The Insecure Preacher
Once upon a time, there was a good preacher of the gospel who was seeing some good results when he ministered to the sick. But he didn’t always enjoy his life. He always had a nagging feeling that he should be doing things better and spending more time praying and studying. It didn’t matter how much praying and studying he did, it seemed like he always needed to do “more” if he was to become truly successful. The same words his church’s worship leaders used almost every service (“C’mon, you can do better than that!”) had defined his life. Surely he could do better and become someone that God could “really” use. If only he had more time to pray and get closer to God like some of the great preachers of old!
You see, he worked a full-time job to support himself while preaching “on the side,” so time was a precious commodity. He also had a wife and a small child to care for. So time was very limited. After all, his family wanted to see him! He would do some enjoyable things at home, but in the back of his head was the nagging feeling that he COULD have been spending that time praying for the lost and praying for revival constantly like the people in the book he’d read, “Why You Don’t See a Move of God” by James Heavyhand. This book challenged people who had never stayed up all night praying for revival. He liked the idea, but he figured that he had to work the next day, and it wouldn’t help him be a great revivalist if he fell asleep at work and lost his job. In fact, it was hard enough to spend his mandatory 60-minute Official Quiet Time with God in the morning before going to work as required by another book he read (“You MUST Pray One Hour” by Lee Gallist). He suspected that God was none too happy when he fell asleep during his designated hour. In fact, he suspected that maybe there would not be a move of God in his area because he just didn’t have time to pray a lot and most other people had no idea what revival was and wouldn’t be praying for it. So it could be up to him and he was dropping the ball.
He lamented the lack of time he had to “get prayed up” before preaching. Of course, working 40 hours a week did put a dent in his free time, and overtime weeks were worse. He’d go through a mental checklist. Did he spend time interceding for the people who would hear his message? Did he spend enough time in the Word to get a good message? Did he spend enough time just being still before God and listening to see if God had a special direction for the service or any prophetic words? Did he build himself up enough praying in the Holy Spirit? Did he bind Satan enough? Did he pray for revival to break out in that city? Did he pray sufficiently mighty prayers to “pray the power down?” Did he get himself “full enough of the Word” so that his “faith level” would be ready to handle any need before him? Could he – for at least his next engagement – be a real “man of prayer” like the people in Heavyhand’s book?
Of course, he could never answer all those questions in the affirmative, so he always felt like he really should be a better preacher than He was. He heard people use the slogan all the time, “It’s all about YOU!” and that had unwittingly become his motto when preaching. It was indeed all about him – HIS prayer time, HIS preparation and study, HIS faith level, and so on. The pressure was no fun, and he would almost moan when he heard the Scripture that said that Jesus’ yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). There wasn’t much easy or light going on with his preaching ministry. He was SURE that God was looking disapprovingly from heaven, saying, “You should be doing more…if only you had the time to be a real man of prayer and get close to Me! Then I’d reveal my REALLY deep secrets to you and your ministry would be world-shaking. C’mon, you can do better than that!” He lamented the times that someone with a serious need came forward, and he thought, “If only my faith level were higher, I could pray in faith for that person’s healing. But I’ll have to do a LOT more Word reading to advance my faith meter to that point, and it would probably take more time than I actually have.”
Then there was the issue of sin. This preacher had heard that “the purer the vessel, the more God can use it.” So he undertook to find all the sin in his life so that he could get rid of it and then God could really use him. Following his church’s suggestion, he made a list with huge letters at the top that said MY SIN. He then proceeded to list all the sins he was committing that he could think of. What about those sins of omission, like NOT praying for all those in authority? Had he prayed for the president? The vice president? His representative and his senators? The Supreme Court justices? The local mayor and city council? The state governor and lieutenant governor? The local School Committee? The members of the town Zoning Board of Appeals? The Sin List started to get overwhelming, but the preacher didn’t want to miss a thing. So he kept re-reading the famous old revival sermon, “All the Different Ways You’re Sinning” by Hugo S. Trey. This brought up all kinds of different sins the preacher had never even considered.
His next step was to carefully confess every sin on a regular basis so that he could receive forgiveness for each one, based on what his church taught about 1 John 1:9. He wanted to “keep short accounts with God” by staying “fessed up” (as they put it). After all, how could God use anyone who had unforgiven sins?
