Embracing Selflessness

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, when you look at yourself and you feel unqualified, or maybe you’re never going to amount to anything, or God’s calling somebody else, but not you. This next episode of More Faith, More Life is for you.

0:00:11 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:36 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:10 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be an experience More.

0:01:22 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, right along with Kathy. I’m Steve Gray and I got my wife with me and I love to do this together to talk to you and Kathy. I was kind of wondering, like, how many people out there listen to this and they don’t tell anybody about it or they don’t. What do you do? Subscribe, like hit a heart. Hit that little. I don’t know what it is, but whatever they do, and I wonder if they do, I think people kind of get.

0:01:47 – (Steve Gray): They listen, but they don’t. It’s like going to church and never telling anybody about Jesus, you know, it’s good for you. And I think people do that because they, they enjoy the podcast and things we do, but I don’t know if they really push it enough. And the reason I do it, first of all, I don’t really keep track of followers or anything, and that’s not the reason I do it. But in my opinion, I’ve been doing this long enough that we’re experiencing in this time in our history that we’re finding out, as, as I’m doing this, that I am saying things now because of where our country is spiritually.

0:02:24 – (Steve Gray): I’m saying things now that I don’t hear everybody else saying now that doesn’t mean that I’m better than anybody else. But I have experienced a lot of things. I’ve done this a long time. I’ve helped thousands of pastors around the world grow into the place where they want to be. And so many pastors and leaders, sincerely, it’s not being critical, are, are doing the best they can do, but they’re only preaching or teaching what they kind of already know or what is generally accepted in our communities about your feelings and how God loves you and trying to teach self-worth, self-value.

0:03:02 – (Steve Gray): And really see, Jesus never taught that. Jesus never taught, go find yourself. He said, I want you to lose yourself and say, what about my self-esteem? He says, you know, I got a suggestion to that. I think you ought to die to it. Let’s just let you know, die to yourself. If you’re going to die to yourself, you don’t need self-esteem. In other words, Jesus is saying it’s a false tool anyway. And I said that at church the other day, so I should repeat it.

0:03:29 – (Steve Gray): And I laughed and maybe we said it here, I don’t know too. But self-esteem is a deception. Cause the only person that has it is yourself. It’s how you view yourself. As though viewing myself is going to change how I change the world. But you know, it’s a false sense of security, like I’m good the way I am and all that. And then like, does anybody really love me? Somebody love me, you know, so let’s get away.

0:03:55 – (Kathy Gray): Everybody’s too busy viewing themselves so all.

0:03:58 – (Steve Gray): That kind of stuff. And so I don’t teach that because Jesus didn’t teach that. But it is taught a lot and not necessarily bad. Although I want to say there’s a lot of teachers and preachers out there that know exactly what they’re doing. They’re enabling people wanting to stay where not be transformed because they won’t preach the power of God. They’re afraid of the power of God. I had a pastor tell me once, he said, well, you know, if I preach like you do, people will leave my church.

0:04:29 – (Steve Gray): And I said, really? Well, let me ask you this. How long you been preaching? He said, like 20 years. I said, have people left your church? He said, well, yeah. I said, so why don’t you go ahead and just go for God, because people are going to leave anyway and go for God and please God and you’ll be so much happier and you get a Success and you might actually grow a different kind sometimes like a remnant believing church. So anyway, so that’s, that’s my biggest point.

0:04:55 – (Steve Gray): I was sharing on podcast with as a guest the other day and they were. Both pastors were hosting and I told them the same thing. I said, it just came to my head, you know, I said, it comes to my head all the experience. Because they were asking me historically things like, well, you can get the story in the book. Well, I didn’t need to pick it up. I guess they could see it. Mighty like Gideon. It kind of tells the story of here, just hold it.

0:05:20 – (Steve Gray): You can hold it in your lap. It doesn’t lay it down, doesn’t matter. I messed it up. But the story of the Smithton Outpouring and the Kansas City Revival and the history of it. And in the book When the Kingdom Comes, which you can get on stevegrayministries.com, it’s been translated. I sometimes say six, seven, eight languages because I forgot. But I do know somewhere over there in the library I’ve got one from Indonesia and Spanish and, and things like that.

