Trust and Change

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to preach for the Sunday afternoon service at our local retirment community. It's something I do a couple of times a year. I'm always blessed when I do. I usually am asked weeks, if not months, in advance, but this time, the request came as the result of a cancellation, so I didn't have much time to plan the sermon. I was busy that week, and didn't take the time to "move into" the planning the way I usually do. I had preached at a church a couple of weeks before, and just decided to "repurpose" the sermon. I had a few nagging feelings about the decision, but I stuck to my plan. On Saturday night, I reviewed the sermon, making a few changes, and then printed it out. On Sunday morning, the nagging feeling got bigger, and I knew that the message I had delivered at the church a few weeks prior was not the message that I needed to bring to the retirement community. Even so, my first reaction was that I had waiting too long to discern this message, and that there was nothing I could do about it. And yet the nagging doubt continued. So, I decided if God wanted it changed, he would enable me to do it, so I found a quiet room during Sunday school, and re-wrote the sermon. I was able to use parts of the previous sermon, but several pages were handwritten and new. I hope it went OK. I felt that it was the message I was supposed to deliver. In my mind, my discernment was affirmed by the worship leader's selection of "Trust and Obey" as the opening hymn.