These past 3 days the staff here at The GBC attended the Newspring Leadership Conference at Newspring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. It was a day full of 7 of the best known pastors in America. It was 8 hours of sermon after sermon spoken by church leaders for church leaders. Needless to say, it rocked my world.
Of all the pastors that spoke, the one message that hit the closest to home for me was not from one of my "favorite" pastors. Don't get me wrong, I think this dude is amazing, but he's not one I typically watch sermons of online. His name is Craig Groeschel. Craig spoke on (coincidentally) my favorite verse in the whole Bible. That verse is Acts 20:24. At first I thought "Sweet! I'm definitely going to relate to this since he's using my favorite Bible verse." Well, I was right, but not for the reason I thought it would be. Here is the verse:
However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.
- Acts 20:24
Craig broke this verse down into 4 points. I'm not going to type every point he made, but I am going to share the 2 things that absolutely destroyed me and my ego.
First, his fourth point was selfless passion. He talked about how we say that we agree with this verse, but it's so easy to say and extremely difficult to live. Think about the first sentence "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me...". Who have I been kidding all this time I've been a Christian and lover of this verse?! Of course I consider my life worth everything!
Second, he made a chart with 3 levels - Me, We, and God. The Me level is all about those who want to make a name of themselves. They want to be noticed. We is all about the "look at our church and the difference we're making." This is a step up from Me but still selfish. Finally, the God level is focusing all attention, all glory, all acknowledgement, and all exaltation on our Creator. After explaining all of this, Craig asked people to stand if they felt like they were in the Me category, then the We, then the God. Here's where I'm going to be very transparent: I stood on the Me category. Sad but true. The Holy Spirit had hold of my heart saying "You're always wanting people to notice you." I couldn't argue. I struggle with being noticed by more than just 6-12 graders and their parents. That's crap! The Bible says in Colossians 3:23-24:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly in the We category as well. I am so proud to be part of such an AMAZING church, and I let it be known, but then again, I'm taking the emphasis off of God, making it sound as if our church is awesome because of Us rather than God.
In closing, I just got out of the shower. I do a lot of thinking while taking a shower, mowing my yard, anything that has a constant noise to block out the world's noise all around me. The Holy Spirit just gave me an amazing idea that I will not go into major detail with but would like to share the main point of what I believe He is telling me to make into a sermon series.
"FLESH" is "SELF"spelled backwards with a silent H. Hence the title of this blog: (H)SELF.
A spelling coincidence? Perhaps. Coincidence that I thought of it? Not a chance. That was all God.
I just hope and am striving to make it to the God category level where Kingdom-minded selfless passion is all I know.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
- Galatians 5:24
