What do you think of promptings like this? Ever have any?<\/strong><\/p>\nOur church back in Gainesville, Florida, would occasionally have \u201cworship nights.\u201d\u00a0 They were some of my very favorite gatherings.\u00a0 About once a quarter on a Friday night, we\u2019d gather for a couple of hours and the only things on the agenda were worship and prayer. \u00a0On this Friday, I was sitting near the front, and Kim and I were among the first to arrive.\u00a0 It was one of those nights that I was truly grateful, even excited, for the opportunity to worship God with the church, even before the first song began.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember the song, but at some point the theme I was affirming as we sang was willingness to obey God, even though it can sometimes be costly. As I affirmed this to God, and was even considering my own limits for obedience, I felt the urge to turn around.\u00a0 Sitting directly behind me was Jon.\u00a0 Jon was one of the people in the church that I most admired, but kind of from afar.\u00a0 The things I heard Jon say in church or elsewhere were routinely marked by depth, truth and heartfelt compassion, but we were in one small group and he led another, so he lingered on the top of the \u201cpeople-I-want-to-know-better\u201d list at church for a while.<\/p>\n
On this night as I turned around, Jon had a familiar intensity on his face as he worshipped, and with his eyes closed.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t anything out of the ordinary, and I turned back around.\u00a0 As I did, I felt an unexpected conviction to turn back around, push my chair out of the way and strongly embrace Jon.\u00a0 Just for clarification, what I felt wasn\u2019t empathy, at least not then.\u00a0 I wish I had reason to be empathetic; Jon was just worshipping God (just like I wanted to get back to doing).\u00a0 If I could describe what I was feeling at this stage it was fear and inner turmoil. \u00a0My first line of inward defense was to dismiss that this was any kind of leading from God.\u00a0 I will summarize the outcome there by saying that however I reasoned about it, I could not persuade myself this wasn\u2019t God\u2019s unction, despite my best efforts.\u00a0 A simple unction to \u201cdo this\u201d had come (as I was pledging obedience to God, no less), and it pretty much only had fear stopping me.<\/p>\n
I was stuck.\u00a0 I soon discovered that going back to singing praises and offers of obedience to God were just impossible, unless the goal was hypocrisy and misery.\u00a0 I wanted to get to know Jon better, but not like this!\u00a0 What would he think of me?\u00a0 What if he recoiled?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0For the next several minutes, I would look back every so often just to see if he had at least opened his eyes so that he would at least see it coming.\u00a0 No luck.\u00a0 My last line of defense was compromise.\u00a0 If Jon wouldn\u2019t open his eyes, I figured I would say something (anything!) and give him some warning or explanation or at least a \u201chello\u201d first.\u00a0 But as I started to say something my guts burned with conviction that I was compromising out of fear, and not being obedient.\u00a0 After another bit of inward wrestling, I just did it.\u00a0 I pushed the chairs aside (Jon still didn\u2019t open his eyes; the music drowned out the sound) and put my arms around him firmly but gently.\u00a0 I felt like as I did it, that I shouldn\u2019t be in any hurry to let go.<\/p>\n
Not only did Jon not recoil, he practically collapsed.\u00a0 His arms\u2014weakly at first, then with great energy\u2014embraced me in return.\u00a0 And he just wept.\u00a0 I must have held him as the singing continued for thirty seconds or a minute at least.\u00a0 By the time we released to look at each other, both of our eyes were wet, but we were both beaming smiles.\u00a0 I knew God was in this, but I still had no idea what exactly had been going on.\u00a0 Jon explained.<\/p>\n
Jon had grown up on the mission field with an authoritarian and judgmental father\/minister.\u00a0 Jon was in his thirties now and had walked through years of healing from it, but that week he had talked with his dad who had now finally been fully explicit that Jon was a thorough disappointment.\u00a0 All the healing Jon thought he had from his dad opinion of him just melted that week.\u00a0 Jon explained that he was in such misery over it that week, he almost didn\u2019t come that night.\u00a0 He had little \u201cworship\u201d in him.\u00a0 He said he had decided to come with only one prayer that he had been praying repeatedly, prior to and throughout the meeting, but with little hope for any suitable answer, \u201cI just need to know what You<\/em> feel about me.\u201d\u00a0 When told me that, I wept, but out of repentance for how close I was to blowing the whole thing off or changing it for my fears.\u00a0 Incidentally, Jon and I became close that day, and every time we see each other, even many years later now, a smile comes to both of our faces.<\/p>\nAlso see this by Mark Roberts<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some weeks ago (before some eruptions at work) I began a series of stories of the spiritual gifts in action.\u00a0 This is the second installment. For a fuller picture of my hopes with this series, please read the first couple of paragraphs from that first post. Before this next story, I\u2019ll reveal a personal bias: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,337],"tags":[2021],"class_list":["post-9498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-theology","tag-spiritual-gifts"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/sites\/40\/2010\/09\/Gifts-300x260.jpg\" "\\"Gifts\\"")
<\/a>Before this next story, I\u2019ll reveal a personal bias: among the gifts, I share Paul\u2019s favoritism for the prophetic, and for the same reason: it builds others up.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, for purposes of this series, the term \u201cprophetic\u201d is, in my opinion, one of the terms that, when associated with anything Charismatic, needs the most gracious re-imagining, both within and beyond Charismatic circles.\u00a0 \u201cProphetic\u201d is a big category for me.\u00a0 I\u2019d put within it almost any kind of God-led action or statement with God\u2019s communicative power and intent.\u00a0 Further, prophetic action usually has the power it does, not because of the tone of the speaker\u2019s voice or any \u201cthus sayeth the Lord\u201d tagline, but because it contains some sort of insight or knowledge about something or someone that God uniquely has.\u00a0 At any rate, here\u2019s one of my favorite \u201cprophetic\u201d stories.<\/p>\n