Just Normal

I’m glad my mom always told me I was special.

I was the last of four children, born eight years after my sister.  I guess I was a surprise, my parents weren’t supposed to have any more children.  I had some problems at birth and then they thought I had hydrocephalus, I think you call it, about six months later.

So my mom, she always let me know she thought I was special.  And I’m glad.

But one of the things growing up that I think has been hard and also, good to learn is that I’m really not.   I might have been to my mom, and I think I am to my wife and to my three girls but in the big scheme of things, I’m not really all that special.

And you know I’m learning to be glad about that too.  Because the thing is if I really were all that special, there’s alot of pressure.  Especially when you are the only one who thinks so. 

Being normal, being dispensable, it has its perks. 

It means I can just do what God’s called me to do as best as I can do it and even it’s not worth writing in a biography sixty years later, that’s o.k. 

It’s o.k. because I serve a God who is impartial.  I don’t know about you, but I find great joy in that because that means, he doesn’t like John MacArthur better than me just because John MacArthur is a million times more gifted than me. 

The fact is John MacArthur, George Whitefield, you name the hero…they are able to stand before God for the same reason I am…and it has nothing to do with their abilities or their achievements but everything to do with the work of Jesus Christ.