Just Another Sermon

“It was just another sermon.”

It seemed that those words lingered in the air forever.  Did I really just say that?  Where did that come from?

I was home for the weekend from Bible College visiting my parents.  We were having Sunday dinner at home with the family just like we had done so many times before.  But this particular Sunday would change the course of my life.   This table conversation would change me for the good.  I had been asked a simple question, a familiar question to me, a “Sunday” question…

“How did you like the sermon?”

Without even finishing my bite of pot-roast or even truly thinking about what I was saying, out came these words…

“It was just another sermon.”

Oddly, it didn’t phase my family as the conversation kept on going, but it rang in my head like a loud bell that would not stop!  While moving conversations were going on all around me the Spirit within me parked right there.  God would not let me leave that space until those toxic words refined me in the deepest way.

How did this happen to me?  After all, I was a Freshman Bible College girl who had already been on 3 missions trips, served on leadership team in her youth group, led worship, and was supposed to be getting foundational teaching for the rest of my life!

Then, I could see it.  The Bible had become my “textbook” and God was the “author” I was studying about.  My faith had become completely impersonal to me.  I attended chapel every day to hear who could “tickle me ears” the best and entertain me with their thoughts rather than be transformed by them.  I had really become a modern day Pharisee.  A person that the Bible describes is all for “show” with no substance.

I didn’t sleep that night, I repented.  I did business with a loving God who loved me enough to show me who I was becoming and I asked Him to change me.  I prayed that God would show me the path for my life…not the life that every other “good church girl” was leading around me.

Within a week, I applied to secular University.  The next fall when I arrived there I joined with a few Christian students to bring Campus Crusade to our Campus and we began a student-led campus ministry.  Dozens of students came to the Lord that year.  I also met my husband at that University and we went on to join staff with Youth With A Mission.  Because I “heard myself” that Sunday, God lit the way to change the course of not just my life , but the lives of countless others.

Have you listened to yourself lately?

Pay attention to your conversations this week.  What do you hear yourself saying?  Where have you given into compromise?  What have you stopped caring about that at one time moved you in the deepest way?

The world is waiting for you to wake up to the passions God created within you to use for His glory.   The enemy of your soul wants to lull you to sleep so that you can no longer even see or hear just how “unaffected” you may have become to them.

Matthew 11:15 (MSG)  “Are you listening to me? Really listening?”

Today is the day.  See.  Hear.  Respond.