⁷But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it . . .¹²to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

~Ephesians 4:7,12-13

Do you want to speak or sing in front of large audiences? Write a best selling book? Pastor a large church? I know they’re all dreams in my heart, well not singing, but you get the point. I think it’s the dream of every young leader who wants to go into ministry.

I love speaking to audiences, I love writing, I love spending time encouraging and connecting with people.  They are some of my favorite things to do in the entire world! They’re also a part of what God’s called me to do.

The question isn’t so much do you want to or do I want to do these things, but why do we want to do these things?

Over the past few years, I’ve really challenged my motives when it comes to writing, blogging, communicating, and ultimately, everything I do. Do I always have pure motives? No. There are times I want attention, fame, glory, etc. , but most of the time, I believe my heart is in the right place.

Where I am and what I believe God’s heart is on the issue is, is to do all these things for one purpose: To help people.

I’m getting to the place in my heart where I don’t care how many people I speak to, how many people read my blog, etc, as long as people’s lives are being lifted.

Because in reality, whether it’s speaking, singing, or writing, all of these things are just gifts God put in us and opportunities God puts before us to make an impact in one person’s life. And really, it’s God who makes the difference in some-one’s life, not us, He just allows us to have a part in it.

So challenge your motives. Challenge them often, we all struggle with the motives in these areas. Just be humble, let God bring opportunities before you, and do everything you can, anytime you can to help people, and before you know it, you’ll have helped more people than you could imagine.

Thoughts?

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at Revolution. Here are the two messages:

Only God Week 1 – Developing an “Only God” Belief System

Only God Week 3 – Don’t Give Up on a God Who has Never Given Up On You

When they’re up, I’ll post the video and notes. Hope these bless ya!

Here is our Series Intro:

Serve Your Way to the Top – 7 Lessons I Learned While Serving My Way onto a Church Staff

Lesson 6 – It’s the Changed Life, Not the Crowd that Makes the Difference

^19-20My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.                                                      James 5:19-20

Something I’ve been recognizing lately is that whenever Jesus would heal someone or impact one person’s life, often the crowd would be wowed by the actual event other times the crowd would be upset and in disbelief. However, Jesus never really cared what the crowd thought. He cared about the person He was ministering to. Jesus didn’t care about attracting crowds, He cared about impacting individuals.

Too often – we focus on drawing a crowd and forget about the individual. While crowds are great because it means more people are hearing the Word, we forget that it’s each of those individuals being changed by God that truly makes the difference. A marriage restored, an addiction broken, someone with no purpose grabbing hold of God’s purpose for their lives – it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a compilation of changed lives that makes a move of God and a crowd an amazing thing, not a crowd of people just there for an event or experience.

Some Thoughts on this:

1.) The Crowd will Never Be Big Enough – Unless we recognize the power of one changed life and value it for what it’s worth, we’ll never think there are enough people in our ministries.

2.) When the Crowd Comes, It’s not a Big Deal - We often think if we’re able to minister to a large crowd, we’ll be satisfied. That is not true at all. We have to find our worth in Christ, so when God does bless us with more influence, we won’t be disappointed that it doesn’t provide the feelings of success we thought it would. A big deal in life is when we’re free from worrying about attracting a crowd and worrying more about impacting one life.

3.) Nothing is More Fulfilling than Touching One Life – There isn’t anything more fulfilling than knowing you’ve made a difference in one person’s life because you were obedient to God.

4.) Be Faithful with One, God will bring Many - The bottom line is that if we’ll be faithful with the one person in front of us, God will continue to bring people in front of our path so we can minister to them. In time, you’ll be impacting more people than you could have dreamed of, and it’s not because you’re so awesome, it’s because God knows you’ll be faithful with the one.

Focus on ministering to one person today – make a difference in their life!