Lessons Learned
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
I have been following Jesus since 1970, which places me in my 56th year since becoming a disciple. Many of those years, I spent educating myself in becoming a better pastor and leader in the Church. Most of it was profitable for me, but the major lessons that drive my spiritual life today, did not come from a seminary or a conference, but came from the experiences of pursuing God. Recently, I shared a Facebook post on the ten lessons I have learned in following Jesus. Here is that post.
I have spent most of my life following Jesus and learned a few things. All followers of Jesus do ministry, may these lessons that I have learned help you as a follower of Him:
Theology is the study of God but the surrender to him is the mark of a disciple.
Placating to people is not a virtue of leadership, the virtue of leadership is to stand alone with God.
Preaching is not the art of the sermon; preaching is the art of conviction.
Simplicity is the foundation of clarity, and clarity is the goal of communication.
The Cross explains the Church, and everything we do in the church is the result of it.
Teach the Bible, it was written by our Coach, the Holy Spirit
God hates religion because it competes with Him. We are not religious people, but we take Jesus seriously.
What you plant, you can expect to harvest. Sow in prayer, expect answers. Sow in knowing God, you will reap truth.
The objective for ministry is to find those without Jesus.
Know God beyond your theological bias, because He dwells in the heart of sacrifice, not in a head of theory.
It is easy to put down the lessons that I have learned, but what isn’t said are all the years I spent trying to figure all of this out. The countless times I had to force myself to get out of the way and let God inm to bring clarity and provision for the moment. Most of the time, the biggest obstacle to doing ministry was myself … trying to be something I thought God wanted from me. The problem with that thinking was that it was me who was doing the thinking and laying out the expectations … not God. God uses our talents, but He doesn’t need them, in fact, talent is often what gets us in trouble with God because we rely on the talent and not God.
Some Last Thoughts
To summarize these Ten Lessons I would say, “Empty yourself and allow God to fill you. That is a good definition of what Jesus meant when He said, you must be born again.”
We give up our natural for His supernatural. The meaning of life is found outside of ourselves, where we find the One who gives us that meaning and then we surrender to make Him first in all we think, act, and do. I believe that would be the greatest lesson of all.
Challenging the Culture with Truth … Larry Kutzler