Preaching in the Anointing

 It was unusual last Sunday as I sensed clearly the anointing once I started preaching from Ephesians 4:3-16. I spent the first 6 minutes talking about a former missionary who was the most influential pioneer of our movement among the Dusuns of Sabah in the late 1930s and then after the Second World War. The first local churches in Ranau were started in 1947. After that, I launched into my preaching and I felt the anointing for the next 45 minutes of the sermon, right to the end. In fact, I felt it was the highlight of my last three sermons, each having been anointed more than the previous one. This Sunday I shall be preaching my 4th consecutive sermon and I pray by God's grace the anointing will be upon me as I preach. I felt for last Sunday's sermon, I had spent a whole week, from Monday to Sunday morning, about 50 hours within the week to preach that 50-minute sermon.

Yesterday I was totally exhausted and slept in the afternoon and slept early last night at 9pm. No wonder I pushed back against starting a second Sunday service which means I have to preach twice, essentially double work. Getting a bigger place is also not an option as rents have almost doubled in the last 5 years and we simply can't afford any increase in rents as givings are consistent but had not risen much in the past few years. 

With so many churches, there is a segment of the church that still like to hop around churches, and not a few just watch the service online. I was surprised to find out at 8am yesterday, less than 24 hours of the Sunday service, our Facebook views have exceeded 1,000. Usually it takes a couple of days just to reach 500 views but clearly there was some movement as far as people clicking on the church's Facebook either sincerely to worship and listen to the sermon, or simply out of curiosity or spying what I said. 

This coming Sunday I am preaching on the life of David in a series of sermons on leadership as we are holding our church AGM in April with the Youth's Ministry the first to hold its AGM this coming Sunday, so I will tailor the sermon more for the youths as those under 40 years old are about 75% of the church members, partly because we are meeting at a shop-lot on the 3rd floor and a few over 60 years old who have visited had not returned for a second time.