Feeling the Rush

You had to have known that I'd blog about it.

If you didn't, let me tell you. This past Sunday was the first time I ever preached. It took twenty-two years and almost three years of Bible college for me to actually do it. I won't lie, I was terrified at the thought of preaching at first, but after having done it now, I think it felt pretty neat.

I'm not going to lie, my prep work was abysmal. I didn't start any REAL preparation until the week that I was going to preach. For a first time, that's cutting it really close; it's kind of like a seasoned preacher in his fifties not preparing for a Sunday sermon until Friday night.

Because I was preaching at the end of Reading Week, it made for a pretty unique few days for me. I did most of my prep work when I was at home in Edmonton. My plan was to come back to Calgary on Saturday so I could preach on Sunday - duh. On Friday night, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I remember waking up several times in the middle of the night in some kind of adrenalin rush or something.

When I got back on Saturday afternoon, I dedicated myself to preparing for the rest of the day. At around 9:30 or 10pm, I hit a wall. I went from being really productive to my brain not even willing to stay focused for more than thirty seconds. At that point, I felt really close to being prepared, but not quite there yet. I tried for about half an hour more, but I just could not bring myself to any level of productivity. So I decided that I'd just go to sleep and wake up a little earlier the next morning to finish my prep work.

The most difficult part during my preparation was taking the points I had written down for my text and trying to formulate actual sentences that flowed together to make the sermon. I tried and tried, but it just felt like poop. That night, I was laying around in my bed for a couple hours before I finally got to sleep. After sleeping for maybe two hours, I woke up again and my mind was racing like never before. I can only remember one other instance in my life where I had such an experience, and that required drinking some pretty strong coffee at 9pm. My mind was seriously going crazy. I can't even remember what I was thinking about, but it felt like a battle was going on. Eventually, I think I went back to sleep at around 5am.

There was tons of nerves before I gave the sermon; but as I always have it, they were gone the moment I got up there and put my notes down. *in best Korean accent* PRAISE THE JESUSUUUU!

Yeah, that's about all that I got. Of course, the delivery wasn't as smooth as I wanted it; but hey, it's my first time. I learned a TON and I expect to be better tenfold next time! (= The thing I valued most from this first experience, and maybe even preaching in general, is the constant reminder for myself that it's not about me and how much I need God to be the one that is in control. I always give a halfassed "surrender" to God, filled with conditions and clauses, that I tend to take back if something were to go wrong; but preparing to preach has definitely allowed me to be completely liberated of all things that are of myself and of this world. It was awesome!