Feltmoss Free-Time Thoughts

Below you'll find another excerpt from my journal. This one covers my thoughts on being one of the main speakers at the Ladies' Retreat in Filzmoos last week. Just so you know, this is one of my longer entries, so undertaking this reading journey is not for the faint of heart! ;o) I've bolded certain sections to make skimming easier. I post this here because several of you regular reader-type people have asked me about my experiences....and also because I hope the process I went through will be an encouragement to someone out there. God has made me a better person than I was before he challenged me. He's still working on me.

October 1, 2005

Where to begin?
…beginnings are often difficult. Especially for me, and especially when it concerns the first sentence of anything. I guess I’ll just have to go back in time a little bit and start there—I sure wouldn’t know where to begin if I just jumped into describing how the past week has affected me. And changed me.

When Joy Pschierl called me and asked me if I’d be willing to be one of the four main speakers at the Filzmoos retreat, my initial thought was, “Absolutely not! How can she ask me this? I’m no public speaker!” I remember vividly the initial jolt of panic that shot through me when I first heard her question.

The Holy Spirit does funny things sometimes. In the forefront of my thoughts and on the tip of my tongue was the word “no,” but what I actually heard myself saying was, “Let me think about it a few days and call you back.”

Here’s where confession time starts. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t actually do much praying about whether or not I should agree to Joy’s request or not. Oh, sure, I asked a lot of fellow humans what their thoughts were….but for some reason (hmm….Satan, perhaps?), it didn’t occur to me to talk to God about it very much. Yes, I did pray…..but did I spend a significant amount of time in intensive, deep meditation to find out his opinion on the subject? No. Did I spend a significant amount of time kneeling before his throne and asking him to allay my fears as I made my decision? No. If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t have spent the last few months with butterflies in my stomach every time I thought about speaking at the retreat.

I’m such a fool sometimes. God is there for me, waiting to help me, waiting to bless me, and still I insist on navigating the traffic of my life by myself. Will I ever learn?

Most people probably wouldn’t call my decision process agonizing. I didn’t weep and wail over it, I didn’t feel the what-should-I-do-what-should-I-do desperation. But for my standards, I suppose I agonized over the decision. I wondered how I would feel about myself if I refused this opportunity. I didn’t like the possibilities, so I told Joy I’d do it. She asked me to take on the topic "Jesus and the Great Commission."

When I finally sat down to work on it, I felt completely overwhelmed at the task of putting all my thoughts onto paper (or, rather, into laptop). There were so many scriptures I wanted to use, so many evangelistic opportunities I wanted to share, I had no clue where to begin or how to impose structure on this teeming mass of ideas. I jokingly told Ed that I could just get up in front of the ladies and say, “If you want to know about the Great Commission, read the Bible,” and sit down again.

I took to calling it a sermon instead of a Vortrag (presentation / speech); after all, what would I be doing if not proclaiming the word of God? Just because I’m female (instead of male) and would be speaking on a Thursday (instead of a Sunday morning) didn’t change the nature of what I’d be doing. Some people chuckled at that, but I didn’t bother to elaborate. I think I was trying to bolster my own confidence.

Several Sundays in August and September, Larry preached sermons on the necessity of preaching itself and on being an effective evangelist. I knew he wasn’t necessarily aiming those lessons at me….but I gleaned a lot from them. Like I said, the Holy Spirit works in funny ways sometimes. I finally started praying more.

What began working its way into my heart was the idea that others have been in my position many times, and they submitted themselves to God’s will and allowed him to lead them. Moses was no public speaker, and he was scared to death to go before Pharaoh as God’s representative. But he went. Jeremiah and Timothy were considered “too young.” I could relate to that; after all, most of the ladies at the retreat have been Christians for longer than I have been alive. What could I possibly share with them that they haven’t already been doing for decades? But Jeremiah and Timothy evangelized in spite of their perceived youth, and they preached God’s word to those older than they. By his own account, Paul wasn’t a public speaker either. But he went. And then there’s Isaiah, who had no qualms about saying, “Here am I. Send me!” I started wondering if my priorities were at all as correctly ordered as I’d led myself to believe.

On Sunday, September 25th, I left for the retreat feeling mostly prepared but knowing I still had some work to do during free time over the next few days.

How can I describe the power of God to change a human heart? I don’t have the words, but I have to make an attempt at verbally praising him for his infinite patience with me and his incomparable ability to teach me the things he wants me to learn. All I can do is describe my experiences and hope my descriptions come across in the right way.