0:05:48 – (Steve Gray): And polish. And they used it as a revival textbook because it’s lessons from the Smithton Outpouring. But it’s also the story from my point of view and things that happen. It’s a great book to get this one. Mighty like Gideon also retells some of the story in it. And so I was talking to them and, you know, one of the things that I realized is we’re in such an individualistic culture that all over the world, but our country, they’re sincere preachers and pastors knowing the church needs something. Sometimes they call it a renewal, sometimes they call it a revival, sometimes an awakening or just we need something, you know, we need the presence of God, we need the glory of God to come down, you know, let it rain. Let the rain, you know, open the floodgates of heaven. All these phrases that they do sincerely, but they don’t. We’re so individualistic, thinking just me and God, that we don’t ask for help.

0:06:47 – (Steve Gray): And I told him, I said, you know, I’ve had all this experience. I know, so because they were just eating up the lessons and the books too. They got all the books. And a lady I talked to the other day too, I did one with her, she was just eating up the books too. And she just ate up, said, I’ve never heard any of this before. And I was talking to him about, well, if we want these great moves of God, in our churches then we’re not just going to one day switch from humanistic preaching and self-seeking preaching and bang, one day we’re going to break out in revival.

0:07:17 – (Steve Gray): John the Baptist did better as understanding. First of all, he said I have to decrease. And then he said, I’m here to prepare the way of the Lord. He said, make a highway for God. Don’t just say drop out of the sky, Holy Spirit, come, we want you so bad. There’s no highway.

0:07:36 – (Kathy Gray): No.

0:07:36 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, we got an old stone dirt road, you know, or no, got to cut through the fields, over the mountains, through the valleys and across the rivers. No, I’m talking about spiritually. Get all that out. Prepare the people. Yeah, and there’s so many.

0:07:50 – (Kathy Gray): Individually and corporately.

0:07:52 – (Steve Gray): Yes, both.

0:07:53 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:07:53 – (Steve Gray): And I also told them the other way to get a move of God is let it start with you. Yes, people will follow the right person and the wrong person. They’ll follow the wrong person. Yeah, anybody that’s got some zeal and fire for anything. But anyway, and so I suggested that and but people like, they still kind of. Nah, you know, I, if God wants me to have it, he’ll get it to me, you know. And so the individualism, you know, I kind of think slows people down. But anyway, so share with people, follow us along.

0:08:26 – (Steve Gray): Get anything you can put.

0:08:27 – (Kathy Gray): Put a like and then share it. Yeah, and share arrow.

0:08:31 – (Steve Gray): And there’s just lots of materials that I have there and J.D. king, who wrote this book with me, my son in law, he’s got christospublishing.com I think great books there too. All of them. He just gave me a reproduction. Well, he redid one of mine. He did somebody so great. If you like to read and you want just material that’s different than going into the. I was going to say just the bookstore, but my book’s in the bookstore. But the first books you see are usually the most popular and they’re all about ourselves, you know, humanistic and as I call it, the commercialized Jesus.

0:09:07 – (Steve Gray): And I told somebody the other day and that made him laugh. I said, my concern is if Jesus, well, Paul or Jesus, we were living when they started their ministries and all we, you know, we go to church and all of a sudden Jesus comes and starts his ministry. Now instead of way back then I get concerned that I wouldn’t even like him or we wouldn’t even like Paul. Paul would insult us and make us. We’d think, what? This can’t be God. These guys are the devil. He needs deliverance, you know?

0:09:33 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, maybe that wouldn’t be true, but I have a concern about that. So anyway, that’s my little speech.

0:09:38 – (Kathy Gray): That’s a very good little speech. And you know what you’re talking about pastors that are trying to build themselves up by keeping the people almost like codependent on them, actually. But then there are other people even out in the congregations, Christians who don’t feel qualified by God to bring the message or to bring it the correct way. And I’m thinking of Moses. And right up here in Exodus 4:10 through 12, Moses disqualified himself right at the beginning of his ministry.

0:10:10 – (Kathy Gray): And he said to the Lord, pardon your servant, Lord. I’ve never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you’ve spoken to your servant. I’m slow of speech and tongue. Then the Lord said to Moses, who gave human beings their mouths mo. Who makes them deaf or mute, who gives them sight or who makes them blind, Is it not I, the Lord? Now you go and I will help you speech and speak, and I will teach you what to say. And so I want us to get real a little bit now for the rest of our podcast. If. If you’re waiting to feel qualified or something before you step into your calling to bring that message of revival, well, you know what?

