Preaching for my ears to hear

I had a kind of funny moment last night. Funny odd, not funny ha ha, although I guess it was a bit funny ha ha too.

I went out for the evening with friends, hung out in a pub with a bunch of old friends and a group of new ones too. It was good, but quite a few people left rather early, and an old friend and I decided to follow suit. I was driving her home, and we began once again to talk through a tense situation in which we are both presently involved. We wrestled verbally with the issue for a while, and when we got to her house, I simply parked and we kept talking.

Somewhere along the line I began to share with her what I could remember from the Dan Haseltine article I quoted in my last post. And something began to gel. Before I knew it I was preaching an impassioned sermon - speaking at length about redemption, about the value of scars, about acknowledging woundededness, about a gospel that is only complete if the suffering, the evil, the wounds are acknowledged, because without these things there is no story of redemption and we negate the greatest message of the cross. I spoke about living in the tension of being both the "walking wounded and the perpetually healed."

And then, I was done. All I could do was ask the question, "what was that?" My car, after an evening in a pub seems an odd location for a sermon of that passionate nature to come pouring out of me. My friend talked about the fact that she wished others involved in our present tense situation could have heard the words I'd spoken. But they didn't , and the moment isn't one likely to be repeated. And then it hit me. As these unfamiliar words were pouring out of my mouth, it was the gelling of concepts I have wrestled with all week. It was the beginning of the answer of how I need to address our tense situation - for God had told me while in Mexico that I was the one who needed to speak out about this situation. I was preaching to myself. God knows that I am auditory - that I need to hear something in order for it to become truly clear in my mind and ingrained in my heart. So He poured words out of my mouth. My "sermon" wasn't so much for my friend (although she was grateful) - it was for me.

And God, in His grace brought clarity to the message I have been trying to find words for all week. I spent a couple hours in the prayer room on Thursday, pouring out my heart in prayers in my journal, begging God to intercede - to make clear the way this situation a number of us have found ourselves in needs to be handled. To clarify in my mind and heart the message that needs to be communicated as I give voice to some things that have been long silenced in myself and in some dear friends. It is the difference between an impotent gospel, and a Gospel of Redemption. And God let me preach it, sitting in my car last night, so that my own ears would hear, and my own heart would understand.