found a way to win every minute while listening to a sermon!

As I attended Grace Toronto Church's evening service tonight, I wanted to try to keep God on my mind in second person at least every minute. Especially listening to the Pastor preach his sermon.

I didn't want to do it "mechanically" or "legalistically" without any life in the process of attempting it though, so I sought the Holy Spirit to lead me in a certain way to do it, according to His specific "flow" or "rhythm" of the moment (which I am coming more and more to believe that differs every moment for each individual Christian).

As the pastor just started to preach, I went about at attempting this vigorous yet "strenuously satisfying" pursuit.

As the first minute passed, some ideas were coming into my head. Whether or not they were DIRECTLY from the Holy Spirit or indirect suggestions mingled with my archives of Game with Minutes strategies I am not sure. Regardless, the suggestion was this:

"since I am commanded by God:

1) to be thankful in all situations, continually thanking God for everything (Philippians 4:6, Ephesians 5:20, Colossians 3:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

as well as

2)to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) aka keep in constant communion with Him

why not try to combine these two commandments which God wants us to do continually?


So here I am, with the first minute into the sermon, trying this wacky idea of trying to practically apply these two commandments simultaneously while the preacher is expounding his points from Ephesians 1:1-6. In my mind, a more specific idea of concretely applying these two commandments throughout the whole sermon popped in my head. Try to thank God for everything the Pastor mentions. Every few seconds try it. No matter what the pastor mentions, just try to keep thanking God in second-person communication for anything my mind can think of that the pastor says.

The results were astonishing! I think by God's grace I was on a roll! When the pastor mentioned stuff like "Paul's letters", I'd say in my mind to God "thanks that you gave us Paul's letters". When he mentioned "Peter" (the apostle), I'd say to God right away "thanks for Peter". When he mentioned "growing up in a democratic culture", I'd immediately thank God for democracy right after. When he mentioned american football, I'd quickly thank God for sports the second after. When he mentioned an analogy about winning the lottery, I thanked God for money afterwards. When he mentioned the "educated class in developed countries", I thanked God for post-secondary education. And of course whenever he mentioned Jesus and/or what Jesus did on the cross for our sins, I'd express to God my grattitude for my salvation. Since Dan McDonald is a Cross-centered preacher, I found myself thanking God for salvation several times throughout the sermon. And when the pastor was silent for a few seconds, I tried to thank God for whatever came to my mind, which included thanking God that the pastor had fingers, that he had glasses, that he had hair, that he had a wife and has a marriage. Haha. It helped!

Here's the cool part. By God's grace, it worked!!! The strategy flew! I was able to simultaneously digest over 90% of the content of the sermon (except for one part when he talked about a story of a football star, I got lost on some parts while trying to thank God every few seconds) while thanking God silently in my mind for whatever I thought of during the whole 30 minutes of the sermon! I think I can truly say to myself that I won the Game with Minutes EVERY minute of the sermon! The cool thing is, I not only communed with God at least once every minute, I think it was once every few seconds too! I think the most that I stopped was for 5 seconds! With this strategy and the grace of God's empowerment over months and months of training, I kept God on my mind every 3-4 seconds during this sermon! Praise God for both the open/creative idea, the grace to carry it out, as well as the exhilaration that accompanied the experience!

Nearing the end of the sermon though, I started to feel that this strategy was starting to become a ritual, and that after the sermon, if I still continued, it might have started to get ritualistic. So I persevered until the sermon was over, thanked God (one last time haha), and was willing to "close" this mini-chapter/leading of the Spirit which had a certain rhythm of gratitude for these sacred 30 minutes.

I know it's probably not God's will for me to use the exact same means for every single moment, for he is a God of variety, spontaneity, and freshness that is ever creative, adventurous, novel, and keeps us surprised every turn around the corner. I don't want any method of keeping in communion with him every minute to become mechanized/ritualized. But I want every one to be natural, receiving the fresh signals from the Holy Spirit, fresher than the news on the morning paper. If every "method" that the Spirit has given me can be metaphorically represented as a key on a piano, I want to put each of these keys on the piano scale of my mind, and play each one appropriately when the time is called for while paying attention to the composition of holy spiritual music of the Father's will.

HALLELUJIAH!