The title comes from another.. words similar to those written of Fredrick Buechner, who called himself “this sceptical old believer, this believing old sceptical”. (It was my good friend Stuart Pascal who spoke so passionately about Buechner that inspired me to obtain one of his books and I’m glad on both counts!) Though the title is from another yet it speaks so well of my own heart and from what I understand of Buechner and others it seems he and I are not alone and many a Pastor/Preacher could well describe themselves similarly…Hence the reason I tell this story..For it is, I feel, more a story than a blog but I trust that there will be encouragement derived by all who read it!
Sundays are always days of doing and of organisation. Despite good preparations being made beforehand things always seem to need adjusting or amending.. In our particular situation it is even more emphasised as we must set up the room in which the morning service is to take place, from scratch, as it were, every Sunday morning. We get there early, well Martins and Oliver, earlier than the rest of us, two of the greatest assets of our little church. They busy themselves getting the seating arranged and everything else in its proper place while others of us get the technology ‘stuff’ up and running. It is all quite straightforward really and everyone now is accustomed to doing what they do and knowing where what goes where..We set aside a time of prayer before the service is to begin and try to be in prayer by 10.30! However, despite all our best efforts and hard work, this seldom happens, something inevitably goes wrong? Something doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do or even worse the keys of the room cannot be found anywhere! The plain fact is, no matter how early we get there, it seems we end up ‘chasing our tails’ THAT IS…UNTIL yesterday?????
Fifteen minutes was all it took? The room had been more or less set up for us by the Hotel staff (Not normally done!!!) and everything else just fell into place perfectly.. Everything did as it was supposed to do, switched flicked turned on or off what they were meant to and we were ready to worship and we were ready to go to prayer..10.30am we began to pray and to praise God for another opportunity to gather as church and bless His Name.. What a beautiful start to this Sunday morning!!!
THAT IS…UNTIL 11.00am?????
Well everything began to go wrong!!! The keyboard through which we play our music refused to work. So we read the Bile text for the message. Still no sound! So we prayed and we prayed a bit more, but the praying was getting a little strained to say the least, as we competed with the noise of banging and metallic sounds from the ones trying to get the keyboard finally to work and I’m not sure if we were really wholeheartedly into the prayer with most having one eye upon heaven and the other open and upon the defunct box that was supposed to be playing music…It was getting really irritating, well that’s what was going on in my mind and then suddenly there was a familiar sound!! The keyboard was doing what it was supposed to be doing. Hallelujah!!!
Let’s sing, let’s praise God! Appropriately, I think, ‘Be thou my Vision’ BUT then it went all wrong again and the words and the verses being projected on the screen for us all to follow where somehow unfamiliar and all mixed up..This has become farcical almost and my heart was sinking deeper and deeper..How can God be glorified in all this mess? I was wondering in my mind at this stage was there anything that I or we could do this morning that could redeem the situation?? AND before you shout down the internet at me, I know, I know, it’s all me, me, me. Where’s God in all this???
Unknown to me, at the time, I was being given a lesson that I needed to learn. The problems and the growing irritation in my head, and the questions I was asking myself spoke of a greater problem within my soul. I had become that ‘Sceptical Old Pastor’! That even though I know with all my heart that God had brought Lorraine and I to Tenerife for ‘such a time as this’ and even though we had been given evidence upon evidence of God’s blessing upon ourselves since we have come, I had become ‘a believing old sceptical’ like Buechner not really expecting God to do anything miraculous with the Church! I confess that even though the work is still just in its infancy, I had already got into that place of ‘going through the motions’??? THAT IS…UNTIL?????
…yesterday and God grabbed my attention and got my attention!! For out of the chaos and confusion God did a miraculous thing, and it was in spite of me and in spite of all the mistakes and all that went wrong, God did a work amongst us all and the Holy Spirit broke through and ‘we beheld His Glory’!!!
I spoke on ‘The Power of Surrender’ wow, now even that was of the Holy Spirit. In the congregation was a couple from Holland, Peter and Elena and their little daughter, Marina.
I’m no longer that ‘Old Sceptical Pastor’! I was reminded so vividly yesterday morning that God did this in my life, 28 years ago.. He still does this in lives today and He can still do this in lives tomorrow. In the middle of chaos and confusion, when we think that there is no hope, God is at work, God can work because it’s at those times when all we have done has amounted to nothing, BUT God says it’s not about you, it’s not what you do or can do it’s about what I do and out of chaos and confusion and what seems defeat HE brings about order and beauty and transformation, now that’s what I call miraculous. That is the Power of Surrender…finding yourself in the place where YOU believe and see the God who still does miraculous things!!!
There were at least TWO people who put their hands up in Surrender yesterday and today is the beginning of a whole new adventure CONVINCED that God has more of the miraculous for both of them to experience!!!!
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