تغريدة مثبتة
Here is the story of one of the first "miracles" that happened in my life.
I had recently become an adult believer, but most people assumed I’d been a believer since I was baptized at 13. But I was new to the faith as an adult, and had zero experience with following the direction of the Holy Spirit as an adult, and no one to mentor me.
In my church, the children’s choir director had resigned for personal reasons, and my daughters would not be able to participate in children’s choir, which I thought would be a good experience for them. So, I prayed that God would provide a children’s choir director for our church. After a few of these sessions, I got the impression that I was to be the new director.
However, I hated the idea that I might be trying to put my ideas in place and calling them God’s. People have been known to do that, and I despised it. There’s a certain leadership involved, and I didn’t want to do this if it wasn’t what God wanted done – not what I wanted done. I felt conflicted – I would do this, but only if God wanted me to. So, how would I tell if that was the case?
I had recently read about how Gideon had asked for a sign from God (in Judges 6), and decided I need to talk to God about this. So I went down to the basement where I would go to pray. Then I told God, I needed for Him to do something to make this clear to me, “your choice of methods - and none of this namby-pamby leading of the Spirit shit – just make it clear” (yes I really said that). To tell the honest truth, when I left the basement, I felt like I’d told God but good, and honestly doubted anything much would happen in response.
About 48 hours later, I was in a bookstore in the mall, about 20 feet inside the store, with my back facing the mall entrance when I felt a tug on the back of my shirt. I turned around and saw a girl, her chin a bit higher than belt height. She asked, “Mr Robertson, when do we start Children’s Choir?”. My eyes bugged out, and I felt the shock of a prayer answered dramatically, and the terror that people talk about when they’ve seen an angel. I won’t repeat my words, as they did not bring glory to God. But in essence, I told her “how would I know?”. The shock I felt is hard to explain. It felt like I had seen God face to face.
I went home to my basement, and prayed “OK God, I got it. You win” and I started the process of becoming the children’s choir director – which I did for about a year and a half, until other things in my life made it impossible for me to continue.
Because I was new to the faith as an adult, I wondered how likely this was to have happened, as it seemed so improbable. So, I put a little thought in the back of my mind to watch for the next time I saw this girl outside of church. Eventually I did see her outside church – it was 6 months later. This was not a highly probable event.
In Christian circles, my initial prayer would be called asking for a fleece (from the Gideon passage), and is considered to be a sign of bad faith, or putting God to the test. I tend to agree – but in spite of that, God answered my prayer in a very dramatic fashion that I *completely* didn’t expect. I think God knew the sincerity of my heart in that I truly was willing to do it, and I truly didn’t want to dishonor Him by taking on something He hasn’t assigned me to do, while claiming He had. The rest was more like God said “Watch this” 😉.
@SearchingDeeper @autocorrect2_0 @darwintojesus
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