On Being a Servant of God by Warren W. Wiersbe

Author:Warren W. Wiersbe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Church Life, REL012000, REL074000
ISBN: 9781441200389
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2007-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

John Rutter is one of my favorite musicians. Listening to his “Requiem” is to me a worship experience, and hearing his settings of the Psalms lifts my spirit in praise.

My wife and I attended a “Rutter Conducts Rutter” concert at which the noted composer/conductor did a strange thing. After the applause had ceased following a choral number, John Rutter turned to the audience and said, “Do you mind if we do that one again? I think we can do better.” I was stunned. The first performance seemed excellent to me, but the ear of the gifted conductor heard something that the rest of us missed. The choir sang the song again, and Mr. Rutter seemed pleased.

More than once, I’ve wished I could turn to the congregation after the benediction and say, “Would you mind if I preached that sermon again? I think I can do better.” I doubt that our congregations will start approving sermonic instant replays; but if we did, it would certainly relieve the preacher’s conscience and remove that smothering feeling of disappointment that we all carry when we feel we haven’t done our best.

In your particular place of service, the problem may not be the memory of a bad sermon. Maybe it’s knowing that you taught a boring Sunday school lesson despite hours of painful preparation. Or perhaps you conducted a tedious committee meeting that accomplished nothing except to convince the committee members not to be committee members anymore. I’m sure church musicians wince when they recall some performances, and dedicated missionaries must have pages in their diaries that are stained with tears.

Which leads us to the overwhelming question: What do Christian workers do when they feel like they’ve done a poor job of serving the Lord?

If you and I were counseling somebody else about this matter, we’d probably say in a philosophical tone, “Well, you’ve got to remember that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.” I like Charlie Brown’s reply to that platitude: “That makes me the smartest person in the world!” Frankly, I’d rather learn from other people’s failures. It doesn’t cost me as much.

How do we learn from our failures? Not by sitting in a corner and brooding over them. That approach only prepares the way for another downfall. The smart thing to do is to evaluate what we did and try to find out what went wrong. Was it lack of preparation that routed us? Were we not at our best physically? Did we have a bad attitude that poisoned us? Was our spiritual preparation neglected? Were we overconfident?

There’s a danger here that you must avoid. Don’t spend so much time on this “autopsy” that you start bleeding to death emotionally and perhaps spiritually. Enough is enough. Honest self-examination is one thing, but brutal introspection only opens the way for the devil to start accusing you. No matter what you did wrong, confess it to the Lord and claim His forgiveness. Don’t sit around recuperating—get busy! Someone has defined failure as “the path of least persistence,” so get back to work as soon as possible.

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