunction (it could be that you, like me, are not able to meet your own expectations, sometimes!); and finally
Your failure is nothing but fertiliser.
His conclusion: When Justice wants to punish us like we deserve, Mercy steps in and says "uh-uh, let Me work on them for one more year!"
That last point did it for me, his conclusion was the hammer blow needed to get past the floodgate of my emotions I have been keeping sealed up, because a good Christian shouldn't acknowledge certain feelings, let alone actually feel them!
How misguided have I been for all these years? I told you in another posting that I too have feels, so it's foolish trying to ignore or deny them, instead you have to learn how to harness them!
Who teaches you that? God.
I'd spent enough time doing that, making me realise that everything I've been through this year, has gradually been designed to wean me off that way of thinking.
This is where this song really brought out the emotion as I realised that not only was God sharing with me His undiluted, unmmatchable, unmistakable Love...
He was also enveloping me with a sense of a real 'hug' that I'd confessed to Peter the night before that I have been so sorely longing for, from a girlfriend.
He was also enveloping me with a sense of a real 'hug' that I'd confessed to Peter the night before that I have been so sorely longing for, from a girlfriend.
That's not lame, that's cute, baby! ;)
Final Thought
Whatever negative happens the rest of this year, bro's, make sure you see it as fertiliser for the future events that are coming your way because they're teaching you what not to do and that is to try and make the future happen on your own terms.
The next part is coming up later this evening, where I'll take a quick look at what I discovered between sessions and I think that you too will find it quite eye-opening!
Peace off!
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