Foreign Anxiety

Yesterday was a more difficult day that I imagined it would be.

It was my first time back in the pulpit for a normal, Sunday morning worship service, and I was grateful to be back in the saddle.

But something was off from the get-go. My wife came separately, and as I recited sermon points in my head, I lost track of our customary prayer time in the car before I preach.

And as I walked the fellowship hall prior to the service, I felt a certain degree of anxiety--not an anxiety borne of fear, but of oddity. Something was just...off.

When I stepped behind the pulpit for the sermon, my normal air of enthusiasm was tinged with that same anxiety.

Just prior to preaching, as we were praying for the needs of the congregation, I was reflecting upon the import of the the question "Who do I think Jesus is?" I thought of a soldier who knew that Jesus is the God-man who came to rescue sinners by grace through faith in Him. I thought of another soldier who escorted that same soldier, now in casket, home. I started to tear up.

I got up to preach and my throat caught. It took me a moment to get composed.

In the midst of my emotion, I forgot to read the Bible passage from which I preached. Of all things to forget!

But that was the type of day it was. A day of God-appointed rest that exposed the subconsciously frayed nerves of a Christian growing by grace and his desperate need for that same grace.

I trust that God still used His preached Word to bless the hearts of His people--especially those as messy as the man He used to cast it forth.

The passage I preached upon (and didn't read) began with Jesus walking up the mountain with His closest disciples to pray.

May my sojourn to the pulpit likewise always begin with prayer. When I crest the top, I will inevitably and painfully realize anew that I am not Jesus, the almighty God whose appearance flashes with lightning, who summons the dead to His side, and is enveloped by clouds of glory declaring "This is the chosen one."

No, I am the sleeper alongside, dulled to the glory of my Savior. But as I awake once more to His glory and am rendered silent by His presence, I am given His Word to speak.

And I go forth as one sleeper to many other sleepers, declaring the joys of being awoken to the preciousness of the Gospel.