Following is a report back from Senior Pastor, Nolan Donald, 12 months after his church hosted me for a weekend seminar on Hearing God’s Voice.
Nolan Donald writes: A few days ago, as I was doing my two-way journaling, I felt the Lord nudge me to reach out to you. We are just past the one-year anniversary of your coming to Opelika for a weekend, and I can't begin to tell you the impact that the three days you spent here have made! While lots of people have learned how to hear the Lord's voice, the openness to God and the Holy Spirit's leadership has transformed us in significant ways. Expecting God to be active and at work, expecting God to give guidance and direction, and not assuming we have to just figure things out on our own have been incredible side gifts to what happened when you were here.
All of our leadership board and staff are now actively using the listening model in their work. It is not unusual for us to stop a meeting and spend time asking the Lord these two questions: What do you want us to know? And what do you want us to do? Just this morning, I emailed a team that is beginning to work on a facilities master plan, and in my email, I included the steps to hearing God's voice and challenged them that as we do the work related to the facilities that the most important thing was to inquire of the Lord and let Him lead us. Continually seeing the fruit of God's leadership is so incredible and so inspiring.
In the last year, we've also seen much more openness to the Holy Spirit. Our new associate pastor spent the summer teaching on spiritual gifts and helping people find and use their gifts, and he has also helped lead us into the place of having weekly times of healing prayer at the end of our worship services. As we keep praying and asking God what He wants us to know, He keeps encouraging us that He is working and that He has more in store.
I'm attaching the most recent picture of how God is working. This is my 6th grade son sharing at a worship night this past Sunday on how to hear God's voice. (He shared the same thing with his entire summer camp one night this summer!)
So, I just wanted to say thanks. Thank you for coming to a Methodist church in Alabama. Thanks for sharing your story with us and challenging us to engage the Lord in active and fresh ways. That weekend had a bigger impact than I think we will ever fully know.
We are now an independent Methodist church. (We were United Methodist, we exited the denomination, and we have opted not to join another denomination.)
Joyfully,
Nolan
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