For the best part of four decades I have preached the whole counsel of God’s Word. I believe His Word; I trust His Word and I attempt to live His Word (with varying degrees of success). I am motivated, I believe, by my love for Jesus obedience to that which He has shown me. The great motivation is not fear (in the cringing sense); nor is it simply a sense of personal duty. In my latter twenties, I sensed Him telling me that He had a job for me to do, and I simply answered in the affirmative.
Over the ensuing years, I have not required a great deal of affirmation apart from the assurance that I was doing what I knew to be right in the eyes of God. As a pastor for more than thirty of those years, I did not expect the church members to ‘stroke’ my ego. I knew that hearing their flatteries and taking them to heart might simply puff up my head and leave my dear mate with the unenviable task of deflating it. It is a good thing because frankly the affirming remarks tend to be few anyway. When I stepped away from serving as a pastor to take on the role of a Director of Missions, I understood that there would likely be less affirmation. Then my daughter-in-love introduced me to Face Book. It has proven to be an interesting outlet to inform individuals and churches of needs and events. Then I started getting ‘friend’ requests from dozens of young adults who had been children, teens or toddlers in some of the congregations I served. On occasion they contact their old preacher with questions or needs and it provides yet another ministry outlet. Sometimes they share something personal about what my ministry has meant to them. I sure never expected such kind words. I guess that the ones who did not appreciate me probably will never ask to be my friend on the social networking site. Even so, I recognize that these are not, in themselves, an endorsement of God upon my ministry.
When I consider what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter three verse 13 where he said, “each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work,” frankly I shudder. To what or two whom have I given my life? What works have I performed that will withstand the fire of His judgment? I do not wish to walk before His throne with my ‘ministry bundle,’ thinking it is precious just to see it go up in ‘HOLY SMOKE!’ I begin to take inventory and I say to myself, “I preached.” Then I remember that God made Balaam’s mule to speak, so that may not amount to as much as I thought. I list the baptisms and am reminded that one of His greatest ministers declared that he was so glad he had not be called to baptize. I think of the great numbers of dollars I led congregations to give to missions and mission projects, and then I realize that I always told the congregations to pray about what their gifts should be and give in obedience. I think about the buildings that we added and renovated and realized none of them can house Him. One begins to wonder if there is anything of lasting importance that one has done. Then a recent Sunday service took place.
We were visiting one of our member congregations who gave me the opportunity to preach for them for several weeks in a row. On the final Sunday before the service, the chairman of deacons approached me and told me he wanted to show me something. He told me that when cleaning the custodian found the pieces of paper that they had in turn put up on the bulletin board. There, hand written in pencil, in the obvious hand writing of a child were the points of the previous weeks’ sermon and also a couple of quotes I had used to drive home the point of the Scripture. In that moment, my eyes began to fill with tears. When you doubt everything about yourself, your abilities, and particularly your usefulness, God shows you that someone—a child—really understood what you had been telling them about the Savior who wanted them to become a child of God. That was the affirmation I needed. That was, to me, the word of the Lord saying, “Someone is listening; someone is watching, and I know who they are.” He is still wielding His two edged sword. He is still separating soul and spirit. God is still at work. If God can use a mule, maybe He can still use me.
Tom Edwards