0:10:55 – (Kathy Gray): You’re going to be waiting forever.

0:10:57 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So I want to talk about the gift of God and how he moved Moses around. But first of all, this is a little tongue in cheek. Like, before we get the gift of God, some people need to get the gift of Moses.

0:11:07 – (Kathy Gray): Hey.

0:11:08 – (Steve Gray): Right? It says, I’m reading the scripture too. I am slow of speech and tongue. Oh, God, give that to some people. We need some people that they slow their speech down. Some people, they just talk and go. And they have. The Bible doesn’t say if you have mouth to speak, speak. It says if you have ears to hear, listen. And so we need a lot more listening and a lot less talk. Okay, now once you get the gift of Moses, now you’re ready for the gift of God. I’m tongue in cheek, laughing a little bit, but there’s a little truth to that.

0:11:36 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so let. I. I know this. I know this subject pretty well because Moses comes and he’s really talking truth about himself. I think he’s just given, like, I want to do stuff. I want to be this. And today, Kathy, we need fresh people. We need fresh that don’t know the system. We need. If we could use a few raw people.

0:11:58 – (Kathy Gray): Exactly.

0:11:59 – (Steve Gray): You know, but, yeah, but a lot of them are slow of speech and. And tongue. As he said, they. They know themselves as, I’m just not really that good. I’m not that sharp. I’m not that quick. And so that does pose a problem because nobody wants to listen to somebody just boring. It doesn’t know and doesn’t have listen.

0:12:18 – (Kathy Gray): To that lie to stop them.

0:12:20 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, but the answer that God gave him was twofold. Now, one of the answers is not here in this scripture, which we were talking about before we started on this podcast, that the first. One of the first things God did when Moses is evaluating himself, said, I’m not good at speaking, is he gives him a backup plan, says, well, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you your brother Aaron. So apparently Aaron was pretty good speaker. And Moses thought, oh, well, that’ll work. Because he just kind of goes from there. And then as Moses goes forward, we never hear Aaron.

0:12:51 – (Steve Gray): I don’t think he really ever did much at all, and maybe made some mistakes and criticized his brother. And so he. He’s not the one that went to Pharaoh. He was there. But anyway, I thought that was real interesting. In other words, God gave him a backup to kind of soothe him and like, oh, okay, but this is what you said is what God planned to do. And he corrected Moses. But okay, he’s like saying, well, who makes people hear? Who makes people talk? How does this system work? He says, I do it.

0:13:18 – (Steve Gray): I give people the speech. I do it. It doesn’t come from you. Even though you’re, you know, you’re trailing off into who you are and getting insecure who you are. Okay, that might be true, but there’s a step forward where we need people that maybe are in that condition to take the step with God. I mean, at least start asking, seeking, read your Bible, get some roots in you. Because what. Even if he gave you the ability, gave the opportunity to speak, what are you going to say?

0:13:47 – (Steve Gray): What? Get some information from God, Get God’s word in you. But anyway, and that’s what I did. You know, I spent a lot of time in God’s Word before I ever got to preach a sermon. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything. And. And so I wasn’t as slow as speech because I got. I had been in some performances and stuff, so I wasn’t that way, but I didn’t know anything. So I had. I could do the same excuse God. Yeah, I’ve been called to preach. I said that. Yes. You know, but Then I can say, but you know what? I don’t know anything.

0:14:15 – (Steve Gray): I had, you know, at the time, I hadn’t studied the Bible. I didn’t know. I had never preached, not one sermon. And nobody was teaching me how, you know, And I dropped out of church since the 8th grade till God touched me. So this is, in other words, it’s got to be a God thing, but it’s a true God thing. And you’re absolutely right. If you, if you’re waiting for something more to happen, then you’re going to wait forever.

0:14:42 – (Steve Gray): Or you can be like in the book, Mighty Like Gideon, the angel said to him, go in the strength that you have. So there’s things in you that need to be developed. There’s things that you need to develop in love, fruit of spirit, love and joy and peace. Because if you don’t have the fruit of the spirit, you’re going to blow it anyway. Aaron didn’t have it. Moses, he was the meekest of all men, least of his time.

0:15:06 – (Steve Gray): So he had character. Even though he killed a man 40 years earlier, the next 40 years he was preparing the way and he didn’t know he was prepared. In other words, all the excuses that he’s making for himself only makes him better for God, right?

