Sermon Illustrations

ILL: When I was leading worship in Denver there were two sisters on the worship team. One day one of the sisters was in a car accident and suffered minor injuries like on a Thursday. She was a shaken up really bad and had looked death in the face and wrote a poem about the experience. Her sister brought the poem to me Sunday night about 5 minutes before the service saying, “God has told us that this poem needs to be read in the service tonight.” I asked to read the poem. To her credit there were some powerful things her sister wrote about God but there was also a fair amount of confusion. She wrote like someone who had powerful experience and a severe concussion. Things were profound and muddy. I took it to Brad, the pastor I was under, and we both felt that reading it that night wasn’t good timing but suggested reading it the following week once we could get a better understanding of what she wrote. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She kept saying, “God wants us to read this.” We just said, “We’re open to it but just not tonight.” So we started the service and she came up on stage and led a silent revolt. She sat down on the steps and I’m told stared daggers into my back. Everyone saw it. She just held the mic but never sang. Everyone was completely distracted. The pastor, myself and the young woman had a difficult conversation after that service and it revolved around her trying to trump the situation by throwing out God’s name.