You've Examined Everything Except Yourself

People have been arguing about tools since the first man picked up a rock.

Real preachers prepare all week. Really? Spurgeon wrote his Sunday sermon on Saturday night and preached to thousands the next morning.

Real missionaries see fruit quickly. Really? Carey worked six years in India before he baptized a single soul.

Real evangelists stay small to stay pure. Really? Whitefield preached to thirty thousand people in an open field and never softened a word.

We've always made this argument. And we've always been wrong.

Galatians 6:4 says, "But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another."

The trouble is most men never get around to proving their own work. They've diagnosed everybody else's problem and haven't sat still long enough to examine their own. The reason there's no self-condemnation is there's been no self-examination.

Art students are sometimes given this exercise: stand before the Mona Lisa and reproduce it. Every student's eyes are fixed on the painting — every student but one. He barely looks up. He ends up with Humpty Dumpty on a wall. He wasn't painting what he was looking at. He was painting what was already in his head.

That's where most of us live.

The question is not what tools you used or avoided. It's what you've been looking at. God hasn't given you a painting to copy. He gave His life for you and left you His Word to study and obey. Your heart is the canvas. What you stare at long enough, you become.

Stop staring at earthly junk. Fix your eyes on someone worth reproducing.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/