I was just sitting here thinking… What should I write about for Saturday?  I’m not sure why, but an idea just popped into my head; OK it was more like a video, and it isn’t the kind of thing I’ve ever written about before.

Well not like this, anyway.

This past Sunday, I was blessed to fill in for a preacher who was on vacation, so I had to handle the preaching for two services.  For me, filling in is always great fun so I gladly agreed and he asked if I could continue his Exodus series and cover chapters 9 and 10 which cover 5 of the 10 plagues. Normally I prefer to cover a text verse by verse, but 64 verses in 30 minutes doesn’t work well, and there is a great deal of repetition in this passage, which is to say there is a definite pattern.

What really makes this passage wonderful is that it has a great deal of theological importance, and the application is very powerful.  The problem is that if I stand up there on Sunday morning and dive into the theological significance of it, and then transition into applied theology, I will be speaking a language that most people don’t really speak, so I decided that I would come up with a way to cover the 64 verses, explain the theology and apply it to everyday life in 30 minutes without using any academic or technical theological words whatsoever.

So I translated Seminary-ese into English, made up an allegory for the application and prayed that it would work.

As I was speaking, it seemed like the people were listening, always a good thing… but when you are preaching or teaching you never quite know if the message is getting through; at least I don’t because I can’t see the audience very well because to me they are just a blur.

Afterwards, a whole bunch of people came up to me to talk about the lesson; I couldn’t get to the back of the room to do the preacher handshake at the door thing.

Apparently it worked.

Finally, a young man in his early 20’s came up and said something like that was really great… and then he said, “I finally get it.”  I found out a few days later that the young man wants to go into the ministry…  If you knew the kid, that might surprise you.

I’ve been teaching applied theology for many years, although I normally don’t tell people that’s what I’m doing because they hear those kinds of terms and think it must be hard!  There are times when it feels like work, there are times when it’s a lot of fun.  This one was a lot of fun!

It is so amazing to see God working amongst His people!  Nothing that I did last Sunday was special or amazing; it’s just what I’m trained to do.  What God did with it is miraculous… but when God is at work in the church, miracles are a daily thing.  To think that God can actually work through me is amazing to me.  What am I?  I am an old has-been who has gone so blind that he can barely read any more and often runs into things and trips and falls on curbs, yet God can even use me!

God works through His people: When we are willing do our part, He takes it from there.  If He can work through me, just imagine what He can do working through you!