Last Sunday was my worst Sunday of ministry in more than five years in Colombia. Thankfully I wasn’t preaching! I tried to lead music but made so many mistakes. On one of the songs we had the wrong words on the screen. On another I couldn’t get the entrance on the three times the chorus came in. Not to mentiont that I didn’t set the sound system up right, so our voices were quiet and our guitars couldn’t be heard well. I tried to give the announcements and got lost in what I was saying about an event for the kids… Then I taught the little kids’ class with a lesson that Holly had given me the night before, and it didn’t go too well. I ended up improvising some of the class as I taught because I didn’t understand the activities too well.
The whole week was a blur as I tried to rush to get everything done that had to be done. As you can see from my Sunday, I “finished” everything but wasn’t able to pull it together. Note to self: being behind the eight ball all week is not the way to have a good Sunday.
Now, why do I mention this? For one thing, I wanted you to have more ideas about how to pray for us. For another, I wanted to praise God and say that He uses our weakness to show us we cannot do anything apart from Him. I realized that I hadn’t specifically prayed that God would give me ability and wisdom to lead the worship service as I should have. Perhaps I felt like “I can do this,” and God wanted to quickly snuff that proud thought out. I think that when we consciously ackowledge our bankrupcy in competency is when God blesses. I’ve been reading C.J. Mahaney’s book on humility in these last weeks, and he has a number of good ideas about growing in humility. To paraphrase his words, “I’m a proud person who’s striving to grow in humility by God’s grace.”
After Sunday, God really blessed in this week. I felt more “pastoral” than ever as I was able to make several visits on people who haven’t been attending church and on one new family. It’s exciting to be an instrument in God’s hands in spite of ourselves and our weaknesses.
(Image courtesy of elinformador.com.co.)
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As dad says, it happens here, at our church, and to us, too! I’ve certainly seen God work when I’m most aware of my inability because of mess-ups, humanly speaking.