The 5.42

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I hope this Labor Day finds you to be well and I hope that you are able to get some rest over the holiday. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post something last week. It wasn’t that there weren’t things for me to blog about because there were plenty of things going on. Time was just my limiting factor.

Thursday was an up and down day for me. Each month, the staff at Crossroads will go and serve meals at the Salvation Army. Normally, I really look forward to the opportunity to go and serve there.  My job is usually cutting up the whole turkeys to be cooked for the meal the next day, then maybe go sort canned food and then during lunch go around and refill coffee for those that are there to eat. It’s during that time I usually have the most fun. I try to be open to what the Holy Spirit might have in opportunities to minister to folks that are at a difficult time in their life. But not this week. I let my schedule get in the way and my “to do list” became my shepherd.

When I got to the office Thursday morning, I began to dread the notion of going to the Salvation Army to serve. I had a list of things to do a mile long (most notably, preparing for a small group leader training and to write the pulpit study guide) and my heart just wasn’t in it.

As a result, I wasn’t prepared to serve and had a terribly disobedient attitude. It may not have been terribly apparent to others, but trust me when I say it was. When I got back to the office and began reading Pastor Tim’s message notes for his weekend message on “Obedience” to begin drafting the outline for the Pulpit Study Guide, I was ravaged with conviction. My heart had hardened. In his notes, I noticed Tim’s four steps to softening a hard heart and I applied them to my situation. Please allow me to be a little more transparent with you as I explain these 4 steps (realizatioin, rememberance, repentance and repeat).

I realized my heart was hard through a painful conviction of the Holy Spirit that I was not prepared to not only serve…but I wasn’t prepared to love those that God had put in my path that day. I many have been obedient by phyically being there, but my heart was no where near being obedient. Thankfully there were bunches of other Crossroads staff there that day that God used to love those people needing a hot meal.

After realizing my hard heart in this area, I took a few moments to remember the time when I first came to know Christ and how much I loved Him then. And then to remember how much I enjoyed showing the love of Christ at the Salvation Army in previous times I served there. God’s Spirit brought back the faces of specific people that I sat down with and listened to and prayed with before. Those times were noticibly absent for me in Thursday’s visit. What was different? The people we were serving were there, my friends and co-workers from Crossroads were there, and God was certainly there. It me that different….it was the state of my heart that was different than before.

That drove me to prayer confessing my sin of disobedience to God and asking Him for forgivness and  help as I move towards repentance. I’m sure there will be other times and other areas where my sinful heart will harden. So I must make it a habit to repeat these steps to keep my heart soft and pliable so the Holy Spirit will use me and so I can grow in my relationship with Christ.

You’ll be glad to know, that the day ended on a very positive note. I had a better attitude and I was still able to complete the things I needed to accomplish on my “to do list” – mostly becuase of our awesome Membership Department assistant, Kristina.

Even though I look back on that day with some regret, I know the Holy Spirit used my disobedience to teach me something and to grow me closer to Christ.

I hope you don’t mind my transparency and I appreciate you taking the time to read this post.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Deering