Big Picture

John 3:²⁸ “You yourselves know how plainly I told you, ‘I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.’”

When we do not know who we are, we do not know who we are not supposed to be. So, we try to be who we are not supposed to be because we do not know who we are. But when we know who we are, we will know who we are not. And because we already know who we are, we would not be trying to be who we are not. The first place I started Pastoring years ago was in a redbrick building. God blessed us and we had a lot of air conditioning units. However, when we left the place to the land, we packed up the cooling units because we knew that we were going to use them when we built and there was no point buying new air conditioners. So, we put them in the store. I drove past the former location often and I noticed a new church had begun to use the building. But I looked and there were no air conditioners, I could only see fans.

I know that building, it can get very hot in there because the air circulation is poor. So, I kept wondering how they were coping. Each time I passed, I would pray for the church and go. Time passed, months passed, and they did not have air conditioners. I said to myself, ‘You have air conditioners in the store, and your brothers are having fellowship and sweating in the heat. Does that even make sense?’ I called the Pastor even though I had never met him before that time, I told my team to deliver all the air conditioners to him, about twenty-two split units and they did. He was shocked and said, ‘I have never seen anything like this. You are a Pastor and I am a Pastor; even with Pastors in our own denomination, the competition is so strong. They can never give me air conditioners; they would instead leave us to sweat and suffer. But you just gave us everything?” I smiled and said, “The reason is because you are my brother. We are not competing.” He says, ‘Pastor, do you know the cost of all these air conditioners?’ We did not take a dime from them; we did not even ask for a fraction of what the unit’s cost. It is not required.

When I saw that he was still struggling, I asked him to follow me and I showed him a large piece of land. I said to him, “If the church I pastor has an auditorium as big as this large piece of land, it would be filled with people.” He said, “Amen” and I said, ‘There will still be people out there that need Jesus and it is only you that can reach them.’ There are people I cannot reach; I am not deceived. But if I can empower my brother that can reach them, have we not reached them? We have reached them, and the Kingdom of God is better off. Unfortunately, it is ‘dog eat dog’. There are people that have told me about Pastors that go on their pulpits and say horrible things about me, even though they do not know me. Some Pastor came to me and said, ‘Why is it that when people go to your church, they do not want to come back?’ So, I said, ‘I do not know; maybe they find God? What do you think?’ I did not know how to answer him. We must be different; we are not in competition with anybody, our DNA is unique.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, please help me to run my own race, in Jesus Name. Amen!