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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: At the Pulpit (11/15/07)
There are so many different types of pulpits. When I was a little girl growing up in the hills of Pennsylvania, my family attended a little country church, the Welsh Congregational Church. This church had a most beautiful pulpit. The intricate carvings spoke of expert craftsmanship that could only have been created with much love and determination. That pulpit had been in that church for almost 200 years. The strong oak would never let a minister down. It had been built to withstand the hardest pulpit thumping. And I am sure it received a lot of that in the earlier days. However, as years passed, the thumping lessened in that church, the message got watered down, and the people got colder. However, the minister would stand behind that huge pulpit and lead the congregation in singing all the old hymns with much form and ritual. I loved those hymns because of the great harmonizing that we could do and the words of each song were sermons in themselves.

I moved to San Antonio, Texas when I was 23 years old and heard a pastor preach Sunday after Sunday of God's righteous anger and how my sins had nailed His son to the cross. This pastor also had a massive pulpit, but he actually pounded his pulpit during each and every service. I came to the altar under this pastor's leading and realized I was a sinner and bound for hell. One Sunday, after hearing “Just as I Am” fifty-five times, I repented of my sins and invited Jesus to come into my life.

Today my family and I fellowship in another church. This church is plain, no ornate pulpit, just a small stand with a simple light on it...the kind that you lift up the top of the pulpit and switch the attached light on so the pastor can see his notes. Our pastor speaks of God's love, His desire to fellowship with me and to walk with me throughout every step of my life's journey. We sing praise songs with a smattering of the old hymns that I still love to sing.

The different pulpits in my life remind me of my salvation. Someone had to plant the seed. Even though the first messages I heard were plain vanilla, that minister taught me God’s word through the beautiful words of those old hymns. Then the second pastor used his pulpit to draw me closer and to reap the harvest. However, it is the nurturing and maintaining of the crop that allows me to grow and flourish and causes a desire within me to know more and more of the one that the old songs spoke of so long ago. Isn’t it amazing how God can use three completely different pulpits to do His bidding and bring me to the place that He designed for me even before I was born? Isn’t He amazing!
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Jan Ackerson
11/25/07
Good job with the structure of this tidy little devotional.
Yvonne Blake 
11/25/07
I like how you described the different pulpits in each step of your life, although in the last paragraph, it would be better if your comparisons were similiar. Also, the title should have a question mark at the end.
Fifty-five verses of "Amazing Grace"? I hope that is an exageration. Good details. Keep writing.
Yvonne Blake 
11/25/07
Corrction: As I reread your story, I realized that you did use the same analogy (seeds), but calling the first sermons "vanilla" through off my thought pattern. Sorry, for not reading it more carefully.