The Way the Spirit Moves

 I am always amazed at how God works in and around us to accomplish His purposes. When asked a few weeks ago to speak to a group of parents during the break at an Upward basketball game, I immediately started worrying the topic of the devotional in my mind—asking God to speak to me and through me. Speaking at Upward is rather intimidating—give me a group of teenagers or women any day—to add to the intimidation, the speaker only has three to five minutes to give the devotion while holding a microphone in the middle of said gymnasium with little children running back and forth getting snacks from the concession stand. I’m no stranger to these events, but it has been a few years since I’ve presented the devotional due to the hectic Saturday schedule I keep in January and February. A few days before I was scheduled to speak, I was still unsure of which direction to take when a verse flitted through my mind seemingly out of nowhere: “Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found; surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach you” (Ps. 32:6, NASB).  The New Living Translation reads: “Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time, that they may not drown in the flood waters of judgment.” I continued to pray for direction, but it seemed this might be a possibility.

The next day, my AP Lit class was writing poetry focus statements and we had just enough time to squeeze one more poem in before the bell rang to dismiss class. I reached for my lesson plan to find the other suggested poems for the activity, and what did I find but Psalm 32 as another option? At this point, I laughed out loud (the students are used to my craziness at this point…) and went with it.  I’m pretty dense sometimes, but God still speaks through the fog of my life when He has a purpose.  Little did I know that he had one more confirmation for me. That evening, I picked up a novel to read for a few minutes before bedtime only to find an almost identical verse quoted in the book as one character urged another to seek God while there was still time (Is. 55:6). I had spent two weeks anxiously praying (the irony doesn’t escape me) about giving a devotional, the whole time doubting that God would really give me a verse for a measly few minutes of time in front of people who probably wouldn’t pay any attention to what I said anyway. In reality, I didn’t say what I wanted to say when I actually stood in front of that group of people with a microphone. It wasn’t elegant; it didn’t flow like I wanted it to; it probably didn’t pack any sort of punch to anyone besides the person(s) God wanted to give that verse to, but that’s His part—not mine. Being obedient sometimes takes us out of our comfort zones, but the ultimate Comforter is always with us, leading us, whispering His truth to our hearts if we’ll only listen.