A Dusty Spirit
Last Wednesday was a momentous occasion for me in several ways. First, sweet goodness, Texas dust storms are AWESOME! It was like I was in the movie Hidalgo! We were sitting around at church, and all at once, the wind starts hitting our building as if it is about to push the thing over! I looked out a window to see dust filling the sky…our own Texas hurricane in the middle of the desert.
Even as amazing as that was (and believe me, the cold front this dust Storm ushered in was exactly what I needed!), the Spirit (or “wind” in Hebrew) was also moving fast inside our church community!
Wednesdays at HOPE Church, the adults are going through a series called, “Freedom Through Discipline”. This is an overview and practice of the Spiritual Disciplines. We have placed the class in a circle formation, and rather than a lecture from one teacher to his pupils, one merely agrees to facilitate the conversation. Last Wednesday, through a miscommunication, we didn’t even have a facilitator. For about 30 seconds, everyone seemed to panic. “Who will teach us? Who will lead?” That’s when the Spirit agreed to step in! Everyone became a teacher in our class last Wednesday. I was amazed to see the shiest people in our group open up to share their insights, others confessed sin, and each of us went away knowing that something special had happened.
While I will always see the importance of the “preached Word”, I can only hope that I never see sermons or lectures as the end of the conversation, but rather the beginning. We all have a right to be the preacher at times, sampling the Word of God for ourselves, and sharing it with others. Last Wednesday all of us “preached”, yet none of us stood behind a pulpit. We were conversation starters, each blowing what we could into our church’s own dust storm; one that will not settle until God sees his royal priesthood established in his children at HOPE Church in Abilene.
