A Word from the Lord? Forget about it. Put it out of your mind.

No, this isn’t a word to you from the Lord...I guess it could be on some level, but this is about a word from the Lord to me.

A few weeks ago while away at a conference I was in a moment of deep reflection, meditation, and prayer (sounds extra spiritual, right?).  Though maybe sounding cliche, it is the truth - I was in the midst of all three of those descriptions when I felt a tremendous prompting of the spirit to do something when I returned home.  I decided that perhaps I was simply caught up in a moment and dismissed the prompting as my own thoughts.  Actually doing so proved difficult.

I remember back when I was wrestling with my call to ministry.  After having come to a breaking point of conviction, I shared the news with my personal mentor, teacher, and minister.  His words to me were, and I quote, “Just forget about it.  Put it out of your mind”.

What?!?  Are you kidding? After all this struggle, rebellion, denial, disobedience and running?  No way! 

He told me that if God was truly calling me, then such advice would be impossible for me to follow.  He said “God wont let you forget it”.  It was an interesting measure to help me affirm the Holy Spirit’s quiet voice among the resounding noise of my own thoughts.  I have used the same advice for others over the years now.

Well, after my encounter a few weeks ago I chose to take a similar approach to what I believed to be the Holy Spirit pressing upon me in a specific area.  I knew the spirit seemed to be telling me to do something, but nothing about what I was hearing really made sense.  I felt like God wanted to use me in a particular event, but in order to do so, I would have to explain this to the organizers of the event... and I would have to come out and ask to preach it.  This thing has been in the works for months, and the details (or at least the major ones) have been worked out.  I decided I may be letting my own heart and desires interfere with my moments of reflection.  

For weeks now I have been unable to release the thought of this prompting and have since decided it is a genuine word from the Lord with no ambiguity.  But how?  How was I supposed to do what I felt like God wanted me to do?  All I could think of was to simply ask, but asking would feel so presumptuous.  Almost egocentric.

I’m a pastor and a preacher.  For those who might not realize, those are very different things and not everyone is good at both.  Some excel in one which helps allow for the tolerance of weakness in the other.  It is my personal desire to be excellent at both - I am still a work in progress.

For the preacher side, the opportunity to preach outside the normal week to week church environment is usually a welcomed one, but is also an opportunity preceded by an invitation by another.  I have never requested to preach anywhere.  Yet, I felt God’s leading for me to ask to do so.

I have kept this a matter of personal prayer for a couple of weeks and finally decided I needed to bring it to the attention of the event organizers.  Knowing that preachers are lined up pretty early, I decided to share the story of my realization and simply offer myself as a back-up in the event the booked preacher could not attend suddenly.  

I decided I need to prepare something in case something unexpected occurred and he could not show.  I am absolutely convinced that I am specifically supposed to preach this event (This doesn’t mean I would have sabotaged another preachers travel ability to force the situation, i.e. slashed tires, syphoned gas tank, give him the wrong address, etc., I was just thinking ahead in consideration of God’s providence).  Anyway.

As it turns out, I was in a meeting where the event was being discussed to discover no one had been booked.  Are you serious!  I couldn’t believe it.  It had been accidentally neglected and the man in mind had never been contacted.  As I sat in the room, I felt myself become fidgety and nervous with excitement.  As with other times in my life, I was seeing God’s plan coming together before my eyes and in my presence.

I finally decided to speak up and tell the story I just relayed in this blog.  I ended with saying that I know it is not up to me, but I believe God wants me to do this.  Just then another man in the room made the statement that “this is definitely a God thing” and that he was planning to ask if they might ask me to do so anyway instead of the other guy.  My heart feels like it skips a beat just recalling it all.  I tell people all the time that God has no trouble communicating himself to his people, and here I am once again experiencing just that in a real and immediate way.

I have no idea what will come of this event, but this I know - I am not going to miss it for anything.  Doing so will be me stepping outside the very will of God.  That is something none of us should ever want to do.