By Victor Ochieng
Besides just going to church to worship God, many people develop the desire to serve God in different capacities, some as ushers, security, elders, pastors, bishops and more. This desire to serve God is very good for our individual spiritual growth. We all know that serving in a department or having some leadership role, however small it appears, helps to strengthen our faith and allows us to be more engaged in the glorious worship of the LORD.
Bill Johnson says that even as we have such pursuits, we must guard against self-promotion, which he says has the potential of blocking us from leveraging our full potential as given by God. He gives the example of Saul and David, saying that in as much as David was promised to serve the nation of Israel as King, he guarded himself against self-promotion. Instead, he remained obedient and rose just by the hands of God.
Even when he had the opportunity to kill King Saul who’d been tormenting him and had made several unsuccessful attempts on his life, he still chose to wait for God’s moment. David knew God wanted to raise him and he knew that God was going to destroy Saul so he could take over the kingship. Getting to find Saul asleep was nothing more than an opportunity. Many of us would quickly say it’s God who’s delivered our enemy into our hands. However, as for David, he chose to spare the King’s life. By so doing, God established his Kingdom.
In our Christian ministry, many fail simply because we seek self-promotion and glorification. In fact, some of our self-promotion efforts, as Johnson points out, could be with good intention. Maybe we’re trying to do something to bring more people to Christ, to improve our weekly service, or show the rest of the flock how to best to serve God. Unfortunately, if our efforts are clouded by “a need for recognition, a need for applause,” they’re likely to fall flat.
When our drive is to put ourselves above others, we rejoice in manly recognition. The challenge with this drive is that we end up feeling bad when someone else receives recognition.
Looking at the story of David, we see that God-given potential should be left to live its full life according to God’s own plans. David got several opportunities to take Saul’s life without much effort so he could rise to be King, but in all the instances, he chose not to lay his hand on him, opting to wait for God to deliver the kingdom to him as promised.
How about you? Are you seeking self-promotion? Are you going to dishonor your church leaders because you want to rise to the leadership position? If your pursuits aren’t according to God’s plans, they’ll most definitely fail.
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