Like a Feather

Pride manafests itself in fear.  This is a phrase that God put in my head this morning and kept it on repeat for about three hours.

Our speaker(I found out his name is Mike) spent the first part of the morning talking about his first experience of repentance.  Not the classic, "God, forgive me and save me" which children are taught from the day they can comprehend light and sound, but real, true repentance. 

Several years after he became a christian, Mike had the experience of repenting of something he didn't even realize he was doing.  He told us about it, and I'm not going to tell his story because it's not important.  What's important is that he then asked that we take at least 15 minutes of absolute silence for us to contemplate and spend in prayer with God, asking Him about the things in our lives that need to be undone.  About five minutes after this silence started, it was broken by several students making their repentance audible, and the room was filled with sobbing and wailing people. 

There is something about making your repentance audible to others that makes it so much more impactful.

For as long as I can remember, I have been terrified of praying in front of other people, and terrified of any sort of spirituality other than worship in front of people.  I always thought it was because I was somewhat self-conscious, and I was okay with that because then on my own quiet time with God I could talk out loud or be completely quiet or do whatever I wanted to sort it out with Him.  That's all fine and dandy, and I'm not at all discouraging quiet time with God.  But during that time that Mike gave us to repent, God made something uncomfortably obvious to me: pride manafests itself in fear.

I thought I wasn't praying out loud in front of others out of fear, and in some cases I even thought those who were praying out loud were the prideful ones(in some cases this is still true, but in the situation we were in this morning, it was not at all the case).  What God made me realize this morning was that I wasn't being silent out of fear or discomfort or self-conscious-ness.  It was out of pride. 

I was too proud to repent in front of others for things I'd rather they didn't know.  I was too proud to pray in front of others because I didn't think I would sound, "spiritual" enough.  I was too proud to look weak.  I made this repentance verbal this morning, and I will admit it came out in a considerably fewer amount of words, but it came out.  I almost literally felt the weight lift from my shoulders, and I quite literally felt the comforting presence of God.

I had a whole slew of other thoughts afterwards, during which God gave me the phrase which makes up the first sentence of this piece, but I don't remember enough of those other thoughts to write them down at the moment.

Mike then spent the rest of the morning talking about letting God take control/work in our daily lives, and expecting him to work.  He told over fifty stories of miracles about how God works/has worked in his day to day life.  I have two favorites.

Mike and his wife had just moved into a beautiful old house in Zimbabwe, and the kitchen floor in this house was made of bricks laid loosely on sand.  This was an ingenious method used to create a very cool atmosphere in the kitchen, due to the fact that Zimbabwe is in Africa which makes it very hot, and a kitchen has lots of cooking appliances in it, which make kitchens very hot.  This floor was a wonderful part of their home, but it had one flaw.  Every single night without fail, thousands upon thousands of red sugar ants would crawl up through the sand in the floor, or through the cracks of their doors to be in the kitchen at night.  They liked the condensation because it was cool.  For whatever reason, these ants would all be dead on the kitchen floor in the morning, and it became the daily routine of Mike's wife to sweep up thousands of tiny little red sugar ants every single morning.

One morning she had a revelation.  She thought, "God, you gave us dominion over the earth", and she said with authority that only God can give, "Ants, stop coming into our house!".  Every single day for the rest of the days they lived in that house, not a single ant entered their kitchen.

The other story is about how their 8 month old son drowned in their bathtub.  He was a fairly large child and every night they would leave him and his slightly older sister to play in the bathtub to play for several minutes.  One night Mike's wife came in and their son was lying facedown in the water completely still.  Their daughter said he had been acting funny: twitching and spasming, and she was terribly frightened. 

Mike's wife picked up their son and without even meaning to she just began shouting the name of Jesus over and over again, and suddenly an unremarkable peace came over her.  She had taken lifeguard training, and began exercising every single maneuver she knew to revive someone.  Nothing worked. 

She rushed into their bedroom and placed his lifeless body on the bed, picking up the phone to call 911 in the process.  The moment after she put down the phone from calling 911, an incredible boldness came over her, and she pointed at her 8 month old son shouting the following words, "Spirit of death I rebuke you, come out of my son!" and instantly her son opened his eyes and began breathing.

Doctors said their son would suffer brain damage, and today he is a pediatric doctor in Africa.

God exists, and He wants to be involved in our daily lives.  We need to allow Him to work.

See you all tomorrow.