Getting Excited

Something unusual and exciting happened this morning at BridgePoint. As usual, under the direction of Michael, our Creative Arts Pastor, we had a well planned worship experience. He and his team had planned great music, drama, visuals and I had what I felt to be a great message bringing it all together.

After Michael wrapped up his music set we were supposed to take our offering and read one of our www.my1story.com stories. Usually our worship is very fluid with little down time but right after the music there was this very noticeable pause in the service. I and our drama team were just off one side of the stage with Michael and many of our musicians on the other. After quite a few indecipherable hand signals I realized the offering and story had been forgotten. I went ahead and sent the drama team on stage and made my way back stage to meet Michael. When I got to him I asked what happened and his first words were "I got excited."

During his last song set Michael was captured by the power of the words he was leading our congregation to sing and lost track of the script for the day. The irony of the experience is that was exactly what happened in the passage that I was preaching from today.

In Ephesians 3 Paul begins a thought in verse 1 and then gets excited about what he had been telling the Gentiles in Ephesus. He gets side tracked and in his excitement goes back to a previous thought from chapter 2 and reemphasises the point. He concludes his side track with one of the most powerful and pivitol verses of scripture in the entire New Testament. Ephesians 3:12 says:

"In Him and through faith in Him

we may approach God

with freedom and confidence."

Wow! What an awesome verse. What and awesome side track.

Sometimes we make great plans and God through his Spirit redirects us. Paul allowed the Spirit and his excitement for what he was sharing to direct his letter to the people of Ephesus and God shared and awesome truth through it. Today I not only got to share Paul's experience, I got to see God do it in person. Michael's enthusiasm for the truth of what he was singing and his willingness to let the Spirit lead him gave us a picture of Paul's excitement and enthusiasm for what he was sharing.

Thank you Michael for getting side tracked today. Thank you for getting excited. May we all get that excited. We are free in Christ. We have direct access to God through faith in Him. My hope and prayer is that you and I will never get side tracked from that awesome truth!