Tim and I ministered at a church in our local area this last weekend. Tim did an awesome job of leading the congregation in worship Friday and Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Saturday evening, in particular I was moved by the worship and the intimacy of the Lord during that time. So much so that it changed how I presented my talk (don't you hate that when you've got it all planned out and God throws in a monkey wrench?).
I'm not sure how people would have responded to what I had originally planned to say - but a number of people came up to me later to mention how what I had shared had connected with them like never before - God had somehow broken through!
I don't understand how or why brokenness communicates things of eternal value much more clearly than a well rehearsed presentation - but it does. I don't know why weakness demonstrates itself more strongly than strength - but it does. I don't know why humility communicates more clearly than boasting - but it does.
In God's kingdom, nothing we would ordinarily pursue or seek to present ourselves as amounts to anything. So why is it that we so avoid being humbled, being weak, being broken? Is it because we live in a world that honours the opposite and so we, in spite of what our theology might teach us, have bought into its ideology and we seek to gain it's applause rather than God's comparatively weak "Well done, good and faithful servant"?
Teach me to love your kingdom of God and to learn its rhythms and rhymes, letting them be etched on my heart and witnessed in my being.
