I love it when a plan comes together*

Daah Dah Daaaah, Duh Duh Duuuuh. Dah Dah Dah, Dah Da-dada Daaah…

[Theme for the A Team]

I have a feeling that God was humming that to himself this week. Last Sunday I thought we had finished a series of sermons in our morning services about ‘I ams’ of Jesus. No, not dried cat food! Things like, “I am the good shepherd” and “I am the resurrection and the life”. I had left myself an empty sermon slot for this Sunday morning. This was not deliberate. I thought I might have been on holiday (but I’m not). So at the beginning of the week I started to think and pray about what to do this Sunday morning.

Eventually I was led to one chapter in Luke’s gospel. It just felt right. But it also felt too long. Which part of the chapter? Yesterday, when I was ready to start some serious preparation, I began with my daily Bible reading that comes by email. Guess which chapter they were looking at. And not all of it, just a part. I got the message. Hopefully if you are at our church on Sunday morning so will you (or you can download it from our website next week).

And God smiled quietly to himself (and perhaps chuckled a bit). And perhaps he said gently, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

“But what’s the passage?” I hear you ask. Well, that would be telling! No sneak previews this week. All I will say is that it dovetails with last week’s sermon quite well imho.

It’s a shame it’s not like that all the time. Sometimes when I want to hear from him God is conspicuously silent. What do I do at those times? Keep praying. Keep listening. Keep searching. Use the brain God has given me. Work out what feels right and do that.

I love the phrase in the letter that the church in Jerusalem sent to the Gentile believers in Antioch (Acts 15): “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”

Now if you read what happened beforehand there was no massive revelation, no writing on the wall, no voice from heaven. There was “much discussion”, a few speeches and a decision. It seemed that the response to the question from the believers in Antioch made sense and felt right. They had peace about it. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to them.

God has not provided us with his guidance in order to save us wear and tear on our brains. He’d like us to use them in partnership with him!

At the conclusion of the sermon, the worshipers filed out of the sanctuary to greet the minister. As one of them left, he shook the minister’s hand, thanked him for the sermon and said, “Thanks for the message, Reverend. You know, you must be smarter than Einstein.” Beaming with pride, the minister said, “Why, thank you, brother!”

As the week went by, the minister began to think about the man’s compliment. The more he thought, the more he became baffled as to why anyone would deem him smarter than Einstein. So he decided to ask the man the following Sunday.

The next Sunday he asked the parishioner if he remembered the previous Sunday’s comment about the sermon. The parishioner replied that he did. The minister asked: “Exactly what did you mean that I must be smarter than Einstein?”

The man replied, “Well, Reverend, they say that Einstein was so smart that only ten people in the entire world could understand him. But Reverend, no one can understand you.”

*for the uninitiated, this is what Hannibal would say each week in the A Team after they had constructed some improbable device to get themselves out of trouble.