When bad things happened or his ministry plans seemed to be advancing too slowly, he would automatically assume that God was punishing him for his poor Christian walk. This surely meant that he would have to redouble his efforts to stay out of sin and press into more spiritual activity during the day so that God would be able to remove the restrictions He was placing to delay his ministry until such time as he had his act more together. He consoled himself by reasoning that someday he would be glad that God had held back his ministry, because he would not have been as ready as he thought he was to advance.
He started his own business, which made his schedule more flexible. Although it had tripled his income, he started feeling guilty about all the money he was getting. Shortly after becoming a Christian, he had read about the (supposedly) Christian need to give almost everything away and live on the minimum possible. The book (“Feel Guilty Because Others Starve” by Nicholas Pokkets) had made him question having anything nice for himself or his family. His family, which had not read that book, did not have an issue with having some nice things. He was single when he first read the book, and in his zeal (which at that point exceeded his wisdom) he gave away almost all his life’s savings, leaving himself with a single-digit bank account after he gave the rest to help starving people in Africa. After all, wasn’t that what Jesus expected of the rich young ruler (although this preacher, while young, was by no means rich)? But if he had money now, would not the Lord want him to do the same? And if he didn’t do it, wouldn’t he have some dead African child’s blood on his hands while he feasted on a hot fudge sundae downtown? He even heard a man on the radio boast that he gave the money to buy a lawn mower to the cause of the gospel once he realized that he could ask the neighbors to borrow THEIR lawn mowers – though one might wonder exactly what kind of Gospel witness it would be to serve a “cheap” God like that.
The problem was that no matter how much he gave, there would always be one more poor person who might die of starvation. Although no one had appointed him Feeder of the World, he often felt that whatever he did was never enough.
Then there was the issue of fasting. The idea of a long fast didn’t seem too practical when he had to work for a living, but he had heard that many mightily-used preachers of old had gone on long fasts, following the advice of an old book (“The FAST Way to Incredible Spiritual Power” by Les B. Eaton). If only he weren’t bi-vocational – maybe he’d have a shot at emulating some greats of faith! But maybe he would have to settle for ROUTINE spiritual power for now.
Then there was the issue of reading the Bible through once a year, as so many people recommended. But the preacher felt guilty about not wanting to spend much time in certain Old Testament passages enumerating who begat whom and who did what service in Moses’ tabernacle and how many shekels or hins of whatever and turtledoves or pigeons or sheep were required as sacrifices for certain sins. The extended doom prophecies in the “major and minor prophets” seemed to get old after a while, too, though they were interesting to at least read through. However, the preacher had no personal stake in what had happened in Edom, Philistia, Babylon, Egypt, Moab, and so on, and he felt guilty for not getting “into it” more while reading about the woes to various countries. The preacher always looked forward to the New Testament part of the reading because that was the covenant he was in, but reading the Bible through every year meant spending the majority of his Bible reading time in the Old Testament. In fact, he sometimes got an “Old Testament mentality,” finding himself being judgmental and critical of others, and even more so of himself for failing to measure up to God’s expectations. He feared God’s hot displeasure and did not look forward to the day when he would give account of himself to Jesus, figuring that he would owe the Lord a huge apology for not having done more with his life.
Amazingly, that same preacher today enjoys preaching and enjoys life! What changed? Well, he learned some things.
The Golf Pro’s Advice
The preacher had loved golf since childhood, but he was never any good at it. He probably had every bad habit mentioned in golf instruction books – moving his head, not keeping his left arm straight, forcing the shot by lunging with his hands from the top of his backswing, shifting his weight from his front foot to his back foot when striking the ball, gripping the club too tightly, and so on. He had done some things to help a local golf pro, and in return the pro gave him some free lessons. The preacher felt embarrassed as he went for his first lesson. The pro was going to see everything he was doing wrong!
But the preacher obviously needed the help. When he had a water hazard in front of him, a perfectly normal shot became grounds for panic. All he could think was, “Whatever you do, DON’T duff the ball into the hazard like you did the last twenty times you played this hole!” He would fight to control his body so that it would stop shaking. It would normally be an easy shot – but not with that water that was messing with his head! There was a time that a man who shouldn’t have been there was way off to the side and he thought, “Whatever you do, DON’T hit that man with the ball by hitting a ‘banana-ball’ slice!” His ensuing shot missed the man by only a few feet. On another occasion, there was a condo wall to the left of a hole, and he thought to himself, “Whatever you do, DON’T duck-hook your drive and hit that condo!” He heard a sickening thwack as his ball bounced off the condo.
