Foolishness

I preached this past Sunday. At Hanover Valley, I get a lot of opportunities to preach. This Fall I will preach once a month. Most guys in my position would be drulling for the opportunities I have . I don't, I have a tendency to break out in a rash of panic and insecurity. Here's the thing, I am not a bad preacher. However, whenever I get up in that pulpit thing, I just feel so exposed, so naked when I preach. I feel like everyone gazes into my soul and sees my inability to preach. I know I will never be a Tim Keller, John Piper or any of those big wigs. I am not great with illustrations and I struggle with being faithful to the text and at the same time being practical. I am like a two year old trying to color, my sausage fingers fumble trying to handle the crayon. I often get so worked up and freaked out the night before that I turn off my heart when I get upfront to preach. I become a man who reads a document about God, instead of man who speaks of the God he is encountering and learning from.

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30am to talk to Jesus. I started reading 1 Corinthians again. I came to chapter 2. I love chapter 2, it makes unpolished, neurotic young ministers feel better. However, instead of the passage making me feel better, I felt the freedom of speaking about Jesus. "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God...We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but no the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." I can't describe the specific impact the passage has made on me, but it has given me an intense freedom to be me. To not worry about who I think I should be, but to proclaim the Gospel, to speak of Jesus as awkardly and wordy as I may be, because it is about the Spirit who opens and changes hearts. It is about the Spirit who wants to open the hearts of those who stumble and those who are foolish to the beauty of Christ. I prayed with an earnestness I haven't felt before for that God would use this foolish man to speak. It's funny, God answered my prayers. I got the nice comments like "Good job! You are really growing in your preaching." But, their was one person who has recently started coming to church. He was weeping. So, we talked. He told me for the first time he realized how much Jesus loved him. The Gospel made sense to him. I sat there amazed and speechless. We prayed and thanked God for how he had broken through in His life. I saw the Spirit at work in a very powerful way. I too became a believer again in a God who is powerful and loving. A God who loves to make himself known. A God who uses His Word to make sense of our lives. It was beautiful, supernatural and simply mysterious.