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Song: Fearless Building 429

Scripture
But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Mark 13:11

Observation
Where is the place we can meet personally with the Holy Spirit? I imagine worship saturated auditoriums or idyllic rain forest waterfalls or the like. But that is not how Jesus imagined places to find the Holy Spirit.

Instead he painted this picture.

Imagine a place where you heart beats at twice the speed, where your throat tightens so that you cannot turn up the volume of your voice, where hundreds of eyes are focused on you and your head spins into that out of body experience that comes with public speaking. If you can imagine a place where you are afraid to speak then you have just identified where the Holy Spirit would like to meet with you. The trysting places are the trying times.

But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Mark 13:11

Jesus made no promise that we would not be afraid under trial. What he did promise is that the words we speak won’t be our own. Hostile audiences can bring God’s best out of us.

Application
There are places I speak where I can hear an audience wordlessly ask, “And who are you?” Those are the moments I must ask, “Who is God?” If I do what Jesus asked me to do I can hear God’s voice even in the most fearful places.

Prayer
Lord, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of your tone. Amen.