Man in The Mirror

"Right back at ya!"

I have this habit since going to seminary and learning to love preaching, where I begin to take into account how I need to practice my speaking and to speak with conviction. Not that conviction needs practice as conviction will work its magic when the Spirit is involve.

But this habit has since made its way in many things that I do. Whenever I open up to scripture and draw out some great truth, I cannot help but to start speaking out loud as if I am preaching to a crowd. This has since been a concerning matter to me as this moments of personal time with God, I turned it into preaching practice. I begin to worry that my time with God has been compromised by the love and passion for preaching that instead of being consumed by His word for my personal life.

I hate to lead this habit to make preaching my joy and not spending time with God personally. Can I sit quietly and allow the word do its work to move my Spirit? Can I find fulfillment without having to stand up and taking a preaching stance? Can I take these words and receive it humbly without having the need to preach it to others?

But even as I struggled with this issue for a while... today I felt something different. Nothing to the changing of my habit but rather a sliver of revelation about myself and how God has used it to speak to me.

As my bible is placed on a tall chair, simulating a podium stand where how I would generally like reading my bible. In front of the chair is my shelf with stacked clothes and by it is my wall mirror. Even as preaching practice, the mirror helps with nonverbal rhetoric feedback.

So as I spent time going into scripture today, I did the very same thing of reading scripture and began to take the preaching stance and started preaching to my imaginary crowd. But what I did not realized is that every time I do so, I preach in such a way that I want to draw it from the Spirit and allow the Spirit tell me what to say about the verses being read. So, many at times I do not have much thought through but just reiterating what I thought  just read and hoping that the Spirit would give me words to say the right things. Much like speaking in tongues as many describe where there is a deep sense inside of me that wants to spill out what the verses made me feel and I begin to speak what I may not have prepared ahead to speak.

So I realized that even with this habit of taking a preaching stance and start preaching what I just read in scripture is not really just a habit of me practice preaching to an imaginary crowd, but essentially when I look into the mirror when I preach, I am preaching to myself.

I realized that I needed to do it because I needed to be preached to and there is no one else in the room but me and God in a way used me to preach to me. And so very often, whenever I do this and allow the Spirit to just bring words to my mouth, I find myself being put into revelation immediately right after.

God used me to preach to me when there is no one else around and when its one of the most effective way that I receive from Him. Me and the mirror was God's tool to speak to me.