To his surprise, the first thing the golf instructor said was, “I’m not going to tell you everything you’re doing wrong. If I do that, that’s all you’ll think about during your swing, and that will actually reinforce bad habits. I don’t want you to think about doing WRONG things. Instead, I’m going to tell you what to do RIGHT. If you’ll concentrate on doing the RIGHT things, you automatically won’t do the wrong things.” To the preacher’s amazement, the advice worked! He concentrated on getting certain swing mechanics RIGHT, and amazingly, the WRONG habits stopped.
A famous golfer was asked, “What about the big water hazard in front of the green?” and his reply was something like this: “What water? I’m not looking at that water because that’s not where my shot is going. I’m looking at the green, because THAT’S where my shot is going.” The biggest golf problems that preacher had were between his two ears!
The preacher chopped over 20 strokes off his handicap as he started to shoot under 100 for 18 holes regularly, eventually getting well into the 80’s on good days and finally breaking 80. Before those lessons, he had broken 100 once in thirty years of golf! Eventually, the hole on which the preacher cleared the water hazard only 2 or 3 times a YEAR became easy, as the vast majority of his shots made it over. In fact, he moved to another location where the local golf course had a pond in front of the green on a certain hole, and it was his best-scoring hole! He kept encouraging himself that he COULD do it right and he concentrated on doing things right instead of wrong.
The day came when he realized that he was making exactly the same mistake he made at golf when it came to SIN! By dwelling on sin all the time, he had developed an acute sin-consciousness. He was constantly afraid that he would “let God down” by sinning. This would surely result in His displeasure, which would surely result in Him holding back how much He could use him. To try to combat sin, he became his own worst critic, roundly criticizing himself for every shortcoming. He tried harder and harder not to sin, but it wasn’t working! Then he discovered Galatians 5:16 and realized that it was the same principle that the golf pro had shared, but in the spiritual realm. Here God had promised that if he concentrated on doing the RIGHT things – walking in the Spirit – he would automatically not do the WRONG things. He made that change and avoiding sin became much easier.
He finally understood what Romans 5:17 says – that righteousness is a GIFT, not a state of self-achieved sinless perfection. So he chose to think about his righteous standing with God that had been his all along because of Jesus’ blood – he just hadn’t recognized it! He had labored under the concept that righteousness was something that you work up that depends on how “good” a life you’re living. He finally realized that he had the same right to approach God as JESUS because that GIFT of righteousness had made him just as righteous as Jesus. Whew, that took a load off his thinking! No longer would he have to work for God’s acceptance when he was already “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). He could come BOLDLY to the throne of grace to get mercy and grace to help when he needed it (Hebrews 4:16)! God could use him ANYTIME because of his blood-bought right standing!
And just as it had worked at golf, when he reflected on his blood-bought right standing with God, it became much easier not to sin – the pressure to perform was off! Just as it was easier not to duff the ball into the hazard when he stopped fearing duffing the ball into the hazard, it was easier not to sin when he stopped fearing that he would sin.
And the biggest relief was the day that He realized that God was not up in heaven counting his sins against him. He wasn’t looking over the banister of heaven finding every little fault He could nitpick about. Instead, God’s primary thought toward him was LOVE, not CRITICISM. He felt a little silly having labored under the lie for so long that God was constantly focused on his failures and shortcomings – as he was!
How to Get Close to God
If you’re a believer, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all live in you (1 John 4:15, John 14:23, Romans 8:9). So if you want to get close to God, the first thing to do is get saved!
Then draw near to Him (James 4:8) and He will draw near to you. That doesn’t take hours of prayer so that you can get “really close.” Just choose to draw near to Him and He will reciprocate immediately. That’s biblical, as opposed to singing, “Just a closer walk with Thee. Grant it Jesus, is my plea.” If you’ll just choose to draw near to God, no pleading will be necessary for Him to draw close to you.
It got the preacher off the performance treadmill when he realized that his ability to approach God (and thus be “close”) was not based on his track record after all – it was based on Jesus’ perfect track record that had been imputed to him the day he got saved!
God Isn’t an Unreasonable Taskmaster
He found out some good news – God actually knew that he had a job and a family when He called him! Jesus DID tell the truth when He said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30).
