Last week, my pastor sent me a text asking if I could meet her at the church early the next morning. I let her know I would head that way on my way to work. She mentioned needing help with something so I figured we would be helping to plan a project within my wheelhouse and comfort zone.
When I arrived, she was in the sanctuary with a phenomenal lay leader, servant heart, and woman of God from a church down the road. I paused at the back of the church wondering what the heck these women were going to ask of me. You can feel the power of God radiating from these two women individually when they are not together. The energy of their faith almost knocks you down when they are both standing in front of you! They chuckled a bit at my pause.
The pastor was holding a small crystal jar with anointing oil. She wanted the three of us to anoint and pray for the church. She anointed each of us first and we prayed for each other. Then we began praying over every piece of that house of God. As District Lay Leader, I had done this at Annual Conference. Lay leaders gather the night before conference begins and we anoint everything in that meeting place. It felt so much more personal in my home church.
As my fingers touched each pew, I knew the hearts who worshipped there, and my prayers were personal. When my hand touched the stained-glass windows, I prayed that God would warm hearts the way he does mine as the light shines through those colorful stories of his life. At the choir loft, I prayed for voices to fill the benches with joy and love once again.
The three of us spread out. She told me to follow where my heart took me. It took me to the nursery which is currently being used as storage. I got on my knees and anointed the doorway and the rocking chair and everything in that room. My heart prayed for it to be a room of crying babies and messy diapers once again! Let it be a room so vital to the ministry of our congregation that we would never again be able to use it for storage.
I prayed over Sunday school classrooms that once bustled with activity and over the kitchen where like most churches, so much happens. Then I went outside. It felt like one hundred degrees in the shade, but my heart took me outside the doors of our church. My heart always leads me outside the doors of the church building to the neighborhood, the schools, and the world that needs the God we know.
For everyone struggling with how to bring hearts to Christ, start at the beginning. Pray for your church. Pray for each other. Ground your hearts in the knowledge that God will show up! We need to remember to invite him into our own hearts and our own buildings before we will be ready to share him with this hurting world.
In these last days of summer, spend your time on things that matter. Invest your energy in prayer that will renew your own hearts, your own congregations, and your own corner of this world. Then be brave and follow where he leads! Sometimes I pause and try to discern if where I am headed is really where God wants me to go or is it instead where the world wants me to go. Every single time, he shows up in those moments as he did that morning…and whispers, “This way…Follow me.” For that clarity of purpose, I give thanks.
“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” John 12:26 NIV