0:15:22 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:15:23 – (Steve Gray): Now, you remember me went through before the Smithton Outpouring, where if you don’t know the story, you need to get it. Quarter of a million people visited a town of 532 people. I didn’t choose, you know, it was, it was the St. Louis Post Dispatch did the numbers and I just took that. They got it right. But anyway, I was at the point, the opposite. I said, Kathy, I believe God’s finished with me.

0:15:47 – (Steve Gray): And remember, I said, and I’m okay. I’m okay with that. I don’t need to preach. I don’t need. I do want to live. I want it. Jesus said I came, that you might have life and you’d have it more abundantly. I didn’t have that. I preached. I had a Bible I could speak, but I didn’t have that. So I was lacking something that I needed. So that’s what I was expecting, is God was going to retire me now and I’ll go do something else. I could go back to teaching school.

0:16:11 – (Steve Gray): Remember, people offered me other job, lots of other jobs and things. But God had another plan, just like Moses says. Steve, look. Yeah, I am finished with you. You like you, the you that is you. I’m finished. But I got a new you. If you’ll let me. You’ll let me if you’ll let me make a new you. And it is not. It’s exciting to look back on it and exciting to hear somebody else’s story. But, you know, God remaking you new, really new. It might not be as much fun as it sounds because you have to let go and get empty before you can really get full. That means stuff you believe and stuff you trust in.

0:16:53 – (Steve Gray): Stuff that you. You know. I preached a sermon once, remember this, Where I said the problem with people and I was talking about church people, but the problem with church people and people is we’ve got fingerprints, handprints all over us. Fingerprints. Your first grade teacher, your kindergarten, your mom, your dad, your Sunday school teacher, your friends that maybe tried to get you in trouble, or maybe they were good friends. You know, I didn’t have always good friends, but I mean, they were good friends. I didn’t always do good things, but they influenced me. There were people. And so by the time I’m trying to come to God, I’ve got fingerprints and handprints all over me. And what I need is the nail prints. I have to switch over to the nail prints. Remember, I preached that once.

0:17:37 – (Steve Gray): And so, yes, don’t. Don’t be afraid of it. But don’t expect to be full of compliments and hear God say, you’re not that bad, or, you know, yeah, you are that bad, but I love you anyway. Okay, he does. Maybe you are that bad and he does love you anyway. But where are you going to go with that? Who wants to hear that? Hey, I really been bad, but God loves me anyway. Oh, thanks. I feel the same way. No, there’s. There’s an inside of you that you need to give to God.

0:18:07 – (Steve Gray): And Moses was willing to do it. And that’s what God says. Look, I’m the one that does it, and I’m the one that will do it for you. And we need it so desperately. Fresh people who have come out of the place of God, come out of prayer and didn’t just pray, oh, Lord, make me rich, or oh, Lord, help the missionaries, which we want to help the missionaries. And I don’t care if you get rich, but what we need is you to be touched by the very hand of God or transformed or come out of the place where you are, where you’re justifying where you are because you want to feel valuable and just forget that there’s no way Moses is standing there before God feeling valuable.

0:18:49 – (Steve Gray): He doesn’t feel valuable. Okay, I was going to ask you, but I’ll ask them, have you ever done anything really bad that you just felt bad that you did it? Like I feel so bad about that. Well, Moses did a really bad thing, right? If you do a really bad thing, some people think of the bad things they did every single day. Moses could have thought for 40 years, how. How could I do anything? I was so bad. How did I kill a man? You know?

0:19:17 – (Steve Gray): And yet God used him anyway. And David, King David, he was shall we say – He was no angel. He had his downfalls, but it wasn’t the downfalls that ruined him. And that’s what we think, Will. It wasn’t the downfall. It was the up pull, right? It was the up pull that he said. But put me in your hands, God, just throw me into your arms, whatever you do. You want to knock me in the head or loose your bad dogs on me or strike me with lightning or start me over, just, I’m going to go to you. And that’s.

0:19:57 – (Steve Gray): I just. Moses was a real person, too, and so was David and all the other people we can mention. And they would struggle and, you know, are you ever reminded of stuff from your past that you regret or think and you hope nobody knows, or you don’t want to even think about it. But it’s just like, why? Why did that come into my mind today? Or especially you start praying, or you’re in church trying to worship and sing, and all of a sudden some dumb thought, well, you’re not so hot. Remember what a jerk you were. Or whatever you’re going, why did that pop into my head? You know, I tell you sometimes, like I tell the devil, you know, I am none of your business.

