A Special Shout Out and Thank You to
Deacon Musgrove for his kind words
about our ongoing story. I pray that the Holy
Spirit lead me to finish the story in a manner
that is well pleasing and that will Glorify HIm.
May everyone have a blessed and a Spirit-filled Sunday
at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, Washington, DC,
where the Dr. Lucius M. Dalton is our creative, Spirit-filled Man of God.
-Join us for worship: 7:45 am and 10:45am (Ministry Recruit Day after this service, please join us promptly at 10:45am)
Have a blessed day and a Sunday, filled with power, glory and the outpouring of the Spirit. At Mt Moriah we say: "Love God. Love People" and we Love You, Just as the Father Does.
----------------------------------------------------Live Twitter Novel:
The Substance of Things Hoped For
Chapter 4: God Was Not First
The church just had no joy. They had
spent so many years building the church,
watching it grow. Just the fight to survive
on that block with all the differerent changes
in the neighborhood.
And they finally reached a point where they
thought they were stable, but there was just
NO JOY IN THIS CHURCH, he thought.
They had become a business. They had
become corporate. They had no recourse,
at least they thought they didn't.
The major problem, as he sat thinking in his
study, was that they did not put God first. Simply
put. That's it. God was not first. They began
to do things on their own.
When they would hold meetings, they would pray, initially
at the outset, but over time, prayer was relegated
to the end of church meetings. And even then, the prayers
were meaningless. Just something they were in
the habit of doing at the end of a meeting. Just another
agenda item. In fact, they would actually put "Closing
Prayer" on the printed agenda so that no one would
forget--because folks did in fact forget.
The church was basically without guidance. Without
direction from the Lord.
They were doing everything themselves, or at least
trying. They had forgotten whom they served.
As he sat in his study, and thought about the sermon
he tried to prepare for several days, he felt his approach should be different.
He felt, that through prayer, the Holy Spirit was directing
him not to fall back on his years of training and teaching
and how he normally preached. This time, this sermon would
be different. He would have a conversation, albeit a one-way
conversation with the church, this coming Sunday.
What came to mind were several passages of Scripture.
He was too tired to look it up in his actual Bible, so he took
to the computer.
The Holy Spirt was wearing him out. He was so tired.
He looked up "The Day of Pentecost," which took him to Acts,
followed by a Web site with a spoken word version of the Bible.
"The Holy Spirit must really be behind all this," he thought, " 'cause I don't normally rely on someone else to read the Bible
to me. I prefer to read it for myself."
He was surprised by the quality of the recording. The man's voice was dramatic and his intonation and pacing brought passages alive.
"This is what I need to do," said Pastor Jones aloud. "I'm going to
read the Scripture as I would to my kids when they were young. With drama and meaning and emphasis.
--To Be Continued...
