I have just come across a study guide from several years ago. If I am honest, I had forgotten all about it until I stumbled across it while sorting stationery. As I read it through all the memories came flooding back. Now, I can see the ‘funny side’, but at the time it was painful and disheartening.
We were having a prayer month and I was leading the Women’s Prayer and Study session. So, I eagerly researched my topic and wrote out and printed the study guides. I organised a time and venue. On the first day I bought flowers, treats, and beverages. I arrived early to set up the room and make it look nice for the women attending. I had all the tables set and worship music playing when I realised, I needed more pens, so I headed upstairs to the office to grab some. That is when I heard my first couple of ladies arrive and promptly complain about the music. They turned it off grumbling loudly about the noise, it was the current Hillsong album. They continued to say the room was ‘too posh’ and how they didn’t like the treats. I don’t think they knew I was in earshot.
The first week, our theme was, ‘putting your past behind you’. I planned to tell them my testimony and had photographs to punctuate my story. As soon as I began, I was interrupted with ‘why are you standing at the front?’ I thought that was pretty obvious, considering I was the one speaking and leading. Then I was asked to stop touching my face and mouth when speaking. But I carried on and got to the end. It was like wading through treacle, by the end I was exhausted. And just to add insult to injury, one of the ladies said someone couldn’t come because it was her cleaning day. But I had already been told this lady and her group weren’t coming. Apparently, they still wanted to meet, and the times clashed. Even though it was our official month of prayer and all the other groups had suspended meeting.
I turned up and led weeks 2 on Love, 3 on Repentance, 4 on Surrender. I set up and had different treats and decorations each week and each week someone would complain. One week, I had to blow the candles out, to stop one lady walking out. The funniest incident was when I bought helium balloons as a gift for a birthday that week. They flat out refused to take them home because they didn’t want to be seen in town carrying balloons. Can you imagine the look on their faces when I spoke about the film Shrek. I thought I was on solid ground using Queen Esther’s beauty treatments as an illustration. But no, as soon as I finished, one lady marched up to me saying I needed to read the story of Esther properly. By the time I got home that evening, she had popped a copy of a book on Esther through my letter box!! All I said was if Queen Esther glowed after a year of beauty treatments, what could we look like if we spent more time in the presence of Jesus. Even the expensive hand treatment I bought to illustrate my point, didn’t seem to help.
You may well ask, why did I carry on with these studies? Obedience! I did it because I believed it was what Jesus wanted me to do to serve these women. Sheer obedience was the only reason I turned up, set up and stood there. It was painful and disheartening. I’m not even sure it made a difference to any one of those women, but that wasn’t my job. I was asked to prepare and present a study and lead a time of prayer and that’s what I did. The rest was up to the Holy Spirit and the willingness of the women to receive.
I learned an important lesson through this experience. One of my favourite Bible verses is Proverbs 4:23: ‘Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life’. I had to put this into practice. But when I did have a pity party, I read Galatians 6:9: ‘Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up’. If I had given up, I wouldn’t have developed the strength and tenacity I would need in the future to run a Coffee House. The faithfulness to pray for my family when they were in trouble or stand through the storms that life has thrown at us.
It’s funny, I had forgotten all about that experience until I found it and read the study again. I think God was speaking to me, showing me how life changing and powerful the study was and still is. Leave, Love, Repent and Surrender were the lessons I taught, but more importantly these were the lessons God was teaching me. Now it’s my responsibility to continue to put them into action.
Featured photo by Rebecca Lane on Unsplash
"Live to Serve" 