I preached a sermon tonight at my home church. What most people don’t know is that I skipped an entire page of notes and started giving away my ending – until I realized that I was on the wrong page.Sweating and flustered, I tried to recover by making one point and then retracing my steps to the place I was actually at. In addition, I fumbled over my concluding statement – you know, the one that everyone is supposed to remember!
Needless to say (and why do we even say that?) – I sat down afterwards and thought to myself, “It’s not about me, it’s not about me.” This was to remind myself that even if my performance(?) was off, God could still use it.
Of course, God had something else in mind, because evidently, nobody noticed that I got completely lost. (I’ve got one or two people who really are completely honest with me, and I asked them about it). In fact, the first person who came up to me afterwards asked for a copy of the message (to my near bewilderment).
This is all to say that we are but spectators during a worship service. It is never about the quality of the music (even though we should strive for excellence) or the eloquence of the preacher (even though we should strive for clarity and potency) or the lighting, the prayers, the coffee afterwards, etc…
We serve a God who will use our efforts and do his thing. He did his thing tonight, and I for one glad that preachers are not really in charge of the results.
(And I’m glad that nobody noticed my blunder – but it’s not about that, is it?)
Consider Paul’s distribution of credit:
Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done. Romans 15:17-18
