Try
making a list of all the people you would want to speak on your behalf. I am going to go ahead and guess that if you are
married, most of you wouldn’t want your spouse even doing that. And you may love your parents, but having
them speak for you just doesn’t always work.
Just think about the possible outcome if you have someone else speak for
you at an important meeting. I can think
of TV shows and dramas that have others speak on their behalf, and it rarely
goes well.
I
would even go so far as confess that I worry what my kids will think one day
about something I did on their behalf when they were young. Maybe it’s just because of my history, but it
seems like so often I am thinking through the long-term effect on my children
for my occasional intercessions. Recently
when I was at home, I questioned my mom about the first piano teacher she chose
for me. He was a great guy, super
gifted, but he just kept pushing me along. Before I knew it I was playing Bach, but
really just faking it half of the time because I never practiced. Of course this has a lot to do with the fact
that most of my lack of progress was my own fault, but I still had the audacity
to question my mom’s choice of piano teachers. In that same conversation, my mom defended
herself with the fact that I almost got the role of Winthrop in a production of
“Music Man.” I know many of you are thinking,
Will, singing? I did, folks!
Let’s clear that up. Even through
high school I participated in choirs. My
voice got even lower in college, and completely changed how I used to sing. I remember a college choir teacher saying to
my pre-sem director, “He sounds like a great bass.” I didn’t respond, but thought in my head that
I actually was a tenor. Reality has sunk
in, but back to the point. All this intercession
stuff got me to think about how many people I really want to intercede for me.
Truths
of the Bible can so often be like that. All
the things we wouldn’t want to happen are necessary with Jesus. We need Him to intercede or we are sunk. We need the Holy Spirit to step up because so
often our words proceed from the flesh. As
a teenager I spent time with my dad every other weekend in Assembly of God
churches. The preachers occasionally
would say, “I had a sermon all ready to preach on this, but the Holy Spirit
told me to talk about something else.” The
skeptic in most of us would say, “Buddy, you just aren’t prepared.” Yet, that stuck with me in my own preaching. I liked something about leaving room for inspiration
from the Holy Spirit. Early on I had
moments of disappointment as I would get down from the pulpit and remember all
the things I meant to say. I found
myself finally coming to peace with the idea that maybe the Holy Spirit had
other plans for my words that day. This is
not an excuse to be unprepared, but more to allow for the spontaneity of the
Holy Spirit. Blogs I can write, read
over again, and have them proofed by an amazing administrative assistant, but because
they are written ahead of time, they lack that spontaneity. I think because of our human nature we like to
be prepared as to what we are going to say, but how amazing it is when we learn
from Jesus and let the Holy Spirit take over! This weekend we talk about exactly that.
No comments:
Post a Comment