Today’s New Covenant nugget is from 1 Corinthians 15:10
By the grace of God, I am what I am…
I remember my grandfather telling a story, he said that when he was a young preacher, he had attended a meeting where another minister preached powerfully and sang beautifully… after sitting under this other minister’s ministry, my grandfather felt very inadequate and discouraged. He said to the Lord, “I will never be able to preach like that preacher, and I will never be able to sing like him.” The Lord replied, “yes, you are right, you will never be able to preach like him and you will never be able to sing like him, but, here’s the thing… he will never be able to preach like you, and he will never be able to sing like you either!”
You are uniquely you… you are anointed to be you… you were made to be a voice, not an echo! By the grace of God, be you! Don’t measure yourself up against others, rest in who God made you to be!
Just this weekend, I watched the service of another church… they had a beautiful, ‘state of the art’ building, they had ‘professionally done’ video announcements… the music was anointed, excellent and professionally put together, and the preacher preached powerfully with a large audience enthusiastically cheering him on… the atmosphere was charged. As I watched, I started getting discouraged… after many years of working hard, we meet outside in tents, we do not own a building or land, we set up and and break down every Sunday, and people stay away from our meetings by the thousands each Sunday, lol. We have a small, radical group of amazing people, but, after many years, we are still in the pioneering stage of our ministry.
As I was lamenting before the Lord, the Lord reminded me of what my grandfather said. He ministered to me and encouraged me to be me, by the grace of God. You see, I may never preach like the preacher I watched, and I may never have a church, or a building like he has, but the truth is, he will never be able to preach like I preach, and he will never be able to have a church like I have! By the grace of God, he has to be who he is, and I have to be who I am.
The truth is, I do not really want a church like the one I watched… as amazing as it was, I would not exchange our church for any other church in the world… I love our people, our church, meeting outdoors and everything about our ‘unprofessional’ church, full of radical believers that are ready to be far more than an enthusiastic audience… they are getting ready to shake the world, doing the works of Jesus! I love who I am, and I love what the Lord is doing through Amazing Love Church.
Many people allow ambition and a competitive nature to get them down… they allow themselves to get discouraged at their lack of achievement. Instead of enjoying who God made them to be, and instead of appreciating what they have, they look at who they are not, what they have not accomplished and what they do not have… for a brief moment, I fell into that trap, but, “thank You Jesus, You renewed my mind once again and rescued me from my flesh. Thank you Jesus for breathing life into me just when I needed it!”
You are anointed to be uniquely you, you have a unique anointing, and you have a unique calling… do not compare yourself to others in any way… say what Paul said, “by the grace of God, I am what I am!”
In His amazing love, Nick
