craziest thing of my entire life.

If you had asked me a week ago what would be the last thing I would ever want to do, I would have probably said, "preach a sermon." Public speaking has always been a dread of mine; I've always said it's my least favorite thing to do, my biggest fear. So guess what? Yesterday I had to preach a sermon. Ha! OK, it was only in front of Devin, Tia, Zach, and Pastor Justin, but still.
So of course, I was kinda freaking out about it this past week. But I always find comfort in the fact that I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME!
I worked on the message throughout the week whenever I had time, but it came down to having to knock out a lot the night before (not me procrastinating, just finding time and balancing with other assignments). So here I was, writing a sermon, slightly overwhelmed because I had never written a sermon before, and I was already feeling nervous about giving it. So I prayed about it, totally gave it to God, and asked that the Holy Spirit would empower me to do it.
So I started writing. And it was the craziest thing. As I was writing, the Holy Spirit was definitely giving me the words. I was getting super duper excited about what I was writing. Or maybe I was getting excited about the fact that it wasn't me writing it. :) I never thought I could get so stoked while writing a sermon? Haha, but it was a really cool experience.
The one problem was that I never had time to practice it. So that caused me to realize how much I truly needed to rely on God. There was once again, no way I could do it on my own. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would speak through me. So when the time came, I got up there, and it went amazingly well. When I was done, Pastor Justin asked how I was so comfortable up there? I pointed up. "God." No doubt about it.
God used the very thing that I never wanted to do, to show how powerful He is. It was an incredible lesson on fully relying on God. He took somethng that I would never, could never, do on my own, and totally proved once again that WITH GOD, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE. And guess what? I actually enjoyed it. That may be the weirdest part of all. ;)