What a wonderful weekend

Well, didn't start out that great as the English won against Wales in the Six Nations so that's annoying. Other than that though it was a really great weekend. Saturday evening saw my wonderful wife head off to church to listen to a guest speaker. He is someone who has been before but we haven't seen him. He has a truly beautiful prophetic ministry and my wife was given a word from God. I will see if I can post the details later. Sunday was also great. Off to church early to sort out a few things. Started off praying again for the leaders that day (worship, talk, leading and children's work) and that was great. Same speaker was there and the church was packed. It is truly magnificent to see a church bursting at the seams. He wasn't giving out prophetic words this time but gave a sermon that was spot on. His main text was 1 Peter 2 - You are a royal priesthood. Now, I have heard this preached on many tiems but yesterday was different. Firstly he considered the Israelites. They were a chosen people, a royal priesthood. However, they lost that in the desert. They didn't trust God and sometimes that is going to happen to others. God puts us in a place and we don't trust him so maybe we will lose our calling! He also spoke about how we have a threefold ministry as members of this priesthood. We are to minister to God through praise, we are to minister to one another and we are to minister to the world. What I found interesting later was the number of times I have heard this preached on in the following way; 'We are all priests, now stand back while I do the priesting'. All too often churches are dominated by one or two ministers and this is wrong. Leaders of the church (and I count myself among them) are to equip others. We are all ministers but some of us have more experience and we should make sure that we equip others. He also was at pains to stress that, despite all being ministers, we have to be led and we need to be right behind out leaders. The pastor and his wife have had a tough time with some members of the congregation and that needs to stop. God has appointed them and we need to follow their lead. I was asked to do the closing prayer and I was gobsmacked to hear what came out of my mouth. Clearly it was God telling me what to say and I was so in awe of him at that time. After church comes the tea and coffee. Always a bonus but there was more today. One of the members of the congregation had a sprained ankle so myself and another leader went to pray for her. However, I was told that the pastor has the gift of healing and so just me and him prayed. As she stood up afterwards, I heard this almighty crack coming from her ankle. I was worried when I should have been praising God. Her ankle was healed! Then it was off south for dinner with some friends. They are a beautiful couple with a wonderful family. We had the pleasure of being asked to pray for them as they are having some tough times and it was a lovely thing to do. The kids had a whale of a time and the fellowship was great. I felt, for the first time, like a grown up Christian and even as a leader. The four of us are on the leadership team at church and it was brilliant to just be together chewing the fat. This was the view that met us when we got there by the way ...

A photo posted by Derrick Roberts (@aberchristian) on Mar 13, 2016 at 10:18am PDT

And so home, the boy has new teeth and the girl was tired. Both went to sleep well and we had a nice relaxing evening. Such a great day. The highlight though? Great sermon, great friendship and fellowship, healing, good food etc, all by the wayside. My sister went to church. My sister. In a church. Thank you God. I have told my wife I am not going to pester her (my sister) but I am so going to keep praying for her and the rest of the family.