On Monday, Becky Schwarz gave us a sermon on relying fully on Jesus in every situation and aspect of our lives. Her perspective is that when we are baptized, we receive something like a spiritual implant: the Holy Spirit, which the Bible describes as our “down payment” from God. And if the Holy Spirit is like an implant, it means that the implant merges with our own “spiritual tissue” over time, becoming ever more a part of us and a part of our spiritual functions. In our discussion group afterward, I realized that a big part of my problem—not just with my sermon, but with all of my work in the church—is that I’ve been trying to perform the wrong spiritual function. I’ve been trying to be the hand, instead of the tool. I need to stop trying to be the hand, and instead become the tool, allowing God’s hand to be the guiding force.

On Tuesday, Angelika Jones spoke to us about Satan’s influence on us and how subtle he is in deceiving us. Not to mention that the only power he has over us is the power that we choose to give him. I began thinking about Satan’s simplest, subtlest, and most effective message, which he spreads to us humans through media, through each other, and through our own weaknesses. The message is: “Without __________________, you’re not good enough.” I began wondering….how many times did he whisper that message in my ear? “Without more maturity, you’re not good enough for this sermon of yours.” “Without more experience, you’re not good enough.” “Without more spiritual depth, you’re not good enough.” Did he send me this message many times? …..Or was one time all it took to shake my trust in God? That afternoon, I practiced my sermon and ignored the doubts. The butterflies tried to rise in my stomach, but I ignored them.

On Wednesday, Kathy Düsel spoke about letting Jesus help us deal with difficult people in our lives. One of her points is that sometimes, we avoid such people. And sometimes, we also avoid God because we consider him to be difficult or inconvenient. Was I guilty of that? And to what degree? Later that day, Joy told me that one of Kathy’s brothers was killed in a motorcycle accident only a few months ago. That hit really close to home, and I felt speechless. Not only did she come to this retreat so soon after such a tragedy, she was also one of the main speakers! Isolde Neumann, who lost her husband to cancer last year, was also there, and led one of the discussion groups. I thought that if these amazing women could put such losses behind them, even for a few days, in order to spread the word of God, then surely I could put my doubts aside and do the same. I felt ashamed of my unbelief, my lack of trust in God. After all, if he didn’t think I could do it, he wouldn’t put me in this situation.

When I stood up to speak on Thursday morning, I still had butterflies. But they weren’t as active or numerous as I’d expected. The week had been full of encouragements and you-can-do-its from my sisters at the retreat, and I knew that they were glad I was there. I knew that they were praying for me. As I started speaking, I still felt nervous…..but after a few minutes, the nervousness faded away, and all that was left was this amazing energy! I know that all of my preparation at home was vitally important for speaking that day….but more important, I believe, was the preparation that had gone on the few days before I spoke. At home, God helped me do all the technical preparation, and he did some spiritual work on me. But the bulk of the spiritual preparation occurred during the first few days of the retreat.

When I first heard that mine would be the last sermon of the week, I was mortified, thinking that I’d have to live up to the example of the speakers who came before me. But in retrospect, I understand that God knew what he was doing. He knew that I’d need those days of spiritual preparation and anticipation.

As I spoke, I looked out at the faces of my Christian sisters before me, and I saw their reactions on their faces. I remember thinking, “Hey, they’re hearing what I’m saying, it makes sense to them, and they’re responding to it. How did that happen?” The key, of course, is that it didn’t just happen. Though I’m not Pentecostal/charismatic in the least, I’ll say that I’m convinced that the Holy Spirit was working in me. The reactions of the listeners were the Holy Spirit working in them. And it all happened through the word of God. I quoted Isaiah 55:10-11, in which God says that his word will never return to him empty. What I witnessed at the retreat—in myself and in others—was God’s word, returning to him in the ways that please him, according to scripture.

I think that as I spoke, I let go, letting him be the hand and myself be the tool. I don’t know if I’ll be able to let go like that again, the next time I’m in an evangelistic situation. But I will try, and I know that God will be there to guide me. After my sermon, so many women—including all of those whom I respect greatly and keep in a special place in my heart—they all told me what a wonderful job I did and that I looked calm and confident and poised as I spoke, a natural public speaker. I told them that I could hardly believe that—but if the message was in any way effective, it was the work of the Lord, not me. Several of them mentioned that they were encouraged and inspired by my words on evangelizing. I tried to be polite and thank them but at the same time take no credit. I was only thankful that God’s word was doing what he designed it to do.

Last week, I told Ed that if anyone asked me to be a speaker like this again, I would give them a categorical negative for an answer. He said, “No, you won’t. You’ll do it again, if they ask you to.” This week, I can say that he knew me better than I know myself. I know that if God chooses to present me with such an opportunity to serve him again, I’ll take it. How could I not, when I know that he is picking me up out of his toolbox and telling me that he wants to use me for a particular job?

When I, the tool, am in his hand, how can I possibly say no?