Still not perfect

I’m glad I can look back on my life in the ministry and see how the Lord has developed me. When I was a young immature preacher I had all of my priorities messed up. I used to think to be a successful preacher I needed to preach loud, hard, fast, get red faced, work up a sweat, jump high, get a lot of Amen’s, use a bunch of clichés, tell funny jokes, wear white shirts, be well known, draw large crowds, have my name published, get a bunch of pats on the back and people telling me how good I preached... and then I realized that all of those things were about ME, and none of them were about Jesus.

 Sometimes I get so embarrassed when I listen to my old sermons or meet someone that knew me in those early days, but now I realize that he was just perfecting me, not that I’m perfect by any means but praise God I’m not the man I used to be! I am so glad the Lord humbled me and broke me from myself. The truth is, none of the things we do in the flesh are going to matter when we stand before Him naked. All that is going to matter is our personal relationship with Him and how we handled the truth of the Gospel. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” ~Hebrews 4:13 KJV