For anyone in ministry, there is a huge temptation to promote yourself and your ministry, especially in those seasons when ministry is slow and the invitations to speak or sing or serve have slowed to a trickle or perhaps stopped. There is the tendancy to send out brochures or flyers, post more on the blog, drop hints to friends and acquaintances about the ministry you are doing, hand out brochures on the street corners or find other ways of promoting our ministry.
What I believe we forget when we get in this mode is that the ministry the Lord has entrusted to us is not really OUR ministry. Nope, it isn’t. It is HIS ministry. We are just a tool that He uses…and an expendable tool at that.
This is something that the Lord and I have been discussing frequently over the past year and He led me to a quote by Charles Swindoll from his book “Great Days with the Great Lives”, that has been like a subtle punch in the gut to me. I shared this in my message when I spoke at the A Woman Inspired Conference in June and so some of you have heard this previously. I don’t know His reason, but the Lord is prompting me to share it here at The Point. Perhaps He just wants to remind me once again that The Point Ministry is HIS, not mine. It is about bringing Him glory, not me.
Anyhooo, here is the quote:
“Humble yourself. Rather than racing into the limelight, we need to accept our role in the shadows. I’m serious here. Don’t promote yourself. Don’t push yourself to the front. Don’t drop hints. Let someone else do that. Better yet, let God do that. If you’re great, trust me, the word will get out. You’ll be found…in God’s time. If you’re necessary for the plan, God will put you in the right place at just the precise time. God’s work is not about us; it’s His production, start to finish. So back off. Let Him pull the curtains and turn on the stage lights.”
