turnaround

It's strange...and wonderful how God will change your priorities. How God will sometimes take something you wanted to do before you were saved and use it, but at the same til do a complete 360 on it.

Even after i became a Christian, when i thought about preaching, my priorities were a mess. Let me be funny i thought, sure, let my message by good, but if i can make people laugh even better...because then i know they like me. Now, as i think about speaking on the next three wednesdays on evangelism, and 'preaching' at USCU a week on thursday, i couldn't be less interested in being funny. People who are starving to know of the grandeur and majesty of Christ are amusing themselves to death as it is. And i want to perpetuate that? No. I want to be earnest. Oh God let me be earnest. Let me burn with a sense of Your message, with a sense of responsibility. Let me not even care whether people like it or not. But let me be earnest. Let me be taken with the seriousness of the responsibility of what i'm doing, and not diminish that to get a cheap laugh.

I need to be burdened. I want to take to heart the awful and yet inspiring truth of James 3:1. I want this burden to produce earnestness and seriousness in me. I need this burden to be joyful...i want to know the grace of God as He helps me prepare, and then speak. I want to be weighed down, and yet lifted up by the glory of God in the face of Christ. This is surely the greatest priveledge there is...to know that, to see that, to speak that. Not neccesarily exclusivly through preaching, but definately through proclamation. And thats exciting. I want to know this burden, and i want to rejoice in it.

I need to build bridges between each verse...taking them apart and putting them back together again. I want to show people the glory of Christ from the Bible, because that is a very great thing. I want to preach the Gospel (i mean obviously) i want to try and show Christ in all His grandeur and show people that this is what they need...more of Christ and less of anything else.

I need to remember that the only way i can do anything is because of the cross. That the wonderful cross dealt with my biggest problem, my sin, and cleared the way for people to have a relationship with the Father through union with the Son. Isn't that the best news ever? I need to be so taken with the glory of Christ, and the importance of the gospel that it just oozes out of me.

And i need to be joyful. I need to rejoice over the text, over the Bible, because that makes us wise for salvation. And that is pretty important!