Yesterday was a busy Sunday with church and attending a class on intercessory prayer.  After church we had our monthly Celebrate Recovery Leadership meeting which usually takes a couple hours because we do a dinner, provide some training and take care of the business at hand.  In all of this I had a couple of tremendous wake-ups to more that God is wanting to teach me.

This started in the intercessory prayer class where Luke 4:1&2, 14 were read.  It says that Christ was led into the wilderness where Satan tempted him.  After 40 days of this and fasting, Christ came out of this experience empowered by the Holy Spirit.  I was greatly struck by this transition from being led to being empowered.  We have all gone through trials and temptations but our obedience to following Christ’s leadership leads to a stronger empowerment by the Holy Spirit. This was my first awakening.  The second one came during the training time in our CR meeting.  Our training was about The Serenity Prayer.  We were listening to a CD created by John Baker, founder of the CR Ministry.  He used Matthew 5:13-16 to show that “You are the world’s seasoning, to make it tolerable.  If you lose your flavor, what will happen to the world?….”  Our testimony (personal story) is salt to the world around us.  It tells what Christ has done to take our mess and make it a meaningful message for others.  This was the second awakening.

Neither of these awakenings were new information, but the timing of them yesterday made their message very pertinent.  Our quartet is singing this weekend for a church in McCall, ID where I will be giving my testimony as part of the service.  I’ve stewed over what I should and should not be saying.  All of this yesterday simply freed me to trust the Holy Spirit to lead me in His message to share.  After all, our testimony is the story of what Christ has done to transform our lives.  I need to stop trying to control the extent of what Christ wants done and be fully on assignment for Him.