It's Sunday morning, I'm in my favorite place getting ready to do what God has called me to do. And yet I am fighting waves of feelings of unworthiness, inability, and fear. I've been preaching since 1991, so there's little reason for a sudden lack of confidence. I've been serving the people of New Hope now for 12 years, so they know me well and my strengths and weaknesses better than any group of people on earth, and they love me anyway. And I cherish them.
The irony is that I am preaching on what faith is today, out of a passage that I preached so many times when I was first starting out - filling in different churches all around Macon GA, that Bunny and Sean not only could have preached it, but they were tired of hearing it. :) I know this text and have gone to it many many times in my life to remind myself just what true faith is.
But I don't feel all that strong today. In fact I feel very weak.
I think I'm tired.
We've been in a battle to make New Hope all God wants it to be for going on two years now. There are fewer of us here, but we're doing more ministry than ever. I'm working full time at school doing the most exhausting, most demanding job I have ever had. Weekends are just that time when you catch up on what you couldn't get done during the week. And I'm tired.
I'm rereading my notes for this morning, and I wrote "Don't trust your feelings. They will lie to you. Trust in God - totally - in everything - for everything. Whether you feel like it or not."
And the Holy Spirit just rapped on my noggin to say "practice what you preach, preacher."
So that's what I'm going to do today. I am believing that God will bring strength into my weakness. I am believing that God's Holy Spirit will speak through me. I am believing that because we are here today, that God will be glorified and something significant will happen that will alter someone's life for eternity.
And I'll do all that... by faith.
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