God Has Done a New Thing! Praise Him!

We preached on the Sixth Commandment, “Do Not Kill” for one month. Afterwards, God has led us to begin on the “Praise” series and He has done a wonderful new thing –for the first time in twenty-one years our church had the preacher presenting the sermon in singing and acting first person. We stood in awe of the great work of the Holy Spirit!

It was the second on the “Praise” series last Sunday, preached by Pastor Jason and our worship leader Debbie. They preached how Leah in the bible praised God and triumphed. In the first service on Saturday afternoon, Debbie told the story of Leah from the third person perspective. Preaching the first time at the Mercy Seat, she was too nervous to preach in the Spirit. As soon as the service ended, I was prompted to ask her to change the mode of preaching – she put herself as Leah and sang Leah’s heart and experiences. I am confident that, by her own gifting and life experience, with the effort she had spent in meditating the scriptures with Ps Jason beforehand, she would be able to freely release God’s Word this way.

It was only one hour before the second service began, leaving Debbie no time to rehearse or prepare sermon notes. But when she relied solely on the Holy Spirit in submission, as soon as she sang out the first line of lyrics, God’s Spirit moved her continuously. Her emotions flowed naturally as she mingled her life with Leah’s. She poured out her heart to God while praising Him. Finally, she delivered the victorious message of modern Leah with her own experience in marriage. What a heart-touching illustration!

Together, we went through one new thing: Through the ministry of Debbie, the Holy Spirit presented Leah’s life vividly before the congregation. Then brothers and sisters mixed the sermon message with faith and then offered praises to God. Thank the Holy Spirit for leading us to change our usual mode of preaching and let Debbie exercise her Being totally. This was the first time in twenty-one years that our church had the preacher doing expository preaching with new songs and drama from the first-person perspective. We were amazed by God’s leading!

I realise that when we rely on the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t mean that we need not prepare ourselves. On the contrary, when we are ready, God can use us further! The change came so sudden that the media team and the worship team were not informed. However, they had already prepared themselves well – they did the lighting, camera shooting and choosing the right songs in a seamless and timely way. In particular, the worship team has been trained up by the RAWSHIP (Restore authentic worship) led by C-Mo, they are able to follow the work of the Holy Spirit at any time. I praise God greatly for that!

Dear brothers and sisters, how exciting it is to follow God. The Holy Spirit keeps leading us to enter His fresh flow. Let us follow God by faith and expect Him to continue doing wonderful new things in our midst!■【2022.08.14】