One night I spent some time praying for the people who would be taking a leading role in the worship at church today. I prayed for the musicians, the worship leader and whoever would be preaching. I asked God to let his Holy Spirit fill them and guide them in all aspects of their ministry so that they would bring his word to us and be a blessing to us all.
As I was praying I started to realise that although I’m not called by God to preach or lead worship I am called to do something else; and even though it might be a something else that seems insignificant and unimportant to my eyes, in God’s scheme of things it is just as relevant as those other high profile, front of house ministries. And just as they need the infilling of the Holy Spirit to help them to lead worship or preach I too need that same source of enabling to do the small tasks he requires of me.
One week, after the meeting, a lady who doesn’t normally come to our church asked me if the person who had preached was ‘one of the top ones’ and I was able to tell her in all honesty that there are no ‘top ones’ in our church, nobody is more important than anybody else but that we all have a part to play in the life of the church as God gives us the gifting. Whether it is preaching or cleaning the loos we will do it better if we do it with the Holy Spirit inside us.
Very often we shirk from taking on roles that put us centre stage, but we ought not to. We ought to trust God to equip us for whatever he calls us. Many years ago I dreamt that I was in a lovely warm swimming pool; swimming leisurely backwards and forwards and enjoying every luxurious minute of it. Until I realised that I couldn’t swim. Help, I started to panic, and splash my arms about wildly. The more I splashed and fought the more helpless I became until I was on the verge of drowning.
It was then, in that most frightening of moments that I realised that there was a powerful hand under my tummy, holding me up and guiding me. It had been there all the time without my realising it. It wasn’t in my own power or strength that I had been swimming and as I rested once more on God and put my complete trust in him I began to ‘swim’ again.
I have heard somewhere that it is difficult and dangerous to try to rescue somebody who is drowning, as out of fear their natural instinct is to fight. I think many Christians are a bit like that, fearing that God will ask something difficult or impossible of them and trying to run away from it.
I remember someone I know being ‘given’ the verse “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 and instead of being delighted they were filled with fear and trepidation as they worried over what the ‘plans’ might be.
God never asks anything of us that we are unable to do; he never asks us to take on more than we are equipped for but the secret is that he himself gives the enabling through the Holy Spirit; he himself does the equipping and he himself has his hand on our tummies as he throws us in at the deep end.
As I was praying I started to realise that although I’m not called by God to preach or lead worship I am called to do something else; and even though it might be a something else that seems insignificant and unimportant to my eyes, in God’s scheme of things it is just as relevant as those other high profile, front of house ministries. And just as they need the infilling of the Holy Spirit to help them to lead worship or preach I too need that same source of enabling to do the small tasks he requires of me.
One week, after the meeting, a lady who doesn’t normally come to our church asked me if the person who had preached was ‘one of the top ones’ and I was able to tell her in all honesty that there are no ‘top ones’ in our church, nobody is more important than anybody else but that we all have a part to play in the life of the church as God gives us the gifting. Whether it is preaching or cleaning the loos we will do it better if we do it with the Holy Spirit inside us.
Very often we shirk from taking on roles that put us centre stage, but we ought not to. We ought to trust God to equip us for whatever he calls us. Many years ago I dreamt that I was in a lovely warm swimming pool; swimming leisurely backwards and forwards and enjoying every luxurious minute of it. Until I realised that I couldn’t swim. Help, I started to panic, and splash my arms about wildly. The more I splashed and fought the more helpless I became until I was on the verge of drowning.
It was then, in that most frightening of moments that I realised that there was a powerful hand under my tummy, holding me up and guiding me. It had been there all the time without my realising it. It wasn’t in my own power or strength that I had been swimming and as I rested once more on God and put my complete trust in him I began to ‘swim’ again.
I have heard somewhere that it is difficult and dangerous to try to rescue somebody who is drowning, as out of fear their natural instinct is to fight. I think many Christians are a bit like that, fearing that God will ask something difficult or impossible of them and trying to run away from it.
I remember someone I know being ‘given’ the verse “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 and instead of being delighted they were filled with fear and trepidation as they worried over what the ‘plans’ might be.
God never asks anything of us that we are unable to do; he never asks us to take on more than we are equipped for but the secret is that he himself gives the enabling through the Holy Spirit; he himself does the equipping and he himself has his hand on our tummies as he throws us in at the deep end.
