Transcript
In my early days of preaching, I made the mistake of thinking that my calling was to be a painting that people would look at and say, "I want to be that person. I want to grow in that way." That put a huge burden on me, a huge fear in me, the huge pressure that I had to always be the hero example of everything that I was teaching. That's a heartbreaking burden.
I Was Called to Be a Window, Not a Painting
What I actually realized is I wasn't called to be a painting. I was called to be a window to the glory of Christ that people would look through me and would see a sufficient, capable, loving, glorious, wonderful Savior that they could entrust themselves to.
Now, here's what I think that means. It means my weaknesses do not contradict the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. My weaknesses preach the gospel. I love 2 Corinthians 1. I think it's in the Bible to make ministry people comforted because Paul talks about the fact that his suffering is God's means of preparing him for ministry and then he says, "I don't want you to be uninformed about the things we faced in the province of Asia. We are far beyond our ability to endure. In our hearts, we felt the sentence of death."
Now, think about this. This is the apostle Paul talking and he's saying, "I was way beyond my spiritual ability. In fact, I thought this is it. It's over. We're done." Now, what is Paul doing? Paul is bearing his own struggle, bearing his own weakness in order to display the marvelous glory of Christ. In fact, if you would read the pastoral epistles, they're really quite autobiographical. Paul does talk a lot about his own life, his own struggles, his own weakness and uses those as a demonstration of the value of the gospel.
Sharing Your Own Story of Grace
Now, that doesn't mean you share the blood and guts of things that are not necessary to share, but I think one of the ways that you powerfully depict the rescuing, transforming grace of the gospel is by telling your own story. Your story is a vehicle. I think that actually endears the hearts of people to you. It endears the hearts of people to your Savior.
What is the key quality of God's leader? It's not that he's a hero, it's that he's a humble servant and in humility, I'm willing to bear my heart and my life a bit so that by means of that, I would be pointing people to Christ. Now, I do want people to see the fruit of faith in my life, but I do not want the pulpit to ever be a place of personal bragging because I have nothing to brag about. There is nothing good in my life that isn't the fruit of grace that I could have never earned, achieved, or deserved.
