Know That I Am The Lord

I felt like I was in the final scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The conference room at the back of our worship center was packed — jam-packed — with more people than it was ever intended to hold. As I pressed and pushed and excuse-me’d my way to the center of the room, untold dozens of men and women kept pushing money into my hands. Twenties and tens. Lots of twenties and tens. Several dozen checks. A couple of hundred dollar bills. People gave me phone numbers and email addresses. And lots of money. Smiling people. Loud people. Happy people. Giving cheerfully. Offering themselves sacrificially. Some of these people I know very well. Others, I’m not sure I’ve ever met. I can still see their wide open faces. But there’s no way I can remember them all. I didn’t know what to say. Almost 36-hours later, I’m still not sure what to say. I just stood there. Speechless. Yes, without speech. I kept waiting for someone to break out in “Auld Lang Syne.” (Is that how you spell it? Probably not.) Surely another Clarence somewhere was getting his wings!

It was too much. Almost chaotic. People were cramming themselves around the room. Others were pressed against the glass, unable to squeeze in. A line three and four across stretched out into the halls from both doors. I fully expected the ceiling tiles to be ripped apart and more people to be lowered down on mats and ropes. We had to move everybody back out into the worship center.

A Legacy family is in crisis. Major crisis. And we gave it to God by giving it to his Church. We spilled it all before the whole Body of Christ. No holds barred. Raw honesty. Brutal truth. All the pain. All the sin. All the darkness. Here it is, we said. Now, let’s help this family.

And we did. And we are. And I still can’t believe it.

Why am I so surprised? God is faithful. He’s always promised to take care of us if we’ll just depend on him. And he’s never broken one of those promises. Never. So why am I so shocked that he moved our church to such great depths of Christian love yesterday? Why was I so blown away?

Because it’s so rare?

Maybe.

Why is it so rare?

Because we don’t always depend on God the way he wants us to?

Maybe.

I really believe the key is to totally and completely and wholly rely on God instead of ourselves. And we never do that. Except when we get in a “hopeless situation.” Except when we find ourselves in the middle of a cyclone of horrible news and dreadful circumstances. Except when we hold meeting after meeting after meeting and discover we’ve got nothing. Nothing. No answers. No wisdom. No suggestions. No solutions. Nothing.

And we wind up with no choice but to give it all to God. In all humility and brokenness and helplessness, we give it to God.

And then he does that thing he always does. He rescues. He saves. He delivers. Just like always. And I imagine our heavenly Father looks at our surprise and says, “Now you know that I am the Lord.”

Praise God. He alone is God. There is no other. Praise God.

Allan