0:20:32 – (Steve Gray): And that helps sometimes. So you tell him that sometimes, when you need to. But anyway, I like the story of Gideon. He could go, there’s something inside him that God could make into a champion. And he was willing, I think, to sit and do nothing. He was in the winepress, hiding out from the Midianites. He doesn’t sound like he’s going, like, oh, God, remember me. Here I am. Lord, send me. That’s not going on. You just don’t feel that at all. Zero.

0:20:59 – (Steve Gray): And when God tells him what he wants, the angel tells him what he wants him to do. He pulls the same thing. Moses, he says, I’m the weakest. I’m the least. Moses, I can’t talk, I can’t do speech. He doesn’t bring up the murder, but he’s got a lot of things going on inside of him. And God says, you know, you have to remember who I am. I’m the creator of the universe. I can create a new heart. I can do this. But you have to want a change.

0:21:25 – (Steve Gray): If you’re just willing to sit and watch and be an audience, that’s what you’re going to be. I was so blessed of God. You and I have talked about this before for. I don’t know where I got it. I don’t know how I got it. But the instant that God really touched me, I was ready. I had the word go all over me. I wasn’t ready. I had to be made ready more than once in my life. I had to be prepared personally.

0:21:46 – (Steve Gray): But the hunger and go for God was in me and you too. There’s got to be some people out there that have go written all over go do and be. Go, do be. And that’s what the grace of God is. You know, sometimes people, a lot of them though, are sitting there using the grace of God to cover up the stuff they feel guilty about or cover up their mistakes or feel regret or they just feel weak and stupid. You’re like them. I can’t do anything. I’m not talented. I can’t speak. Thank God for grace. I hear that.

0:22:15 – (Steve Gray): It’s so, so stupid because grace has nothing to do with your feelings. Grace is a power that adds these three words into your life. Go, do, be — what you don’t deserve to be, do or go.

0:22:32 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:22:32 – (Steve Gray): And if they would get that. And I know there’s men, women.

0:22:35 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:22:35 – (Steve Gray): Teenagers. It’s okay. Up and coming kids.

0:22:38 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:22:39 – (Steve Gray): Parents.

0:22:39 – (Kathy Gray): Many, many retired.

0:22:41 – (Steve Gray): Your parents started their ministry after retirement. There’s really is no excuse.

0:22:46 – (Kathy Gray): No excuse.

0:22:47 – (Steve Gray): Now there’s no excuse. If you’re, if you’re not, you don’t have a mega church, but you have a good church. Or you have a church that you could make a God church out of a good church. There’s no excuse for that if you don’t do it. Okay. But maybe you’re not in a place to be mega this and big shot that, or nobody’s ever going to know your name outside of your own church. You know, you could make excuses for that. Say, well, I’m in a small place, we don’t have much money, I’m not very educated. But for God to mold you and your church and your ministry and your family and your marriage and your children, just make the list go on and on. And you at your job, what God wants it to be, there is no excuse.

0:23:23 – (Steve Gray): You just set your heart on it. That I want. I’m willing to throw off. I want to get washed of all those handprints, Kathy. And I want to have the nail prints of Jesus on me. And I’m willing to give up some of my dumb ideas. Some things I was told, some things I argue and say this and this is what I believe. And I’m Let that all go and you’ll be. Don’t be afraid to be an empty jar if you want to be a full jar.

0:23:54 – (Steve Gray): Get the book. Go to stevegrayministries.com we got a workbook for $1 and if you only knew is there. That’s excellent. Follow The Fire. I hardly ever mentioned it in my second book that was published, but the first one went so big that I sometimes forget about the second one. It was good too. But anyway, we’re so glad. Would you please start telling people not because you’re trying to promote our ministry, anything like that. You’ll notice, you know, we don’t talk or ask for money or anything, anything like that.

0:24:22 – (Steve Gray): We’re low key on that most of the time. But if you want to help somebody hear words they’ve never heard before and you don’t know what they’re hearing in their church or from the radio, tv, internet, or whatever, tell them about this podcast, and I think you’ll be doing them a favor. I think it’ll change their life because more faith does bring more life. Till next time. Bye.