An Uneducated Pastor

Can you imagine volunteering for your job instead of getting paid? Imagine walking into your boss and telling him you don't need the company computer, you are going to provide your own. Or a bus driver telling the city he's going to provide his own bus? Silly, right? Yet so many of us do that with God. He doesn't want anything from us except our friendship, love, emptiness and availability  For everything he calls us to he equips. Yet, most of us turn down his provision and try to resource the tasks ourselves.

How many things do you do in God's name that actually come from you? How many times have you spoken from your wisdom, served in your strength, reacted by your conviction, given from your riches? We can do a fair job in our own ability but God intends for us to go beyond fair to supernatural, beyond anything we could have ever imagined. When we do things in his anointing everything changes. He doesn't need anything we have to offer, he pours it out on us. Wow! do we ever have it backwards.

This is what the great apostle Paul requested the Ephesians to pray for him:

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. (Ephesians 6:19-20)

"Words may be given me", he writes. Paul did not speak from his own great knowledge and training. Paul did not speak from his own opinion or speculation. Paul did not study for four years to come up with the gospel of grace. Paul was in-filled by the Spirit. equipped, enabled and empowered to be the apostle to the Gentiles. He was given the revelation of the gospel of grace through the Spirit of God.

We've gone crazy with education. Knowledge is great. All minds should be expanded to the best of our capacity but God is not dependent on our education. We do not have to go off and be trained according to the methods of man before we can preach, teach and evangelize. A pastor does not need letters after his name and neither do apostles, prophets, evangelists and teachers. There is nothing wrong with Bible colleges but God doesn't require them. We need to have Paul's understanding of God's equipping.

Style and methods do not mean anything compared to the anointing of God. We need more servants who are dependent on God for all things than we need educated men and women filling the positions in the Church. We need men and women who say to God "here am I send me" and desire their lips to be touched by the burning coal. We need men and women who understand that their power to serve comes from the Holy Spirit not seminary courses. We need men and women of God who are more interested in the anointing than in man's recognition of their studies.

I would rather sit under the training of an uneducated former alcoholic, saved by grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit than the best trained and educated seminary graduate. The anointing of God is all that we need to serve him to the full potential to which he has called us. Do not let anyone tell you any different. God's training school is all you need. Put your confidence in Jesus and you will be amazed how he uses you for his glory.