Privileged and Unworthy

As many of you know I am a second year student at Zion Bible College in Massachusetts and I am in a program called "Catalyst" it is a two year program which marries the idea of hands on ministry with classroom study. This program, only a few years old, has given me an opportunity to connect and grow close to a group of about 10 individuals that I am honored to be in this program with. Seeing how it is a small group we have gotten to know each other and grow together over these past few years but I cannot convey to you the glorification of God that takes part inside of our relationships with one another! WOW!


Now that you can see my heart for this group you may be able to more fully understand where I am coming from in this Blogg. This year God has been doing a work in me much greater than I can ever covey and that I could ever deserve and he has done a lot of this in my life through the very people who are in this program. This semester we all took a class together called Homiletics it is the "Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching." In this class we have an opportunity to throughout the semester present and speak 3 different messages in class, and man were they good.


But this last week i had the privilege to speak first in the long series of sermons in class that would be our final sermons conveyed to the class. This was an honor! so as I began to find my passage (2 Corinthians 4:1-6) and to study it God began to do something in my life that I have never experienced.


I began to write the sermon the night before (due to finding out i was preaching the day before) and I was so burdened by the spirit it was unbelievable. In this passage of scripture Paul himself is writing to the Corinthian church and is in a way defending his ministry and calling the Corinthian church to not focus on an "experiential" or "attractive" Gospel message, as they were so prone to do, but to speak, live, and attract Truth!! This Truth may not look like we would think or like it to look it may be filled with suffering, endurance, unpleasant remarks and attacks from others but Truth still must be taught. But the main point I emphasized in this message was that we cannot as ministers of the Gospel, whether vocationally or not, Water down or de emphasize the Gospel for the sake of pleasing people and winning soles!Why? you may ask. Well because we DO NOT win soles Christ does !!


See the Corinthian church and the people whom the Corinthian church was praising for their ministries (the heretics) were accusing Paul of doing this very thing, that is watering down the gospel. Why would they say this? well because they were not seeing the outbursts of tongues and the shaking of bodies and the "experiential" sermons and responses that these other men were showing when they came to speak (Sound familiar?)


So they are accusing Paul of being Un-Legit when in fact the very people they were praising were Un-Legit because they were crafting and forming these experiences by their own doings so that they could receive praise not so God could be praised! These men were pleasing people by preaching a false Gospel and it was only to feed their own pride!!!


This was my main point and I was so burdened by this point myself when grappling with this text because I could see the possibility of that happening in my own life!! I WAS TERRIFIED!! My pride is my biggest struggle and I know that even in the happenings of my expositions and presentations of my sermons in the class in the past that my pride was fed!! Why? not because I thought I was better than anyone else but because I knew that I excelled in speaking. I knew that my personality would not allow me to exposit a text for a class that had to be under a mere 7 min and get up there and just give a weak, typical, topical message. Not to include the fact that my classmates were giving me praise!


So comes Thursday morning and it is time for me to present my plea from scripture to my classmates to not become like these people the Corinthian church so flippantly followed. I step up in confidence and all of a sudden i become nervous beyond belief!! This has never happened! I do NOT get nervous in front of crowds in fact it is probably where I shine the most! So I struggle through my sermon never making eye contact and shacking the whole time while gripping the sides of the pulpit.


Finally I look up after I finish stumbling over my words as my bottom lip was quivering due to nerves and I see some people crying and other speechless when asked to give feedback. I then begin to question why this is happening because I know I SUCKED!!


I left class racking my brain on how this could happen? I understood how the message could hit them but not why I became so nervous. And then it hit me in the middle of my drive to the other side of campus. It was as if the Holy Spirit opened my understanding to why this all occurred. I realized that these very people the the Corinthian church exalted i was at risk of becoming possibly sooner than I thought. I realized that that message was a reality check for me that I cannot rely on my own gifts and talents and that the very idea of me even having the opportunity to speak that message I am unworthy of. It was as if God himself said "See Chase I do not need your talent or abilities that i have given you to allow my work to be done" I could see that he moved aside from my horrific effort in class and he touched lives through his word. Then again he spoke (not for real but through his spirit in me) and said "Trust me I will use these talents and Gifts for my Glory but you better believe the second Pride gets in my way those are going out the window" and I responded "Ok".


Though I knew all of these things before I went through this experience and that this had not been my first encounter with this struggle it happened at a pivotal point in my life. As I have been growing and deepening in my relationship and understanding of Christ I could have easily become arrogant, prideful, and self-sufficient. I could have relied on my own understanding and gifts and not on the all powerful, all knowing, sovereign God. This was key for me to learn and experience before I step out off of this training ground at school into some type of ministry.


I leave you with these words Spoken by Jonathan Edwards, May we apply it and shine it in and through our lives.


"He that has doctrinal knowledge only, without affection, has no business in True Religion"