A new experience for me this past weekend.
This was Vision Weekend at Northern Hills. I was amped and excited to share where we are headed. Saturday night (or technically Sunday morning), I awoke at 3:30 in the morning. Now that is not all that unusual. When this happens, sometimes I will pray, or God will put something on my heart that I will write down for the following morning's message. At other times I just take the awake time to go through the following days message one more time, then return to a wonderful sleep.
However, this past weekend when I awoke, I had the unmistakable impression that I was to take some time to worship God. This really did not make sense, so I just started going over the message that I would be giving in a few hours. Doing so proved useless and my restlessness was growing and I wanted to go back to sleep, but I could not.
It took nearly 30 minutes to give in and do what God was asking. So I simply started to praise God silently for who he is and what he is doing. Then after several minutes I grabbed my iPod and listened to a playlist that I titled God's Glory. It was really an incredible time of intense focus and praise toward God. Around 5:15AM I went back to sleep and woke up at 7 AM ready to roll.
In reflection, this time of worship was required to make sure that my focus was where it needed to be while speaking about the future of Northern Hills. Not sleeping, brought rest, comfort, and instilled within me a God given passion to communicate his mission. God is good!
That's so awesome!! Thanks for sharing this story. I love to hear what God is doing in your life and it inspires me to obey Him too. I'm glad you obeyed His prompting! :)
Posted by: Dan | January 29, 2008 at 01:12 PM
Wow that is just incredibly cool, God IS good!
Posted by: Jack | January 29, 2008 at 11:14 PM