29 May Waiting For A Jet Plane, Among Other Things
Sitting at Chicago O’Hare Airport, waiting for my 9:05 (7:05 PST) to board and take off at 11:00 (9:00 PST), which is midnight in Columbus, Ohio, my destination. Attending our annual Foursquare Convention with about 2,000 other Foursquare Pastors and Leaders.
Circumstances have kept me from attending the last two years, so I’m looking forward to re-engaging. Actually, that’s true for a lot of my life lately. You can read the several posts to get a read on what’s been going on the last few months, related to the last couple years really.
For any that might be interested, you can actually catch the main sessions live here. The schedule is here and the speakers are here. This year’s Convention (they’ve been trying to re-name this annual time “Connection”) is smaller than usual, likely due to both the location and the economy. Columbus is not the most attractive place to visit for conferences apparently.
Anyway, while I’m waiting, I just wanted to document and reflect on this morning’s celebration at NewHeart. I had a message all ready to go, but it became one of those mornings where God had other plans for us; they unfolded beautifully.
Our attendance was great for a holiday weekend. Most three day weekends see lots of people clear out for travel and vacation. Not this weekend apparently. Always makes for a nice three day weekend for pastors!
It turned into a morning of praying for folks, some planned and even more spontaneously, along with words of Scripture, wisdom and encouragement from the Lord being shared. It’s become very typical for pastors and church leaders to plan out the service to every minute. That in and of itself is NOT a bad thing, as long as a willingness and openess remains for God to do what he wants when we show up, if He so chooses to change OUR “plan”.
I readily confess that it’s often a challenge of mine to plan everything out and sometimes NOT be willing and open to a change of plans. I try to spend some time every Sunday morning asking the Lord to help me discern those times well, and to lead them accordingly.
Today, that happened, and it was a beautiful thing! People were ministered to by the Holy Spirit in ways that my message never would have ministered.
Does that make my message wrong, or should I have seen this coming? I don’t think so. I believe that God often wants to remind us that He is God and we are not. And this is a simple way of Him doing that. I, for one, am glad He is God, and that I am not.
Makes hanging around airports a little longer not so much of a big deal too!
Stephen Hibdon
Posted at 17:39h, 30 MayGreat blog. My parents said they saw you and so I had to look into your networks.
You are a perfect candidate for an app because you already have all of the feeds in place. Apple would be sure to approve it. It would make it a lot easier to drive a lot more traffic to your blog as well. Check out the most successful blogger’s app, Seth Godin if you’d like to see an example of what I think would be great model for your app.
Paul Kuzma
Posted at 05:19h, 01 JuneThanks for the comment Stephen! I’ll connect with you on FB to get started with the app!