As I mentioned before, I believe that Peru has a special significance for me. As it was the location of my first mission trip, and therefore the beginning of my mission journey; I also believe that my return here signifies the beginning of a new era for me. It is time to step out of the boat again and test my faith.
I was given the opportunity to preach at the Tuesday night prayer meeting. Since God pushed me to confess to my team that He wants me to use the teaching gift He has given me, I really had no room to hide. Knowing that this was what God was calling me to, I accepted the challange trusting He would work it out.
In my mind, I kept saying “I am really better suited to small interactive group settingsd, not standing at the pulpit in front of the whole church”. Of course, the church in Musho isn’t very big, but it seemed big to me when I thought about standning in front of everybody.
Determined to not be intimidated by this challange, I pressed on. I started working on my theme Monday in Yungay after using the internet. I sat in the plaza searching for ideas. Afterall, since it was a prayer meeting, prayer seemed to be an appropriate topic.
I didn’t want to just preach about prayer, becuase Amanda had done that the week before. Instead, I began looking up prayers from scripture. I read a few, but I kept getting sucked into what I was reading and didn’t get very far through my list. I wasn’t getting very far in preparing my message. Then it started to look like rain, as it always does in the afternoon.
Jake and I decided we better head back to Musho before the rain came. Well, we let the rain halfway, but at least we were in a car.
When we arrived at the church, I sat in the santuary trying to finnish my searching. Not soon after I got settled, the power went out. I gave up for the night and resigned to staying home from ministry Tuesday morning to finnish.
My original plan was to share some examples of prayer from scripture and talk about them a little before going into a time of corporate prayer. As I took notes, God began to poor in ideas and references. Before I knew it, I had a sermon about prayer; exactly what I was trying to avoid.
Trusting that the Lord knows better than me, I went with the message he have me. I talked about what prayer is, how it is the core of our relationship with God, and different types of prayer. When I finninshed, I asked everybody to pray for God to examine their hearts so they are right with God before we enter into intercession for the church, community, nations, kingdom…
It didn’t exactly work out as I planned. After a brief pause of silence, pastor Josue got up and closed the service. Oh well. God is in control.
What happened next, I never could have prepared for. (See the Surprising Truth)