Now that doesn’t mean that you’ll never face hatred and trials – God assures you that you will (2 Timothy 3:12, John 16:33) – or that you’ll never have to exert any great effort at any time. But God is NOT an Egyptian taskmaster threatening beatings if you don’t make bricks without straw. He won’t call you to do something knowing that you’ll never have the time to do it. Now, you might not have the time to be all over social media, watch TV and play multiplayer internet games and still have time to do what He wants, but if you will order your steps correctly, you WILL have time to accomplish everything that He wants you to do. Just be aware that this may involve some sacrifice of what your FLESH would rather do sometimes.
It’s All About JESUS
The devil must be the one who coined the phrase, “It’s all about YOU!” When you get centered on yourself, you set yourself up to fail. Rather than looking to himself as the perfecter of his own faith, the preacher finally learned to look to JESUS, the Author and Finisher of his faith (Hebrews 12:2). After all, isn’t Jesus the best faith teacher ever? Why not get His help in learning to walk by faith?
Rather than having faith in his faith, or faith in his ability to be prayed up, he learned to trust Jesus. Preaching was a lot more enjoyable without that pressure on himself.
Authority Is Exercised, Not Prayed Up
The preacher finally learned another lesson: You don’t PRAY to get authority over the devil and his works. You get SAVED! From that point forward, you HAVE authority over the devil and his works (Luke 10:19). It is the DEVIL who wants you to think that you have to be “prayed up” enough to do anything. What Jesus gave you in the New Covenant was on a gift basis that has nothing to do with your personal performance.
What about the words of Jesus about the disciples’ unbelief through lack of prayer and fasting? I believe in prayer and I believe in fasting, and I do both. But I don’t do them out of fear of missing out on spiritual power. I do them because I love God and I want to keep my flesh under. Jesus had already GIVEN His disciples authority over unclean spirits. The issue was NOT that they needed to pray and fast to get that authority – it was that they needed to pray and fast to become more aware of the authority that they already had! And so it is today. I’ve never been on a long fast, either; I’ve never gone more than four days in a row at this writing and I have no plans to break that record.
Jesus did not say, “You shall receive power after you prove your consecration by going on a long fast.” He said, “You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). So the way to receive spiritual power is to receive the Holy Spirit, not go on a fast. Have you received the Holy Spirit? If so, you HAVE received power, so stop struggling and striving to try to get it!
The Key Is USING the Faith You Have, Not GETTING Faith
A question the preacher used to ask himself when a person with a need came up was, “Do I have enough faith?” This was just part of his constant introspection that he needed to get over. A better question is, “What does the Word say?” When you know what the Word says, you just act on it. Acting on the Word does not consist of staring at your navel trying to figure out if you have enough faith to do something. God has already given you the measure of faith (Romans 12:3)! When the disciples asked for more faith (Luke 17:5-6), Jesus did not say, “Sure, here’s more faith! I knew you needed more.” Instead, He talked about what would happen if you USE your faith – even if your faith were the smallest they could imagine – the size of a mustard seed! Faith for a particular thing comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Once you hear the Word concerning laying hands on the sick (Mark 16:18, John 14:12), you can now point the faith you already have in that direction. Once you know what the Word says, just act on the Word. That is the essence of walking in faith.
The preacher had heard a lot of “faith” messages about “building your faith,” and there is something to be said for immersing yourself in the Word so that what it says becomes more real to you than what your circumstances are telling you. The problem comes when you see yourself as struggling to raise the level of your “faith meter.” For example, this preacher had heard that “faith comes by hearing the Word” (see Romans 10:17) so he figured that if he would just read the Bible as much as possible, his faith level would soar. The idea was to just read and read and read – it didn’t matter which books of the Bible – and watch his faith level rise! This was based on a misunderstanding of Romans 10:17 in its context, the main thought of which is expressed 3 verses earlier:
Romans 10:14:
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
The preacher finally realized that his take on this verse, which was “build my faith sky-high by reading and re-reading a lot of Scripture” was the opposite of what the verse really teaches! The people in question had not heard the gospel because no one had preached it to them. Once they heard it, they could exercise their faith (which every man has – Romans 12:3) for the blessing of the new birth. There is no hint here that you have to hear the gospel a lot of times before you get “enough faith” to get saved. I know that some people extract the phrase “hearing, and hearing” and preach it as meaning that you have to “hear and hear” (a lot) the Word of God to walk in faith. But I see no reason to mess with the comma where the translators put it – connecting two thoughts that faith comes by hearing AND hearing comes by the Word of God. When you have heard what the Word says, you can exercise your faith by ACTING on it. Paul did not even hint that the hearers might have to hear the same message 100 times before people would actually get “a high enough faith level” to act on it. We don’t see the apostles preaching like that. They put the gospel of what Jesus did out there and people believed it without any indication that they needed to hear it more than once before they could act on their faith. Peter certainly didn’t have to preach ten faith messages at Cornelius’s house – he didn’t even get through ONE message and the people had heard enough to get saved. They acted on the gospel before he was even done with what he had planned to say!
