Psalm 22:25-31 Acts 8:26-39 We shared a humorous moment at a session meeting recently when one of our elders looked a little panicked. He thought he was being asked to preach on an upcoming Sunday. It was a misunderstanding that was cleared up quickly, to his great relief. This is an elder with a lot of wonderful gifts, but I guess he does not consider preaching to be one of his gifts. Although, it certainly could be. I have to admit that I think it is interesting to put the question to a person sometimes and just see how they react. Would you like to preach? If their reaction is the expression of a person facing a firing squad, then they probably won’t take me up on the offer. But sometimes a person says, “yes.” I saw that once when I was a campus minister. My students were preparing to […]
Continue readingTag: Call of God
How Do You Know?
1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51 “The word of the Lord was rare in those days.” This is the setting in which the young boy Samuel first heard the call of God to him. It was the period of time before there were kings in Israel, a time when Israel was ruled by judges, and if you have read the book of Judges then you know it was not a high point in Israel’s history. As the closing words in that book says, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” The word of the Lord was rare in those days. It was not one of the good times. The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the temple under the authority of Eli, and Samuel was there for a reason. Before he was conceived, his mother Hannah was childless. She was married to Elkanah, who loved […]
Continue reading
