Who Are You to Tell Anybody About God?

If your failures have made you feel disqualified from serving Him, this is for you.

This thought started because October is Clergy Appreciation Month.

I was thinking about pastors and ministry leaders—people who have given years of their lives to teaching His Word, tending His people, praying, counseling, visiting, carrying burdens, going after wandering sheep.

There is something beautiful about that kind of life.

Not because the person becomes worthy of glory.

The glory belongs to God.

But a life poured out in service to Him says something about His worthiness.

You are worth my time.

You are worth my gifts.

You are worth my labor.

You are worth my obedience.

You are worth my life.

And really, the closer we get to a holy God, the harder it is to become overly impressed with what we have given Him.

If anything, His presence has a way of humbling you.

You become increasingly aware of the distance between His goodness and yours. His faithfulness and yours. His holiness and the things still hiding in the corners of your heart.

You start to feel a little like:

If this is the most I have to give You, it isn't enough.

But it is the least I can do.

What a privilege to have anything that can be given to Him at all.

What a privilege for God to entrust His people to human hands.

What a privilege to be allowed to participate in something He could accomplish without us.

Scripture even tells us that it is God who works in us, giving us both the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.

So when we honor someone for faithful service, we can acknowledge the hands without confusing them for the source of the strength in them.

We can thank the servant while glorifying the King.

And we can allow their devotion to remind us of something:

He is worthy of ours too.

But what if you haven't been very faithful?

This is where the thought becomes personal for me.

When I first came to know God, I was on fire.

I wanted to tell people about Him. I had ideas. I had boldness. I wanted to serve. I imagined all kinds of things I would do for the Kingdom of God.

And then I fell into sin.

I didn't stop believing in God.

I just became painfully acquainted with myself.

I saw the distance between the Christian I thought I would be and the woman I actually was.

I wrestled with grace.

I wrestled with my own inconsistencies.

I wrestled with the idea of speaking to anybody about righteousness while struggling to walk rightly myself.

And there is a question that can become very loud from that position:

Who are you to tell anybody anything?

Maybe yours sounds a little different.

Who are you to minister to somebody?

Who are you to start that thing?

Who are you to pray for somebody else when your own prayer life is struggling?

Who are you to talk about God after what you've done?

Who are you to serve when you cannot even seem to get yourself together?

Sometimes that voice comes from the very real knowledge of our own failures.

Sometimes fear joins in.

Sometimes shame.

And I believe sometimes there is spiritual opposition that is more than happy to use all three.

Whatever mixture produced the chatter, pay attention to what it is trying to make you do.

Hide.

Be quiet.

Withdraw.

Keep staring at yourself.

Keep examining your inadequacy until your inadequacy becomes larger in your sight than the God who called you.

That is where I think we have to slow down and recognize that the enemy is real and so is the war.

Condemnation can sound like humility

There is a kind of sorrow over sin that draws you toward God.

It confesses.

It repents.

It asks to be washed.

It asks to be corrected.

It opens the door and lets Him into the ugly room.

That is different from the voice that tells you to stay outside until you have cleaned yourself up enough to deserve His company.

God's conviction draws us into the light.

Condemnation makes us hide in the dark, thinking we are being humble.

And sometimes condemnation makes a very convincing argument because it uses evidence.

You did do that.

You have been inconsistent.

You did know better.

You haven't prayed like you should.

You have wasted time.

You have disobeyed.

The problem isn't necessarily the evidence.

The problem is the verdict.

The conclusion becomes:

Therefore, God cannot use you.

Therefore, sit down.

Therefore, shut up.

Therefore, whatever light God put in you should stay covered until you become somebody more impressive.

Be careful.

A lie does not become truth because it contains facts.

You may have failed.

You may need to repent.

You may need accountability.

You may need to repair something you damaged.

You may need to become much more serious about obeying God.

But none of those things require you to agree with condemnation.

Romans 8:1 does not say there is no longer anything in us that needs correction.

It says:

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

God does not have to pretend that you are good in order to be gracious to you.

That is the beauty of grace.

My testimony is not that I became good enough

This is what I had to understand.

My testimony was never going to be:

I finally became so faithful that I earned the right to tell people about a faithful God.

No.

I wandered.

He remained.

I was inconsistent.

He remained.

There are times when I neglect Him, and He continues to draw me.

There were places I should not have been, and He did not allow me to become comfortable there forever.

There were things that once felt like home that no longer feel like home.

That is grace.

The fact that sin doesn't feel like home anymore is grace.

The fact that something in me still wants Him is grace.

The fact that after disappointment with myself, after failure, after all the ways I have fallen short, I still know that my soul will be restless until it rests in Him—

that is grace.

