Coming Off a High

This last fall, all the way through December, was a bit of a mountaintop experience for me. Seeing God answer prayer in so many lives and in mine was staggering. Preparing for the Miracle messages impacted me deeply, as did the video stories God led us to tell. Christmas Eve services are always my favorite of the year. And I'd have to say the whole Remarkable series on Acts had a deep impact on my spirit.

But I'll tell you what, I'm in a funk right now like I can't believe. On top of that, I fell behind on my message prep because of all the extra effort and work that went into the Miracle series. So instead of getting way ahead during the Dave Ramsey series, I'm actually quickly falling behind schedule (a schedule that's needed for Group Life writers and for service planning, since things like great video faith stories don't grow on trees).

I took some time to work on vacation last week to write a message and got nowhere, which made working on vacation doubly frustrating. Spent today at Bethel Sem library and almost got nowhere...until (thank God) the last hour or so. Wrote the first draft in one shot, but it needs loads of work to make it intelligible. That helped pick me up a bit. But really, falling behind is a symptom of emotional exhaustion and stress from lots of great stuff (with some of the usual hard stuff thrown in to make it interesting).

Why am I telling you about all my woes? So you'll feel sorry for me? Maybe that's a little bit of the reason. But really I wanted to check in with you and say that if you're feeling a bit down after the last few weeks of seeing God at work in your life through the prayer challenge and after all the stuff that comes with celebrating the Christmas season, you're not alone. In fact, it can be expected. It happened to people in the Bible all the time, the classic case being Elijah after trouncing the priests of Baal.

I also wanted to ask you to pray for me as I prepare messages for the next series. It's a series on spiritual growth that I think can have a huge impact on lots of lives. My working title is 7 Dumb Things Committed Christians do to Stall Their Spiritual Growth. I really can't do it without your prayers.

One more thing: I think I might need a better word than "stall." Any ideas?