Ouch!

Ouch!
August 11, 2014

I love listening to sermons. Good sermons. God-sermons. There are a handful of pastors whom I listen to their weekly messages via podcasts and I always learn something. 

One of my favorite communicators is the senior pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California -Bill Johnson. I can just tell that he has spent a lot of his time in the presence of God. I had the pleasure of visiting Bethel while touring the Pacific Northwest in 2013. Some worship leader heroes of mine lead there, and I have great respect for the leadership of that church. 

Here is a quote I recently stumbled upon from Bill Johnson; 

"If you engage with the Holy spirit because you want to merely be effective in ministry, then you’re developing professional intimacy…and what do we call people who are intimate as a profession?"

Wow.

My worship pastor Montell Jordan says "If you can't say 'Amen!' say 'Ouch!'" And this is definitely an "Ouch!" for me. As much as I desire to be truly humble and authentic in my relationship with God, I can get overly focused on my performance as a leader and lose focus of the health of my heart -in the name of being effective in ministry. Yikes.

If there is one thing I am learning more than anything in 2014, it is the importance of being connected with God personally and privately every single day. Not for the sake of the people I lead, but for my own life. And that isn't selfish. There is a very good reason that flight attendants instruct passengers to put their own oxygen mask on before helping others when they give their little spiel before takeoff.

I certainly want to have my personal experience with God spill over into everything I do, but hopefully I can steer clear of being "professionally intimate".