Preacher Dan

I want to give you all an amazing story about how God is God.


A few weeks ago I was sitting in my apartment playing video games to pass the time until my class. I was getting up to leave when I got a phone call from Ren. He said that he was with a pastor from a Wesleyan church in Cuba. This seemed odd to me because Ren is not a Wesleyan and makes that pretty clear, but I listened to him. He wanted me to come meet this pastor and talk to him about possibly preaching a sermon. I couldn't go right then but I told Ren to have the pastor email me. Eventually I set up a lunch meeting with this pastor and he told me that he was going on vacation and wanted to give a student minister an opportunity to preach. He also mentioned that the church would pay me 100 dollars to do it. I wasn't going to pass that up.

The really amazing God thing that happened this weekend. On Saturday while I was preparing the sermon, Hilary was having a really bad day but I needed to work on my sermon. I then felt God compelling me to take Hilary out and cheer her up, and I felt overwhelmingly that this sermon was His and He would see it through. So I did. When we came home I finished my preparations and trusted God to take care of the rest.

On Sunday when we got to the church, we loved it. We both immediately felt a connection and may try to get further involved there. Anyway this is where God really showed up. I had decided to put in my introduction some statistics about stress related illness. I was speaking about the fruit of the Spirit, peace specifically, so I thought it reasonable. After I preached the whole sermon, several people came up to me and commented about how I was mature beyond my years and how they all thought it was a great sermon. This made me feel good, but the real amazing God thing happened next. The last person to come up to me and speak with me was a woman who said that she had been having some trouble lately because her father was in the hospital and she had been getting stressed out. She mentioned that she had developed a skin condition because of her stress. This was something I had mentioned in my stats about stress and she said that God really spoke to her through this. She then went on to mention how she hadn't been in church for a couple weeks and God must have put in on her heart to be there today, she also mentioned how she took notes which she never does.

God really touched this woman. She was crying as she told me all these things, and how she knew God would do awesome things in my life. She even begged me to come be the youth pastor at this church because they had just lost theirs.

Isn't it wonderful and mind-boggling how our God works? I keep having to remind myself that God is God, and God is who He says He is. I can't even tell you how nervous and unsure of this sermon I would be. I felt like I'd prepared it inadequately, but I followed God as He directed me and His will was done. Praise God!