Nothing To Prove – No One To Impress?

There was one phrase my mentor constantly drummed into my head during my early days as a pastor, “You have nothing to prove – no one to impress.”

It was the one thing he wanted every pastor and leader he mentored to grasp. He believed that most of us are insecure at the core, even if we cover it up well. From his experience, those of use who appear secure aren’t so secure once you get up close and personal. And those of us who are genuinely secure are often living on the backside of some significant life and ministry accomplishments that produced our sense of security.

In other words, from his perspective, few of us actually find our security and value in Christ and the cross.

We preach it. We know it. We just don’t live in light of it.

At first, I thought he was overstating – maybe even catastrophizing. Sure, we all have our areas of insecurity. But I wasn’t riddled by doubt and insecurity. And neither were most of the pastors and leaders I knew. In fact, I was anything but insecure. Or so I thought.

But then something happened. My ministry began to fall apart. Suddenly the fragile nature of my security and self-worth was exposed. It had been built upon the shifting sands of ministry accomplishment. When the storm came, it collapsed.

I thought I was finding my value and worth in Jesus and the cross. But I wasn’t. It took a storm called failure for me to realize it and admit the truth: I was a success junkie.

The light went on near the end of my third year at North Coast Church. When I arrived, the church was a new plant meeting in a high school cafeteria. Though I was young (28 years old), I had a track record of highly successful youth ministries. Each one had grown to be the largest in the history of the church. I expected more of the same.

But after three years, our average attendance had grown by just one person (that’s a third of a person per year for those of you who are mathematically challenged). I was in a deep funk, on the edge of clinical depression. My confidence was shot. I looked in the mirror and saw a loser.

Yet when I’d mope or complain, my mentor, Wally, was unwilling to hear it. He’d tell me, “Get over it. Do your best. Then take a nap. You have nothing to prove – no one to impress.”

Finally, one day it hit me. He was right. Jesus was good with me, so why was I so concerned with how I stacked up against others and what they thought of me?

Jesus hadn’t just theologically and theoretically valued me. He had genuinely valued me, enough to die for my sins and adopt me into his family as a fellow heir.

He knew me – everything about me – past, present, and future. He knew I currently sucked at this pastoring thing. He loved me and wanted me on his team anyway.

For the first time, I realized that all of my self-confidence was accomplishment-based. And so was my current depression. Both were based on faulty mental math: My Effort + Ministry Results = My Value.

The same formula that was producing depression would have just as easily produced pride and arrogance had things gone better.

Like most of us, I have faces and voices from the past. The ones I remember most tend to be those that believed in me least. As a result, my ministry efforts can flow more out of things I’m trying to prove and people I’m trying to impress instead of being a joyful response to the Lord’s calling and work in my life.

Ironically, whenever ministry becomes a way to validate our worth, most of the people and voices from the past we’re trying to impress don’t give a rip. They don’t even think about us. They’ve moved on. But we haven’t.

While ministry almost always starts out with the purest of motives (a response to God’s grace, calling, and gifting in our life) it can easily morph into something else – a vehicle for establishing our personal value and self-worth.

When that happens, we end up preaching grace to others while personally being driven by guilt and insecurity. The early joys of ministry are lost, replaced by frustration, discouragement, and a ministry treadmill that eventually wears down our families, churches, ministry, and even our personal walk with God.

I’ve come to believe that more often than I’d like to admit, my desire to be great for God isn’t all that different than my neighbor’s desire to be great for greatness sake. When they fill the God-sized hole in their heart with physical pleasures, the pursuit of material possessions, and the successes of life (what the Bible calls the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life) it’s easy to recognize. But when my own pursuits of pleasure, competition, and success are baptized as ministry, I can piously call it advancing the kingdom, and never even notice what’s happening to my soul.

If the enemy can convince me to link my value and self-esteem to my ministry, he has me where he wants me. It’s an insidious mindset that inevitably blunts God’s work both in me and through me.

Ever since Adam’s fall, we’ve had plenty to be insecure and feel guilty about. It’s true. We’re sinners and losers – cut off from God. But when we take that insecurity and emptiness to the cross, everything changes.

We’re forgiven, adopted, and transformed changed from the inside out. We’re KNOWN. We’re loved. The pressure is off. We no longer need to be the best. We just have to do our best.

And having done that, we’re free to relax and take a nap. It’s what people do when they have nothing to prove – no one to impress.