Practicing What I Preach

I love an icy, rainy day! There's just this wonderful hush outside, as if the whole world is pausing to catch its breath. Most of the kids' classes were cancelled today (and I'm not attempting the icy Driveway O' Doom for the one that is still meeting), so Ben, Becky, and I have decided to make it a work day here at the house. Thankfully I brought my laptop and briefcase home from the office this time, and I'm making great progress on this week's message.

Last Autumn, when I felt this inexplicable, indescribable urgency to preach through Galatians, I was really unsure what God wanted to accomplish. Oh, sure, I knew some of the major themes of the book. And I knew that by the time we reached the section on the fruits of the Spirit I would likely step on a few toes with my understanding of that passage. (There's an ominous hint of things to come, eh?) But I didn't know what God had in mind for my own journey as I prepared each week.

Well, once again God has blown me away with his overwhelming intervention during my preparations. I'm not really a subjective, touchy-feely kind of guy when it comes to sensing God's Spirit; I'm much better at just going along with the flow and waiting to see his handiwork in hindsight. But for the fourth week in a row, I've sat down to work on my Sunday message and found the Spirit totally overriding what I was planning and blowing me away with something more wonderful.

I'm really not sure how clearly it's all coming across on a weekly basis; preachers are never good at evaluating their own sermons. But I'm sure thrilled at the insight God is giving me into how grace applies to my own life. As I'm discovering afresh some timeless principles, God is prying open my eyes to see how so much of it applies to my own life -- to the experiences leaving Arizona, to my relationship with Margo and the kids, to my own needs for refinement, to kindling an outrageously grateful heart of worship in me, and so much more. Not a day has gone by since I started working on this series without God intervening in some totally awesome way to show me something new.

Grace... it really is still amazing!