When God Takes Us at Our Words

A week ago (Oct 29th, 2006), a well known Megachurch pastor was preaching from 1 Samuel 16 on God's preparation for the removal of one King, Saul, with his replacement, David. An interesting passage to cover in a church where the leadership model more closely resembled Kings and Chronicles, than that of New Testament leadership. The preacher was speaking about the forthcoming US midterm elections. Talking about how God removes some leaders and replaces them with others. One might see the preaching as prophetic for the events in the last week.

Even more interesting is the preacher's prayer 39 seconds into the sermon (in the church podcast on iTunes). In that prayer he says,

Father, we pray that lies would be exposed
We pray that deception would be exposed

The preacher was Ted Haggard. Little did he know how prescient his prayer would be - and that the lies and deception exposed would be his own mere days after he'd prayed this prayer. I've included the clip from the podcast - and here again is the link to the actual podcast.

Marc Axelrod, in a comment on Ben Witherington's blog, drew attention to this.

Rev. Haggard's last sermon on Sunday October 29th was on 1 Samuel 16, why God decides to remove people from leadership and replace them with others. Before the sermon, he prayed for God to expose lies and deception. That prayer got answered really fast ....

Imbi's comment this morning to me when I told her this story was, "would that more of us pray prayers where God takes us at our own words."

Related posts:
The Loss of Accountability Leads to Profound Sadness
Accountability: Man in the Mirror
Profound Sadness in Colorado
Earlier posts:
It's About Transparency
The "A" Word: Accountability
The Responsibilities of the Led

Technorati Tags: leadership accountability, prayer, preaching, Ted Haggard