Gourmet Chefs But Terrible Eaters

I was privileged to attend a meeting this evening in which Pastor Wayne Cordeiro from Hawaii was sharing. Needless to say I was challenged and provoked. He shared a story of when a member in his Church came to him and told him he was leaving because he was not getting fed. If I could get a dollar for every time a Pastor has heard this statement, I would be a millionaire. Pastor Cordeiro replied with a question, how long have you been saved? After the man said 18 years. Pastor Cordeiro said, if my son who is 28 years old was still depending on me to feed him, he would be shriveled up to nothing. By now he should be able to feed himself.

How many Christians depend on one service a week for somebody to feed them? Yes, I do believe that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, but as my spiritual father Bishop Tony Miller says, you can't live off another man's nickle. How many Christians are driving around in circles waiting for a meter that someone else has deposited their nickle in? Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. In other words you don't just need someone to break bread with you, you need a word out of God's mouth, a word that is just for you. God wants us to grow up into maturity where we are not like a baby that refuses to be weaned even though she is no longer a baby but a child. I am OK with giving baby Christians milk but what I have a hard time with is having to part the mustache to get the milk bottle in.

Here is where God challenged me. Most preachers are great gourmet chefs but they are lousy eaters. We know how to cook a great meal once or twice a week for our congregation but we don't feed ourselves on a daily basis. Bishop Tony Miller has said many times that the width or breath of your ministry is determined by the depth of your devotional life and if you have lost your devotional time you will eventually lose your ministry. Many of us are a mile wide but only three inches deep.God doesn't intend for you to live out of the bottom of the barrel, He intends for you to live the overflowing life out of your abiding relationship with him. He said various times in the gospels if you abide in me I will abide in you and in John 15, He said unless you abide in me, you can do nothing. Without His annointing on our lives we can accomplish absolutely nothing!

I afraid that much of the powerlessness in our pulpits is a result of living off another preachers nickle rather than getting your own nickle. Our primary call is to first be with Jesus (Mark 3:13) and then He can send us out with the deposit that He has placed in us in your times with Him. If there has been no deposit there can be no withdrawal and if you continue to live out of the bottom of the barrel you will eventually break down. Nothing great will happen around you or for you, until it happens in you. Your life on the outside is mirror of what is in you. That's why I believe that there are more preachers leaving the ministry than there are entering the ministry. They have gotten way from their daily time with the master.

Pastor Cordeiro shared about how he met a great jazz musician who shared with him how people would come up to him asking him how did you become a great musician? The musician told them that he was only as good as his daily practice on the scales. he said if I practice one hour a day a week, I will know the difference, if I practice one hour a week, the world will know the difference. Why? Because true greatness comes out of living in the overflow of your daily routine. I told Pastor Cordeiro that he had challenged me to spend more time in God's presence and less time trying to live off the residue of someone else's experience with God. I don't know about you, but I want the overflowing life, so that when I walk into a room, the atmosphere is changed without me even saying anything. I want to be able to say less and impact more because the anointing makes me better than I really am. I will share later some practical things you can do to develop a devotional life.