A dramatic day

What a dramatic day it has been. I told you yesterday that I started coming down with something and I didn’t have the time to be sick at the moment. So I fought through it. Today I woke up and I didn’t have much of a voice. So I was hoping if I had a big breakfast that might help. So I got to church and my voice was still a little raspy. I went over with Pastor Graeme what my role in the service would be. Originally he gave me a monologue, which was ok, but just not great. I asked if I could rewrite it a bit and he said no problem. So I fashioned this as an extremely well-prepared improv, as opposed to a learning a skit word for word. I teach so much improv, I feel that well done improvs are much more believable.

So I got up on stage on my cue and the performance came off without a hitch. The voice was fine. I hit all my important points and the audience seemed to respond to it well. Now here’s the weird part. My friend Josh noticed this first. After the service we were supposed to promote our small groups. As I was trying to promote mine my voice started to go. Its like I was well enough just to give the monologue. I consider that to be God’s grace. Afterwards I went to lunch with a young muslim friend of mine. He asks so many questions about Christianity, faith, and God. He really is seeking the truth. I share my point of view and he shares his. A few weeks back he was talking and he asked about me speaking in tongues (spirit language) then he asked me to demonstrate. Talk about being put on the spot. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just did it in front of a group of other Christians and Muslims. I started out silently in prayer and then just started in with my prayer language. I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do or not. So this only went on for a few seconds. He then said…can you teach me how to do that? I deferred that we should probably do that in a more private setting. He agreed. So today we went out to Fuddrucker’s for lunch after church. We had a great discussion of Islam and Christianity, the differences and similarities. During this discussion I had my voice. I explained that tongues (speaking in the spirit of a heavenly language) is a gift of the Holy Spirit. As a Christian, you believe in the trinity, where God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are one. This is a concept that is difficult for most Christians to explain and even harder for non-Christians to accept. So I explained the Trinity the best I could. I am a father, a son, and friend…yet I’m still rick Beeman. That is three different people in one. He accepted that. Speaking in tongues is gift that comes from the spirit, so to do that, you must first accept the Son (Jesus) into your life and then God and the Holy Spirit follow since they are one. So if he wanted to speak in tongues, it comes as a package deal. I didn’t want to put any pressure on him to convert. That’s not my job. If you pressure or coerce a person into give their heart to God, it might not lead to a genuine conversion experience. I guess it would be like the parable of the seeds that fall in the rocky soil. You can’t force a faith upon someone…use the inquisition as a prime example of that. So instead I open myself up and share my heart, my beliefs, and my experiences. It usually starts with “this is what my faith did for me…” I usually don’t say…”You ought to do….” So Im not sure what seeds were planted today, but I was honored to discuss such matters with my friend.

I usually take my laptop into restaurants for dinner. That way I don’t have to eat alone. I usually watch whatever TV series Im hooked on at that time. Since I frequent Fuddrucker’s so often, the manager has taken notice of what I watch. So he expressed an interest in Prison Break season one, so I dropped it off to him today. I think he was kind of amazed I offered and gave it to him. Again, you don’t know what type of seeds you are planting out there with small gestures.

After the lunch I completely lost my voice. It was so bad that my friend Sidd couldn’t understand me over the phone. I was supposed to go to a party tonight, but I bailed. Why go if I don’t drink, dance, or can’t talk. I would have just sat and waved at people. I feel fine, I just sound awful.