Awesome Praise

This morning I awoke still feeling lousy with my cold. In fact, during the night it appeared that the cold had moved down to my chest and I was developing a cough. Now, seeing as I suffer mildly from asthma, this is generally not a good time. I felt that I would need at least one more day off school. I'd need the time to renew the strength so that i can carry out the physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting job of teaching kids aged 11 - 16.

Nothing was going to keep me from going to church though.

We had good worship, we had a good talk by Tony Ling. At the end Tony went very quiet. I was getting a bit worried. He kept repeating "praise and worship, praise and worship". So that's what we did. We entered into a further time of praise and worship, this time, instead of it being led from the front, we were exhorted to just worship God individually. At first the time was a bit strained. We're so unused to worshipping in public without it being led. yet slowly we awoke to the task. For much of the time I just sat and watched the people. My son had brought a non-Christian friend and I wondered what he thought. Then I watched the faces of the worshippers. As the time of worship grew, so their faces changed. You could see them enter God's presence. The initial fears and worries of being led to worship this way was fading as people entered their own place of worship. As I watched, my spirit was stirred. As my spirit was stirred I felt my strength restored. As my strength was restored I was lifted into that awesome place of God's throne room.

This evening, after a restful, but not lazy afternoon, I am feeling as though I just have a few snuffles. I know my strength is renewed. I know I will be in school tomorrow, to serve my God in the place he has put me to impact the lives of those I come into contact with.

Oh, and Matt's friend? Well he was pretty spooked out (his words) by the worship. The woman behind who was singing in some foreign language... the people with their eyes closed and their hands raised... He told Matt that he won't be able to come next week. Then he added, "but I should be able to come the week after"!

God's at work! He's restoring his tent!