Good Enough Preachers

It’s a bit after midnight, Friday night. Eleven hours from now, I’ll step onto the stage at North Hill Adventist Church. About a hundred people will sit and listen to me speak for God.

I know something of the needs of my people. Marriages wracked by insatiable desires for the other to change. Cancer. Heart disease. Unemployment. Alcoholism. Young people devoid of evident faith, linked to church primarily by birth and mom’s urging. Recent divorce. Long, unwanted singleness. Violence at home.

In view of their needs and my inadequacy, how dare I stand up tomorrow and speak for God? On the other hand, since I have been called how dare I not?

A couple of lessons from Jesus to give me (and you) courage:

First, when Jesus wanted to feed five thousand, he ordered his disciples to serve dinner. They, of course, protested all they had at hand was five loaves and two fish, Jesus replied, “Bring them here.” Five thousand hungry men and all the disciples had was five loaves and two fish. And it was enough.

Second, in Luke 22, after predicting Peter’s miserable failure, Jesus asked the disciples, “When I sent you out purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“No. We lacked nothing.”
“Well, now if you have a purse, take it. If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
“We have two swords.”
“That is enough.”
Is Jesus serious? They are headed straight into an ambush that will scatter the eleven and result in Jesus’ arrest and subsequent death. A legion of swords and swordsmen would have been more appropriate to the occasion, it would seem. But Jesus assures them two swords is sufficient. And they were for God’s purposes.

So tomorrow I will stand up to speak, no more adequate for the heroic work required than the disciples were with their five loaves or two swords. And no less adequate.

What I have–and what you have–is enough. So let’s hand out the bread in our baskets. Let’s swing our swords, however clumsily. And God will make our bread and swordsmanship enough.