2 Corinthians 1:8-11
The Message Bible
May I Have This Dance?
(Play Ancient Words Video)
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray…
Creator, Sustainer, Loving God, you who spoke to you children so long ago through your prophets, we ask that you would speak to us today through your Spirit. May we hear your Ancient Words of hope, of peace, of comfort and joy. May you give us an open and willing heart so that we may hear the word you have for us today and to act upon what you reveal to us. We pray for your presence to be here with us gathered here this day. May your eternal words echo throughout the world so that all will know of your saving grace. Speak Lord…your friends are listening…
How many of you like to dance? I know that I do. I love the whirling and twirling across the floor. I love to watch the TV shows where there is dance. I love dancing with the Stars and ballroom dancing and movies about dancing. I just love it when Ray and I break into spontaneous dance (much to the dismay of our children…). The closeness that there is from our dancing makes me remember our first dance as husband and wife. But…I have one problem when I dance. You see…as we are dancing I find myself wanting to take the lead. Now I know that the guy is supposed to take the lead but I just can’t help myself…I need to really concentrate on what I am doing. I spent 11 years studying dance when I was younger so I tend to think I know better than my partner.
Life, itself, is much like a dance. Sometimes we are moving fluidly through life without a care and other times we feel as if we are unwillingly being dragged across the dance floor. Sometimes we seem to know what we are doing and others we feel as if we are whirling out of control. Whirling out of control…the operative word here is the word control. We tend to feel that we need to be in control at all times and in all things. But…God wants us to dance another type of dance….a dance that he orchestrates…one that He leads. Ray sent me an e-mail about just that…about how God is the one who orchestrates the dance of our lives…one in which we trust God for our guidance.
It talked about the word Guidance and how each time the writer meditated on the word the word “dance” kept coming to mind. It states that when two people lead, nothing feels right (Boy…how I know that one…remember that I said that I tend to try and lead when I dance…but then again…how many of us try to lead the dance of life). The movement doesn’t flow with the music and it all seems jerky. But…when one person realizes this and decides to follow, it all moves in rhythm again. The leader gives the follower gentle cues and the two become one body. But…the dance takes “surrender, willingness and attentiveness from the one person and gentle guidance and skill from the other.
The writer goes on to say that the “G” stands for God and the “u” and “I” stands for…well you get the authors drift. You see God, u, and I dance. But…I feel there is something missing in the analogy…what is missing is the trust that you must have in your partner (Now don’t get me wrong…I do trust in my husband but there is this control thing in effect). We need to let go of our control and trust in God. As Huntley talked about last week…we need mindfulness in our walk with God. We need to practice being present in the here and now and not look at the future and past, trust that God is in control and that the Giver of all knowledge will lead us in the direction we should go. By practicing this mindfulness we can be aware of when God is speaking, we need to trust that God is in the world today and will be tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next…as I have said we need to practice being in the present and trust God is with us in that present moment. 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 talks about that trust in God. It reads (and I’m reading from the Message Bible):
“We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us from certain doom. And he'll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing. You and your prayers are part of the rescue operation—I don't want you in the dark about that either. I can see your faces even now, lifted in praise for God's deliverance of us, a rescue in which your prayers played such a crucial part.”
It is this trust that enables us to move mountains…it is this trust that enables us to play “follow the leader” with God…it is this trust that enables us to take a step of faith and believe that God is in control. It is by God’s strength, through the Holy Spirit , not our own, that we can move forward when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel…and it is by this strength that we become conquers over the things that hold us back.
Next week, we will be having a Nursery Shower for the church. We will be stepping out in faith to prepare a nursery for those who come with small children. We may not have many in our church now but in the immortal words of Field of Dreams “If you build it, he/they will come.” We need to trust that God will have them come…that God will grow our church, using us as His ambassador’s to the children. We must trust that, as God has done so many times, God will lead us in this dance as well.
Let us practice God’s presence in our lives. Lets us believe that God is with us now…the the present time. May we let go of our control and let God lead us in the way He would have us go. May we trust and believe that God is in control…
(God is in control by Twila Parris)
Amen.
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