Turn Your Faith Journey Into a Faith Career (4) Never Show Off
Once you have embarked on your faith career, whatever it might be, the most important consideration to keep at the forefront of your thinking is that IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. This is not as easy as it sounds. Presumably you have selected your career, be it as a singer, or a preacher, or a writer, or an ethical scientist, or whatever, on the basis that it is something you are good at. You have natural talent or abundant skills in the field you have selected and God, through your prayers, has supercharged those skills. The temptation is to publicize that fact, rather than to concentrate on the needs of your ministry. For instance, as a singer, you have a fantastic voice. Your audience wants you to keep singing. You are using your music as a way of communicating your faith, giving your testimony and raising the spiritual temperature of your fans. How easy to let that tide of adulation emanating from your audience fill you with spiritual pride. If that happens, your faith career will be short-lived. You will begin to follow your own path instead of the path set out by God.
You can measure the difference between God-led initiatives and Self-led initiatives. God-led initiatives help others, heal, educate, restore, and fill you with a sense of goodness. Self-led initiatives are always counter to that sense of outward good. They feed your own ego, are always anxious about money, fame, looks, adventure and excitement. Yes there is excitement in doing the work of the Lord, but it is the excitement of outward not inward gratification. There’s not a pastor in the land that doesn’t feel pleased with himself after a well-delivered, well-received sermon, but his gratification should come not from his own self-worth but from the good he sees being done in his congregation. We all begin by being led by the self. Being re-born as a Christian is about watching the shift away from self to God-leadership.
Why is this important? For the simple reason that God can only use you when you are working for Him and not for yourself. To stay on the tracks that are going to achieve real mission goals, you have to keep listening out for the orders. If you are constantly battling God by putting your own interests first, you will sooner or later stumble and your disciples will suffer. Discipline is key here. How easy would it have been for Jesus to go around healing everyone; how easy for him to have become a superstar of his day. But he made it clear again and again, that his healing powers were solely to demonstrate the glory of God, not the wonder of Jesus. Meditate on this, then return to your mission with a renewed sense of God’s aims.
Milton Johanides is a retired businessman, church elder, writer and artist. He has been featured on BBC TVs Songs of Praise, owned numerous art galleries and once ran an award winning picture framing business in Scotland. The views expressed in these articles are his own. Web address: http://www.x-ibit-it.com
Author: Milton Johanides
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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