I have a really good friend who’s told me more than once that we should all do at least one thing each day that we’re afraid of; and I don’t think for one minute that she means fear as in “I’m afraid of the dentist.” I think I know her well enough to know that she means we should be daring enough to irreversibly move the boundary lines we’ve drawn all around us. Well, I feel like I did just that a couple of days ago when I actually delivered the message on Sunday morning in a church that had invited me to be their guest speaker for Baptist Women’s Day.
My expectation was indeed nervousness, even though public speaking is not new to me. I expected to be nervous because there was something very new about the type of public speaking I was doing–I was speaking from a church pulpit. My name was even on the sign out in front of the church when I pulled into the driveway there Sunday morning, which shocked me even more than being asked to speak in the first place. But I knew, from the very moment I arrived Sunday, that I was in the middle of mind-blowing happenings that could only have been engineered by the divine hands of God himself–the trajectory of my life just does not and cannot make sense any other way.
Regarding the nervousness, I was very wrong. From the very moment I stepped up in front of the church, I felt nothing but absolute calm. And I felt a little like I imagine Eric Liddell told his sister he felt when he ran. Liddell is one of my husband’s and my heroes; he was a missionary to China, he was an Olympian, and his life was highlighted in the Academy Award-winning movie “Chariots of Fire.” When Eric’s sister (who seemed to think his running was foolish, relative to missionary work that is) asked him why he ran, he told her it was because when he ran he felt God’s pleasure. That’s how I felt Sunday.
I don’t know the particulars of what God has in store for me, for any of us really; all I do know is that he has promised good stuff, most amazing things, to those who love him; and I believe his promises are certain. And I saw Sunday, at a church who now has a very special “forever” place in my heart, that one of those good, amazing things is a “sweet spot occasion,” a moment in time (as we define it) when we find ourselves exactly where and doing exactly what we feel that God means for us to do down here.
Now, I am grateful beyond words to the men and women of White Level Baptist Church for inviting me to be one of their own Sunday, for feeding me in body and soul, temporally and eternally. It really is special when God’s people unite. We so need to do it more. If we did, I feel confident that there would be many more “sweet spot occasions” for all of us, many more moments when we truly do feel God’s pleasure down here in the middle of a most trying world. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed me your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-10); as Jesus tells us through his prayer, we don’t have to wait until we get to Heaven to feel the sweetness of it.
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