Pray Before Speaking: Pausing to Find God’s Word

It's it's a dangerous business speaking on behalf of God, and especially in into the midst of, I don't know, sort of a frightful kind of context where you just don't know. I mean, I had thought in 2025, you know, every news day you open the paper, and it's like, oh. Now I usually really do try to prepare myself. [00:40:32] (24 seconds)  #PrepareToSpeak

we tried to shine this light of something the church could do differently than frighten the living daylights out of children and some of their parents for money, no matter how much money it made. Because we're in a different kind of business. We're our our job is a different sort of thing even when it doesn't make money or doesn't seem to work, and that can be the hardest pause of all, recognizing the need for that. [00:46:16] (30 seconds)  #ChurchOfKindness

We're we're gathered around Nehemiah. It's one of my favorite stories. You may not know a whole lot about Nehemiah. He's a character that enters on the scene in the wake of what we call the Jewish exile. So Judah, the the Southern kingdom of Israel, has been, annexed into has been sort of swallowed by the Maw of Babylon, which itself has been taken over by another country, and they're just slaves. You see Nehemiah here. He's the cup bearer. He's supposed to smile in his slavery. Did you notice that? I've never seen you sad because his job was to be happy. [00:46:46] (39 seconds)  #JoyfulService

And and then but something was heavy on his heart. He began more and more to be feeling this call, this pull. I'm gonna call it a lure. Right? Or a nudge, a gentle nudge. Have you felt such a thing in your life? I see some heads nodding. Not a tackle, not a shove. Sometimes people talk about the holy spirit with a cattle prod. Not a not an electric charge. [00:47:32] (27 seconds)  #GentleNudge

Have you ever noticed what happens to you when you get in this sort of death spiral down the drain of how bad things are? And have you ever wanted to say, I I need to take a time out. I this isn't good for me. Maybe we should be asking, what would happen if I listened to that story or to that statement and and took it in? Right? [00:50:48] (26 seconds)  #PauseAndListen

I think that's how God works. You know, we talk about God's plans and and God's design, and I I think there's somewhere in scripture that says, all my days were recorded in your book or something like that. And, who would want to live a life like that practically? Right? Where your your life was just, you know, not guided so much as prescribed by anyone, even God. It would feel like a kind of slavery that is inimical to everything we we worship and celebrate about our God, [00:51:49] (35 seconds)  #LifeNotPrescribed

That was another quote in this story that really caught my attention. They were talking about the kinds of because even a nudge, you see, given at the right sort of time and in the right sort of place. Right? They say, what? Give me a give me the right fulcrum and I can move the world. Right? So even a nudge can be a powerful thing. And at one point in the story, they're talking about the kind of nudges in moments of great change. [00:53:43] (26 seconds)  #PowerOfANudge

It's not a test. This is who we are. This is what we're capable of. It doesn't take much. It just takes, I think, a a kind of belief that that this story that we tell about a God who has created a world and called it good and created human beings and called them do you remember? Very good. [00:58:33] (30 seconds)  #CreatedGood