I’m six months into my first senior/lead pastorate position. I’ve preached before, but this is the first time I’ve been the main teacher responsible to speak to a congregation almost every week. I’ve really enjoyed it, but I’ve also felt the pressure to bring something fresh, deep and challenging every week. When I’ve led our adult “Bible Learning Time” (BLT…our sunday school equivalent) I’ve wanted to engage things that will stretch our congregation and see them transformed.
This past Sunday in our BLT class I opted for something “simple”. Basically we started looking at Biblical texts dealing with the reality that God hears us. It was simple. This first of two Sunday’s we looked at texts describing God hearing misery, God hearing prayer and God hearing complaining. We finished the forty five minutes of scripture reading and talking and I felt it was good, but nothing spectacular.
When we were finished a visiting brother came up to me to thank me for what we’d talked about and to say he really appreciated it. He went on to share through his tearing eyes that he had a good friend who was very sick and hadn’t woken up in three days. They knew he was about to die. Simply talking about the reality that God hears us in our misery was exactly what he needed to encourage him that day.
It was an amazing reminder to me that my job is not to be profound all the time. It is not to be challenging all the time. It is to open up the Word of God…in all its complexity and all its simplicity. Remembering that will free me from so much of the pressure I’ve put on myself from week to week. It won’t free me from all of it, but from some of it. And when I’m overwhelmed in any given week it is good to remember that God hears me as I call to him for help.
