God Made Me For a Reason

In an era where you can watch and listen to the ‘best’ preachers around the world; were you can find thousands of blogs, websites, and videos around the globe in seconds. When you get up to speak at a church or small group or just chatting with your friends; it is so easy to slip in to being someone else, talking like your favourite speaker, or even praying for people like you see ‘that guy’ pray. Why do we choose to imitate instead of just simply admire someone doing what their called to do?

Searching for the Spotlight

Look, I want to be honest, I am 22. I am not this guy who has preached for 30 years. I am not the guy who has spent more time with God then all my friends. I am not even that seems to speak wisdom every time he opens his mouth. I am the guy who is trying to find my identity. I am the guy who is trying to learn to be a good husband. I am the guy who still love attention a bit too much sometimes. I am the guy that speaks before I think sometimes and I can dig a whole for myself but wont admit it because I am proud and stubborn. So please don’t think I have life sorted, please think I am a young man trying to discover my Identity in God and learn from what ever I can.

I know if I am not spending time with God and being accountable I can so easily fall in to christian plagiarism. At one point I was listening to 6 podcasts a week from around the world whilst also going to 2 services on a Sunday. So that is 8 messages that I was taking in; 8 different styles; 8 differently methods, and at least 8 different things to challenge myself with. So when it came time for me to share to my small group or to preach; I would have a lot of different styles going through my head. I could switch from being like Bill Johnson, to Matt Chandler, to Mark Driscoll, to John Piper, to John Arnott, to Heidi Baker in one talk. I could affectively plagiarise all those guys hard work and yet still find my identity in what I was saying.

Finding Your Identity In God

Trying to be like someone else robs you of your God-given Identity. Trying to be like anyone else will rob you from being who God created you to be. I am all up for admiring someone, but when that admiration turns to imitation or idolization you have moved from being who God created you to be, to just being a mimic act.

Robert Murray McCheyne said this about preaching,

“Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two: your life preaches all week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourself to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words, from God.”

This is the call to all believers who wish to be a preacher or in some time of ministry where your message leads and guides a body of people.

Passion

The Apostle Paul said this, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” Grace just isn’t there for when you mess up. Grace is there for to help you through the good and the bad times. Grace is there to help you grow in understanding. When Paul said he ‘worked harder than any of them’. It wasn’t because of his sheer discipline in life. It was by the grace of God he was able to do it.

Our Call

Our calling a believers in Jesus is to be unique beings but to have the same purpose; to see Jesus come. The Psalmist said,

Power

God knows you. God knows me! We must find our daily love our daily identity from God. If you’re not regularly reading the bible… get some accountability and get reading. Find Him in everything you do. Fight sin by clinging to Christ. The Holy Spirit is in us. We have His power. Now the word primary use of the word ‘power’ in the New Testament is all about ‘freedom to choose’. The power of the Holy Spirit is so best displayed in us when we make a choice to accept his power in our life.

Be yourself. That’s the way God made you. Admiring a person is fine. But don’t find your identity in them or what they say. Find your value, find your meaning, find your identity in God.