Early this morning I was lying on the living room floor, just sort of relaxing and praying, when into my head popped a memory of the first time the Word of God was opened to me in a way that stirred my heart. I was raised in church and heard my parents preach countless times, but when I was fourteen or fifteen my mother took me to a meeting in the D.C. area where a man named Wade Taylor was to speak. Brother Taylor is still alive, still fulfilling his work in the Lord.

Vividly I remember his message from the third chapter of Exodus, this portion in particular:

So Moses said, “I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.” When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

Taylor’s preaching that night revolved around the idea that God responded to Moses’ turning aside–“When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him...” The Lord waited until He had Moses’ full attention, and then the revelation unfolded. The Lord watched for a response. Taylor intimated that we too have the opportunity to “turn aside” to God, to hear His voice and enter into active participation in His purposes. But without that focus, without turning to gaze, the opportunity may be missed.

Brother Taylor is very soft-spoken, monotone even, and he speaks slowly. He doesn’t tell clever stories or jokes or raise his voice or make wild gestures. By the world’s standard of speaking, he is probably not a good public speaker. But the mystery of the thing is that as he spoke, something was extremely excited within me. It was as if every word he was saying was completely new and fresh: I’d heard the story of the burning bush many times, but I’d never heard such real-life application made as to the meaning of the story to my life. I’d never heard preaching like that.

When I went home that night, I was changed. My view of the Bible had changed. I told my father how “no man spoke as this man spoke,” and he smiled as I related all the revelation I had heard, of “all these deep and insightful things.” (My father was a graduate of Pinecrest Bible Training Center, the school Taylor founded in the late ‘60s.) I prayed to God, "Lord, open Your Word to me the way You do for Wade Taylor. Make it as real to me as it is to him."

In short, that night was a definitive moment, a memorial-place. I can trace the beginnings of my own love of God’s Word, and the style of applicatory, expository teaching that I love, to that one night when I sat under the teaching of Wade Taylor for an hour or two, saw a "burning bush" in my own spirit, and turned aside in my heart to “see this marvelous sight.” And now it has become my prayer that God might use me in the same way.

...and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. ~ 1 Corinthians 2:4, 5

The remembrance of these things brought a smile to my face.