Steve Moses is a Southern Baptist minister and has been on active duty in the U. S. Navy as a Chaplain since 1994. He is currently serving as the Deputy Force Chaplain (a supervisory position) for Marine Forces in the Pacific; his office is in Hawaii. Here is his personal account (from his Facebook page) of the service last Sunday when President Obama visited the Chapel at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii

I’ve had a lot of folks ask me about preaching to the President this past Sunday. Most people want to know about the news accounts about my heart condition, which occurred nine years ago, others want to know what I preached on, so here’s a Reader’s Digest version.

On Christmas Eve, I was told the President and his family would be attending our worship service on Sunday, 26 December. The title of my message was, “Now What?” It was the day after Christmas, the shepherds and angels were gone, Mary and Joseph were alone with a new baby to raise, the Son of God … “Now What?” My text was Matt 10:29-31.

The passage describes how God cares for sparrows worth no more than a half cent, therefore He cares for us even more. Since He watches over these insignificant birds when they fall to the ground, think about how much more concerned He is about what happens to us. Even in those moments when it seems we’ve been left alone or abandoned, God is watching over us Providentially, Personally and Powerfully.

In my point about God’s providential care over us, I pointed out that when bad things happen to us, God is either Protecting us from something worse, Preparing us for something greater, or Pulling us closer to Him. A section of my sermon that gained some notoriety was where I talked about the doctors discovering a heart defect during a routine physical nine years ago that required a catheterization procedure in my heart called cardio ablation.

They went into my heart with 32 catheters, poked a hole from my right atria to my left atria, and blasted my heart with RF pulses to fix a bad current path. I questioned why God didn’t just heal me. During the sermon I joked maybe I had to go through the procedure so that I wouldn’t have a heart attack if I ever have to preach to the President!

I added that in addition to protecting us from something worse, preparing us for something greater or pulling us closer to Him, sometimes God allows us to experience a crisis so that we can declare His sufficiency to others as Paul did when he experienced the thorn in the flesh. There’s more, but that’s plenty.

The sermon was well received, I gave invitations for rededication of trust in God for the New Year and I gave an invitation for salvation. There were good responses. Afterward, we had communion and the President and his family came forward to receive communion.

After the service, the President complimented me on the sermon, said he was glad I came through the heart procedure so that I was here to preach to him, and he very sincerely asked me to pray for him and his family.

By the way some of the news accounts say “the congregation clapped and sang Joy to the World as the President entered.” The truth is music was playing as he and his family entered and after the welcome and opening prayer we sang, “Joy to the World,” as our first song.

Steve.

Chaplain Moses biography: http://www.marines.mil/unit/marforpac/chaplain/Pages/DeputyChaplainBio.aspx

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]