I think we’ve unwittingly done ourselves a disservice in faith circles by tying extensive works on our part to being able to act in faith and walk in God’s blessings. We’ve made things a LOT more complicated than necessary. Once you hear what the Word says, you can point your faith in that direction and act on what God says. You don’t have to be immersed in the Word 24/7 to do that. God knows that you don’t have the time to do that.
Now I’m sure that some people will take issue with these statements and conclude that I am somehow against reading the Bible a lot. I’m not! I sometimes “binge-read” the Bible and not that long ago before I wrote this, I read the entire Bible in one month. I love the Word, and you should too! The better you know Scripture, the better you can act in faith in agreement with what it says. However, what I’m warning against is getting a “works mentality” that “it’s all about YOU – YOUR ability to muster up more faith.” This puts the focus on YOU instead of JESUS and His finished work, and it will lead to frustration. How many times did the woman with the issue of blood have to hear of Jesus? How many times did the crowds need to hear about the Man from Nazareth who did works indicating that He was the promised Messiah? Probably not dozens of times! They received when they ACTED on what they heard. If they could hear once (probably) and act in faith back then, why can’t we do it today?
So should you read the Word a lot? Absolutely! But NOT with the idea that if you don’t adhere to a feverish Bible reading schedule, you won’t have heard the Word “enough” to respond in faith to a need that arises in your life. Just ask yourself this question: What would you do if you knew with 100% certainty that every verse in the Bible is true? Well, just go act accordingly. That’s faith!
Fessed Up and Messed Up
Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to confess every sin to God to be “right” with Him – Jesus already took care of the “right with God” issue when He gave you the gift of HIS righteousness (Romans 5:17). But the preacher finally learned what 1 John 1:9 really means and got free from the idea that God couldn’t use him unless HE could figure out all the ways that he was sinning and confess those sins one by one. That was a major relief! No longer did he have to worry that he might get messed up because he wasn’t fessed up.
Binding the Devil?
It finally dawned on the preacher that no one in the New Testament ever said, “Now, remember to bind the devil every day!” as he had heard one of his favorite preachers say, nor was there a record that anyone in Acts “bound the devil” before preaching. Scripture doesn’t say that Satan will be bound until he’s bound for a thousand years! Jesus said WHATSOEVER, not WHOSOEVER, you bind on earth will be bound in heaven (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18).
You Can Trust the WORD to Do the Work in People
It’s not up to you to be a Holy Spirit Salesperson and try to convince everyone of the truth with your persuasive oratory. Let the Holy Spirit do the convincing. He’s the one who teaches believers all things. Put the Word out there and expect that it will work effectively in people who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13). It was liberating for the formerly insecure preacher to realize that it is GOD’S word he was preaching, so GOD would back it and use it to enlighten the hearers. That took the pressure off himself and made preaching a lot more enjoyable.
Held Back No More
What a relief it was the day that he realized that GOD was not the one trying to hold him back – Satan was. After all, God had already said “Go!” How freeing it was to know that he no longer had to walk in fear because of his unbiblical “Don’t sin or God can’t use you!” mindset. How liberating to realize that setbacks were NOT God’s punishment for his failure to measure up! This gave him the boldness to just GO and trust God’s grace in him to work, rather than feeling like he had to earn enough merit badges from God before God could “really” use him.
Walk Free as He Did!
If you can identify at all with what this preacher went through, I hope that you can learn the lessons he did and walk in freedom rather than living in constant fear of messing up, displeasing God, facing punishment for your shortcomings and having your ministry held back.