One of the things that can be most paralyzing to pastors when they are preparing to preach is their awareness of their own imperfection. It can downright cripple your ability to believe that God can use you to do anything of substance in people’s lives.

But the reality is you still have a message to deliver. And it’s the most relevant and powerful message in the history of the world. People desperately need it and you can’t afford to hesitate to deliver it.

So pastors, from now on before you preach or do anything God asks you to do, pray this prayer:

“I’m not a perfect messenger, but this is a perfect message.”

Your life isn’t perfect. You have sins and struggles.
Your delivery isn’t perfect. You could always improve every aspect of it.

But your message is perfect because it’s Jesus’ message. And He is perfect. His life was perfect. His death was perfect. His resurrection was perfect. His Word is perfect. And God’s promise that His word will never return void is perfect.

You’re not perfect, but Jesus has never and will never need you to be. He already has that covered. He has called you to preach His message and it’s perfect. And that’s what ultimately matters.

Your imperfection never cripples Jesus. Don’t ever allow it to cripple you.

But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? The LORD answered Moses, “Is the LORD’s arm too short?
Numbers 11:21-23

The Israelites wanted meat. God said he would provide it. But Moses doubted it because he didn’t see how it was possible. 600,000 men. Not enough corresponding animals.

It seems simple enough, but that’s because Moses’ conclusion is based upon an estimation made from logic. And logic, while God-given is not a reliable companion when it comes to calculating God’s infinitely great power.

In fact, it can be offensive. When we calculate God’s capabilities and limit God according to our logic, it insults His ability. It confines an unlimited God to the realm of possibility that has been constructed by our limited imaginations. It allows His ability to only stretch as far as our minds and our faith allow it to. And that’s infinitesimally small compared to an infinitely great God.

Unfortunately a lot of people still feel that their situation is the first to finally break the limits of God’s abilities. It seems like there’s a natural tendency in us to feel that our present predicament is the one just beyond the reach of God’s arm.

Your financial situation is such that even God can’t provide for it.
Your illness is too strong even for even God’s power to heal it.
Your marriage is too irreparably damaged for even God to restore it.
Your addiction is so overwhelming that even God can’t break it.
Your friends and family are so far from God that even His arm can’t reach them.

But each of these estimations is just like Moses’. Limited by our own conception of what’s logically possible. We have to get used to the fact that God and His abilities don’t make sense. And that’s a good thing.

Because then He can pour out provision that doesn’t make sense.
He can heal in ways that don’t make sense.
He can restore marriages in ways that don’t make sense.
He can break the power of a sin in your life in a way that doesn’t make sense.
He can save the lives of the people who seem the furthest away from Him in ways that don’t make sense.

Whatever situation you’re facing right now, you’re not out of the reach of God’s arm. You are not and never will be the first to break the limits of God’s abilities. It might not seem logically possible to you. But never forget that what seems impossible to us isn’t even remotely difficult for God.

A common critique that I hear about “seeker sensitive” churches is that their message is too simple and accessible. The feeling stems from the fact that we tend to believe that if something has been made more plain and obvious, the message must have been compromised.

But this isn’t always the case. User-friendly doesn’t have to mean dumbed down.

In the design of technology, usually the more sophisticated the design, the simpler the interface should be for the user. The reason the iPhone and similar products are so successful is because they’re so intuitive. Likewise Google is the easiest and most powerful search engine, but their algorithm is extremely complex.

In both of these cases it’s not like the designers made it simple because it was less work. Or because they were compromising their product. In reality, it actually took more work to make something so complex so accessible and easy to use.

You know you have really mastered something that’s complicated when you are able to present it simply. And without sacrificing its essential features.

The apostles knew this. When you read through the gospel presentations of people like Peter and Paul in the book of Acts, it’s not the exact same material that you get in their letters. What made Paul the greatest evangelist in history was not the brilliance of Romans. It was the fact that he could condense the essential message of that 433-verse book into a 25-verse sermon when he was preaching in the Bible believers of his day (Acts 13). Or a 10-verse sermon with culturally relevant illustrations when he was preaching to a crowd with absolutely no knowledge of the Bible (Acts 17).

Did Paul dumb down his own message? Or was he such a master of it that he was able to make it simple and accessible?

The measure of a church’s faithfulness to the Bible is not its ability to dumbfound people with its complexity. It is its ability to faithfully communicate its essential message in a way that people can understand and embrace.

The greatest expression of the Gospel that we can have is the simplest.

“This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalm 118:24

I’ve met a lot of people who take this verse to mean something like, “well, God has made this day and everything that is going to happen is going to happen. There’s nothing we can do about it. We may as well rejoice in it.”

But I don’t think that’s what this verse means and I definitely don’t think that’s the outlook of the Bible. We don’t serve a passive God and I don’t believe God desires a passive people who wait for life to happen to them.

This day is not a pre-determined, pre-programmed event. This day is a decision.

And for that I will rejoice and be glad in it.

This day is a decision of whether or not I’m going to come closer to fulfilling my divine destiny by the choices I make.
This day is a decision of whether or not I’m going to walk in greater obedience to Christ.
This day is a decision of whether or not I’m going to love my wife and kids as Christ loved the church.
This day is a decision of whether or not I’m going to breathe life into the people around me.
This day is a decision of whether or not I’m going to live a day worth rejoicing and being glad in.

Don’t hear me wrong. I’m not saying that we are writing the script of our lives by ourselves. God is the ultimate writer of our stories. Of all our stories, and of every day in our stories. God is sovereign and he is ultimately in control of the script of each day. There are certain things you can’t control. Certain things that God has written into your life and into this day that you’re going to have to embrace.

But I still believe God gives us enough ink to write our story in His Story. I still believe that He still wants us to proactively work with the unchangeable parts of the script He has given us to maximize the potential of every day we’re given.

This day is not set in stone. No day is. And there is never going to be a day exactly like this day again. Rejoice and be glad that God has given it to you. And now live a day worth rejoicing in.