6 Rules Every Man Must Break by Bill Perkins

Author:Bill Perkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781414341415
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2010-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

THE RULE OF

INDEPENDENCE

NEVER ASK FOR HELP

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

JOHN 1 4 : 1 6 - 2 0 , NASB

I once spoke at a large church in Houston, Texas—by large I mean one that drew over ten thousand people every week. Afterward, I met with some of the leadership team.

It didn’t take long for someone to ask, “How big’s your church, Bill?”

I looked up at the ceiling as I calculated the number. “I’m pretty sure we run somewhere between nineteen and twenty thousand a week,” I said.

The entire staff team sat at attention and their eyes opened as wide as saucers. “Twenty thousand a week—why that’s . . . that’s . . . that’s bigger than our church.”

I nodded my head and smiled. “Twenty thousand would be. But I said my church ran between nineteen and twenty thousand.”

Once they caught the drift of my statement everyone laughed. And I laughed too. But I felt as if a bee had stung me. And I recoiled on the inside because I knew that two decades of ministry had not resulted in what I had once dreamed would take place.

I hate it when I compare myself with a man whose achievements eclipse my own. Such comparisons make me feel small, like a deflated balloon. Yet, as much as I hate feeling inadequate, something good comes from the pain. Namely, I’m reminded that I want my life to make a difference. I want my time here on earth to mean something. If I didn’t want my life to matter, then I wouldn’t care what I had accomplished.

In that way we are alike. Regardless of your age, intelligence, education, income, or influence, you also want your life to matter. And in some way you question whether or not it does or ever will. You may go for weeks, months, or even years without giving it much thought. And then you run into an old high school or college buddy whose lofty achievements make you wonder how he could have done so much more than you in the same amount of time. You slap him on the back, but inside you’re not celebrating his success. You’re grieving the comparative smallness of your own—which a few moments before you had viewed with pride.

Too often, well-intentioned Christians have added to my sense of insignificance. While in seminary I led a weekly Young Life club, taught

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