I may not have a testimony of my own perfect faithfulness.

But I have a long testimony of His.

I can tell you He is patient.

I can tell you He is merciful.

I can tell you He corrects.

I can tell you He restores.

I can tell you He is faithful when I am inconsistent.

I can tell you that yesterday's failure does not make today's grace inaccessible.

And if that is the testimony I have, then that is the testimony I will give.

You do not have to testify about your goodness to testify about His.

Do not fight condemnation by trying to prove yourself

It's a trap.

Because if condemnation says, You aren't good enough, our instinct can be to start gathering evidence that we are.

Look at what I did.

Look at how much I've changed.

Look how disciplined I am now.

Look how much I serve.

Look how much Scripture I know.

Look how useful I have become.

And congratulations, condemnation has managed to keep the conversation centered on you.

There is a better response.

Move your eyes.

If the accusation is that you are weak, don't spend the afternoon trying to prove that you are strong.

God already addressed weakness.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

If fear says you should shrink back, God has already spoken about the spirit He gave you.

If shame says your history should keep your light covered, Jesus is still the One who told you to let your light shine so that the Father would be glorified.

If condemnation keeps presenting your failures as evidence, present the blood of Jesus.

Present mercy.

Present grace.

Present the character of God.

Present what He said.

Return to what is true.

This is warfare.

There is a fight against your active knowledge of God.

There is a fight to keep what you know about Him from becoming the reality you live from.

There is a fight to keep you so conscious of the flesh that you forget the Spirit.

So aware of weakness that you forget His strength.

So aware of the accuser's case that you forget your Advocate.

So embarrassed by where you've been that you stop paying attention to where God is calling you now.

Don't cooperate.

You are not the source

Maybe this is where we can learn something from the faithful people we honor.

No pastor who spends years communing with a holy God should believe the flock survives because of the pastor.

The Shepherd is Christ.

The Word is His.

The Spirit is His.

The people are His.

Even the ability to serve Him is grace.

And that should not produce passivity.

It should produce surrender.

There is something freeing about realizing:

I do not have to be the source of what God wants to pour through me.

I have to yield.

I have to obey.

I have to repent when I don't.

I have to return when I wander.

I have to stay close enough to Him to be corrected, fed, strengthened and sent.

A branch does not need to become a vine before it can bear fruit.

It needs to remain.

We are a priesthood

Pastors carry particular offices and particular responsibilities. Scripture places weight on those offices, and none of this is an argument against biblical qualifications, accountability or holiness.

But pastors are not the only people called to serve the purposes of God.

We are a priesthood.

Royal and set apart.

There are people stumbling around in darkness grasping for God, grasping for hope, grasping for something true enough to set them free.

Somebody needs the fruit of your intimacy with Him.

Somebody needs your testimony.

Somebody needs your prayer.

Somebody needs the patience God has grown in you.

Somebody needs the thing He taught you on the rough side of the mountain.

Somebody needs you to apologize.

Somebody needs you to forgive.

Somebody needs you to open your mouth.

Somebody needs you to stop treating your weakness like a command to disappear.

Maybe you have spent enough time asking:

Who am I to do this?

Ask a better question.

Who is He?

Is He gracious enough?

Is He powerful enough?

Is His mercy still enduring?

Is the Holy Spirit still able to strengthen weak people?

Is God still able to use imperfect vessels?

Is He still worthy of whatever you have left to give?

Then give it.

The least I can do

So, yes, this thought started with Clergy Appreciation Month.

And I hope we honor people who have faithfully tended God's people.

I hope we acknowledge the years.

The prayers nobody heard.

The calls nobody knew about.

The sermons prepared while tired.

The visits.

The counsel.

The burden-bearing.

The obedience.

But perhaps while we are looking at lives poured out in service, we can also let their faithfulness remind us of the One they are serving.

He is worthy.

Worthy of the years.

Worthy of the labor.

Worthy of the sacrifice.

Worthy of the gifts He gave us in the first place.

And if you are reading this feeling painfully aware that what you have given Him has not been enough, I understand.

Mine hasn't either.

But bring Him what you have.

Bring Him the weakness too.

Bring Him the fear.

Bring Him the shame.

Bring Him the memory that keeps accusing you.

Bring Him the parts of you that still need to be made new.

Open the door.

Confess.

Listen.

Let Him correct you.

Let Him love you.

Let Him strengthen you.

Then get up and obey Him.

Your failures do not deserve more of your attention than His faithfulness.

And if the most you have to offer Him still feels painfully small compared to what He deserves—

maybe that's all right.

It was never going to be enough.

It is simply the least we can do.