I have a routine that I go through on Saturday evenings, which is to preach my Sunday sermon to an empty auditorium.
Well, it’s not completely empty, because I do appreciate the Lord being there with his presence. Many times, I have started to preach and struggled to get my thoughts together.
I have a policy that I live by: “If it doesn’t make sense to the preacher, he shouldn’t be preaching it.”
I have gotten so frustrated that I felt like quitting and have said to the Lord, “I just can’t do this anymore.”
It’s then that I walked down to the altar, kneeled down and told the Lord that if he didn’t help me, the effort would be a lost cause. I then got up and, with God’s help, the words began to flow and the sermon came together.
Most times now, I start at the altar, confessing that I must have God’s help in order to succeed.
It all comes down to the fact that fulfilling God’s call in your life is not about you — it’s about God. It’s about the end result of the Father and Jesus Christ getting all the honor and credit for anything good happening through our lives.
The Apostle Paul said in the Scriptures that God gave him what he called a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being conceited.
In other words, God allowed difficulties to come into Paul’s life so that he would remember that the ministry was not about him but about God, and in order to fulfill that ministry, he would have to depend on God.
God has gifted all of us with abilities to help our fellow man. But he will require the end result to be him getting the praise, honor and credit. It truly must not be about us.