I did the unthinkable today. It’s literally been years since I stepped into a church with a prepared sermon in hand (together with really cool PowerPoint slides at that!), and then ended up preaching an entirely different sermon all together.

At the point of my arrival, the pastor was doing some teaching in the worship hall. So I thought before the service began, that it’d be good to quickly bring my thumbdrive to the audio visual guy so he could transfer my PowerPoint file over into the computer to be flashed later on during my sermon. Just then, I felt a firm tug in my heart that held back my intention. And the word salvation was literally haunting my mind.

By golly, was this what I thought it was? That the Holy Spirit was telling me that he wanted me to speak on salvation, and not on the topic I’d been asked to prepare? Hey, it’s been more than a decade since I was part of the Pentecostal tradition! Was there a part of me that was still “pentecostalised”?!

It did somewhat help that this church was a Pentecostal/Charismatic church. But still, I thought I’d not be so presumptuous as to think that the church would be okay with something like that. After all, who wants an invited speaker to come spew an incoherent sermon he didn’t have time to prepare, right? So just as I took over the microphone, I asked the pastor for permission to switch my sermon. He answered, “Coming from someone with your background, I’d say it must be the Holy Spirit. Shoot…”

So what ensued was an hour-long sermon on Salvation. I even managed to get my sermon organised into three points: i) You are saved, ii) You are being saved, and iii) You will be saved.

You know, I'm recently beginning to discover more and more about the Pentecostal/Charismatic tradition that is consistent with the Great Tradition of the church. It's just amazing. Sometimes, at the point of a new discovery (new to me, I mean), I have to pause for a moment to just hear my heart pounding.

This journey is amazing.