The Day I Had Nothing

A couple of years back, I was driving to Edmonton on a Sunday morning to preach for my friend Rodney Forton at Church in the Vine, and I spent most of the drive repenting.

It was March. If you work in the patch, you know what March is. We were understaffed, I was driving constantly, and I'd been putting in strings of eighteen- and twenty-hour days for weeks. I had not prepared one thing. Not a note, not an outline, not a verse. I hadn't prepared mentally, I hadn't prepared spiritually, I was just flat empty — and somewhere on that highway I started telling the Lord how sorry I was that I'd ever agreed to preach in a month like this one.

I got to the church and sat down, and I'll be honest with you, I was laughing at myself. It was funny. It was also the kind of funny where you want to cry a little.

The worship started and I did what a desperate preacher does. I listened to the songs, hunting for a theme. Anything. A line I could hang something on. Nothing came.

Then Rodney got up and introduced me like I was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And I sat there feeling sorry for those people. They had gotten up, gotten dressed, driven across the city on their day off, and they were about to watch a tired man bomb.

I walked up on that stage with nothing.

He handed me the microphone. And the second it was in my hand, I felt the anointing of God come on me as strong as I have ever felt it in my life.

It usually comes up my body. That morning it came right up over my shoulders — the only way I know to describe it is that it felt like somebody laid a cape on me.

And as soon as I felt it, a thought dropped into my spirit. So I opened my mouth and started talking. And before I got to the end of that sentence, another one dropped in. And then another.

I preached for an hour. I felt like I was walking on water. The room was electric, and those people were taking hold of the word of God like it was food.

I drove home that day just broken. Not proud of myself — there was nothing to be proud of. Just grateful, and a little undone, that He came through like that when I had absolutely nothing to bring Him.

Here's what I've chewed on ever since.

He wasn't going to let those people down.

They didn't drive across Edmonton to hear Steve Holmstrom. They came for a word from God. And God had every intention of giving them one, and He was not going to let my busy month get in the way of it. It was never about me. It was never about my preparation. I was just the one holding the microphone.

Now I have to say something here, because I know how a story like this gets used.

Do not read this as permission to wing it. I don't always know what I'm going to preach when I show up somewhere — I often don't. But I almost always come spiritually prepared and full of the word. That's the normal way. That Sunday was not the normal way. That Sunday I had nothing, and God covered for me, and I have never once concluded from it that preparation doesn't matter.

Preparation was never for God's benefit anyway. It's for yours.

But there's something in this that goes deeper than a good Sunday, and it's sitting in a verse most of us have heard so often we've stopped hearing it.

And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." — 2 Corinthians 12:9

Now read that word again. Perfected.

Most Bibles give you made perfect, and when we hear "perfect," we think polished. Flawless. Cleaned up. So we read the verse as a consolation prize — don't worry, God can still squeeze something useful out of a mess like you.

But that's not what the word is doing. The Greek behind "perfected" belongs to a family of words that mean completed. Finished. Brought all the way to its intended end. Not scrubbed clean — done.

Which changes the verse entirely.

It isn't saying God's power tolerates your weakness. It's saying God's power isn't finished until it has weakness to be finished in.

Think about that for a second. Power that never meets weakness has nowhere to arrive. It's like strength with nothing to lift. It stays potential. It never gets completed.

And that means your weakness is not the obstacle God has to work around to use you. Your weakness is the place the work gets finished.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. — 2 Corinthians 4:7

Cheap pots. On purpose. Because if the pot were impressive, everybody would be looking at the pot.

I've had good Sundays where I was sharp, rested, prayed up, and I knew exactly what I was going to say. God blessed those. But I rarely feel Him move like He moved the morning I had nothing — and I don't think that's a coincidence anymore. There was nothing of me in the room that day. Not one thing. So there was nothing standing between those people and Him.

So let me ask you the question this actually raises.

What's the weakness you've decided disqualifies you?

You know the one. It's the reason you haven't offered. Not enough education. Not enough Bible. Too old, too new, too tired, too much of a mess in your own history. You've got a whole file on it, and you've read it to God more than once.

Hand it over. That's not the thing keeping you out. That's the raw material.

He isn't waiting for you to get strong enough to be useful. He's waiting for somewhere to finish what He started.

And He's not going to let those people down either.