that day

This week Matt kicked off New Beginning Church's first Bible Study, and man alive this man can teach. He's doing the book of Psalms, a study I've never done before, and it was SO good.

I can't help but look back to that day, when he was 17, before I even knew Matt existed, that the Lord spoke to him first and clearly, You will teach my Word.

When we sat in massive churches in Haiti, Matt preaching the anticipated hour in passionate, fluid Creole, young men on the edge of their benches, I remembered that day and thought, you were right, Lord, bet he never thought like this.

When he taught classes at Wesley, students around the world online and Mississippi pastors at the desks, changing out his "you guys" for "y'alls", I thought yes, Lord, it was true and I bet he didn't ever think here. 

This Thursday night at Mama Hamils, a local Southern-soul food restaurant a friend owns, 70 men and women turned out...many of whom have had Bibles in hand their whole lives, like me. Without missing a beat, without a note or outline or book, he launched us into Psalms...a book I've read dozens of times and yet never looked at like this. We all couldn't write fast enough.

Never thought like this, I ponder these things up in my heart, but you were right, Lord, he will teach your Word, and you have equipped him.

It probably amuses-slash-irritates the Lord when I note Him right. As if there was a chance He wasn't. 

Of course He saw all these things, long before He spoke to Matt, as He was even weaving him together. Of course He saw every country, every church, every classroom, every restaurant, every future place, and spoke it plain and simple, Ebenezer with oil on top...You will teach my Word. 

And of course alongside came the equipping for the calling, the provision for the empowering, the faithfulness in the contracting.

Of course, that being said by the Almighty God, it IS. And of course, called and equipped and helped by God, when you experience Matt doing what he was made for, you think, "Man alive, I've never seen or heard anything like this."   

It excites me, not because of Matt, but because of ALL the stories of His children.  Because of Your story.

He made you for something. Somethings. He's called you, is calling you, for the very thing He made you for, and He can and will do it BETTER and AMAZING through you, like no one's ever seen or heard, and that will change things for those He calls you to.

Men and women TODAY in broken dark Haiti are full of hope and preaching God's Word, WELL, because God made and equipped and called Matt to teach His Word there.  

While it's easy for me to experience Matt's teaching gift and feel like I don't have anything like that to offer, He reminds me that what is special and life-changing is just Jesus through Matt, and THAT, I do have. What He's given me to share that's worth something, that's life-changing, is just Himself, and I do have THAT. 

Whatever is hindering you from living into and sharing what He made you for...ask Him to show us and to help us lay it down. We don't have to offer up anything good in ourselves...just ourselves. Just obedience. 

He's at work in anyone who believes and obeys, and God at work? 

 that's what's mighty. 

I am reminding you. You keep on reminding me.