Coincidence, or did God have a message...?

I returned last Sunday after speaking four times for the Global Impact Celebration at The Family Church in Gainesville, Florida.   You can listen to my Saturday evening message by clicking on the following link, then choose "GIC Life Commitment Service": http://thefamilychurch.net/media/sermons.php

Here's the interesting thing about last weekend:  I spoke three times - Saturday evening and twice on Sunday morning.  They chose to put my message from Saturday evening on the website, which is interesting to me in light of what happened the next day.  I woke up around 3 a.m. on Sunday morning (which isn't unusual in and of itself) and felt a strong prompting from the Lord to change a few things in my message.  Namely, I cut out a video that was shown just before I spoke the night before, which effectively changed my entire introduction and closing.  I also changed more than one thing in the body of the message.  I don't recommend this practice to visiting preachers, knowing that the church bulletin was already printed with the notes for my message, and the Power Point presentation was also prepared to project the main points of my talk up on the screen as I spoke.  The combined attendance for all three services was around 1500 people, and the largest service is the second one on Sunday morning - so I was taking a big risk to look the fool that morning, and to make my friend Jeff (the Missions Pastor who'd invited me to come) look bad for inviting me.  But at some point in this Walk of Faith we have to be willing to look foolish if we're really serious about following the leading of God's Spirit, right?  It's one thing for me to look stupid on my own, but a whole other level of potential catastrophe if my actions will have a direct impact on someone several other people.  It's a great way to ensure that you're never invited back to speak again!  I have to admit, though, that I felt a strange sense of peace as I got up to speak at the first service that morning. 

I started by explaining that I'd experienced a "Holy Spirit Adjustment" that morning in what I had been prepared to say, and apologized for the fact that the notes in the bulletin and on the screen would be all but useless.  I can only imagine what my friend and the Senior Pastor were thinking at that moment: "Oh Lord, where is he going with this?".  The theme of my message was "Crises of Faith" and how God will use them to shake us up, change our direction, or re-align our thinking with His.  What I changed that morning was to start my sermon by being vulnerable with the church about my own experience with burn-out 3 years ago, and how God used that crisis of faith in our lives to redirect us to leave the mission field and return to the U.S.  Remember: this was the culmination of their missions emphasis week, and the whole thing was to end with the Life Commitment Service that I was now leading - and here I am talking about how God ended my career as a missionary.  Wow, this was going from bad to worse!  Much to my surprise, however, the response from the church was huge: One young African man came forward to accept Christ, five people committed their lives to full-time Christian ministry, and over 150 came forward to make a commitment to going on a short-term missions project or to serve in some other capacity.  Unbelievable. 

After I returned home I received an email from a young woman I'd met after church that day.  The title of her email was "Coincidence, or did God have a message..?"  She explained how she'd had a experience with God that morning, and as I read her email I realized that her experience was due in large part to the changes I'd made to my message (Go God).  She and her boyfriend had broken up several months before when she wanted to get serious about the Lord, and he'd freaked out.  Unbeknownst to her, he showed up that morning and was the one who came forward at the end of the service to put his trust in Christ.  Not only was she shocked by his step of faith, but so much of my message seemed to speak so directly to their specific situation that several of her friends commented on it afterwards.  Although she's still trying to understand the meaning of these events, she was deeply impacted by her "close encounter" with God that morning.  Her story was a reminder to me that all God asks of me is my obedience, and the rest of the story is up to Him. 

I'm diving in.