a lesson learned

On Tuesday night I gave the devotional for the south side of the dorm building. I spent hours working on it, practiced in front of friends, felt confident in my ability to carry it through. Before devos started, I prayed that God would speak through me. When the time came for me to give the lesson, I was unable to recall all that I had planned, and I was left scatterbrained and disoriented and fumbling around in the dark like a blind caveman. I kept looking back to one of my friends who just kept giving me this What in the world are you doing?! look, which didn’t help. I felt everyone’s eyes drilling into me, perceiving my failure, and I heard the illusions of their mockery and ridicule. As I returned to my room, I told one of my friends, “I don’t know what happened.” He told me, “Neither do I. You’re one of the best speakers I know, so what happened tonight… I can’t explain it either.” Mad at myself, disappointed in myself, I went to bed and tried to avoid everyone who was present for the devotional. I was ashamed of myself.

Today, I have had three people tell me that the devotional was excellent. One person told me that it was his favorite devotional all year.

And I am left thinking, “How?”

And a scripture passage comes to mind.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom… And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. – 1 Cor 2.1, 3-5

In Paul’s day, a person’s message was deemed valid only if it was eloquent, well-crafted, and lofty. A good message was a message that was filled with the power of the tongue. Paul was “unskilled” in his preaching, coming not with eloquence but with a simple declaration: Christ crucified (verse 2). While the validity of a message was determined, in Greco-Roman culture, by the way in which the message was delivered, Paul writes that the validity of his message came by the Spirit of God and the power of God working through his words.

Before the presentation of my devotional, I prayed that God would speak to me. If God were to speak through me, I expected, then He would grant me eloquence, well-craftedness, and lofty words of wisdom. God did speak through me, but not the way I expected. He took a scatterbrained, disoriented, fumbling fool such as myself and spoke through my discombobulated words. He convicted and encouraged through what I said, and He did not need primp and pomp to do it.

There is a lesson in all this. I must not rely upon my own abilities; rather, I must acknowledge that my abilities are nothing and rely not on myself but upon God using a foolish vessel like me to advance His kingdom.