Putting me in my place
I had the opportunity to give the message in church on Sunday. I learned a number of lessons while doing that. The biggest one was that despite the fact that it may have appeared that I was the ‘main dude’ at church on Sunday (I was the only person to occupy the stage by myself), that in reality it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with God.
Let me tell you the story.
Our Senior Pastor asked me ages ago if I could fill two preaching slots. I said no to one immediately as my daughter was due to be born around that time and it would have been chaos in my house. The other date (this last Sunday) seemed manageable as I would be taking 3 weeks from work to help Marla with the new baby and my assumption was that I could do some prep work during this time.
For the record, I don’t write these messages myself! I get a transcript of a message given at our partner church and work from that. I am pretty good at delivering the message, but not so great (or studied) at writing them from scratch.
A week before I was due to speak I had managed to put in a total of 0 (zero) hours prep. Not good. After a hurried intervention, Marla and I organized for CJ to spend the bulk of last weekend with Family so that I could put in some of the time required. The 2 public holidays last week (Monday and Friday) also really helped.
Fast forward to Saturday night. At this point I have completed all the prep I will be able to complete, there is no more time for anything else. I am at about 80% ready.
80% in my mind. No one will really notice the difference between 80% and 100% except me. So that last 20% is just a mixture of Pride and Perfectionism.
The time is now 03:00 on Sunday morning. I can’t sleep. I am stressing about the missing 20% when it hits me. I have not even prayed enough as I have prepared the message. That it has been 99% rehearsal and 1% prayer.
I started stressing: What if God wants to use me as an example of bad preparation, what if he wrecks my delivery, what if I make a complete fool of myself, because I have not prayed enough.
Notice how I had put the focus of things working or not on my shoulders. If it worked , great, but if it failed it was because I had not prayed enough. Silly me.
I finally got to sleep after apologizing to God for trying to hijack his deal. For thinking that I was so important that he would withhold his blessing on others because I had not got the rehearsal/prayer ratio right. For being so self-focused that somehow it all was resting on me.
Next time I will work harder to get closer to 100%, not for my own sake, but rather to glorify him with the talents he has given me. I will pray more, not because failure or success rests on my prayers, because he has asked me to come to him with everything and to lay everything at his feet.
[Image credit:quil]
Its so funny that when ever things go wrong we think that it could only be going wrong because we did something to piss God off. I totally understand what you are saying. I always make the same mistake.
Exactly!
I’m so glad Stuart didn’t accept your initial excuse and that we sacrificed the long weekend so you could do this. I love it when my husband is up there- he is brilliant at delivering the talks and it makes me very proud of him. Not because it makes him important, but because he is doing exactly what God designed him to do.
Thanks to the grans, cousins and aunts who took care of CJ who made it possible for me to be proud of my husband!
Thanks Babes