The Aftermath

My wife and I just got home from our first Sunday meeting. We started at 6:30 in the evening, and, I believe thanks to your prayers, God really blessed tonight. In spite of me, that’s for sure. Even though our music kind of dragged along, especially at first, there were a couple songs that they picked right up – and the overall effect of the music was pretty amazing. A lot of Christians praised their Lord in song for the first time tonight! And everybody wanted to tell me afterwards how much they enjoyed the music. Thanks primarily to the lack of familiarity with the songs, most of them never got too loud, so I don’t think the neighbors were much disturbed. The house was full, which kind of absorbs the sound indoors, though I don’t know what in the world it does on the outside.  

St. gave the welcome and really did awesome. I know it’s difficult to rank welcome’s according to awesomeness, but this was good. He really stepped up to the plate, abandoned his usual inhibitions, and gave them all a truly warm welcome. T. led the music and did great. If I had a heart at all, I probably would have led the music tonight myself. But I’m about as cruel and selfish as they come, so I let him teach the crowd six new songs all by himself! Less than perfect, but definitely more than good! Lots of other students pitched in tonight and treated our guests like guests and made it a service worth remembering. 

I preached about the reason for the birth of Christ. Like so many bad Christmas gifts, God’s most amazing gift of His Son is often regarded as irrelevant and unsuitable to our lives. As one student said not long ago, “I just don’t feel that God giving the world Jesus is that big of a deal.” (I’m pretty sure he got saved tonight!) So we talked about Jesus being our Peace Child, given to the enemies of God to reconcile us to Himself. A full house with a bunch of guests is always a tough crowd, and my Chinese was particularly poor tonight, but I think the Holy Spirit really worked. It appears that we had two or three salvation decisions tonight, and several other serious cases of conviction going on! There’s some glory to God in the highest! 

Altogether, I think this was a beautiful memory for these students of a new part of this church’s history. Thanks for your prayers, and please continue to remember these few that are loitering outside the door of faith! As for me, my throat felt better this weekend than it has in a month! Stupid me, though – I preached three Christmas messages this weekend – blew three years of material in two nights! Thanks to all of you who pray for my wife, too. She works like crazy to make all these meetings happen, and she’s half-dead when they’re all over. She is an unbelievable help!