By Martin Smith
I was recently asked to speak at a church breakfast on the value of community for men. Speaking to a small group has always been easy for me, but large crowd events bring a certain pressure and uneasiness. Greater preparation and scripting are needed to produce something worthwhile of people’s time.
After devoting a significant amount of time to prayer, research and draft writing over several weeks, I felt good about the talk.
The day finally arrived, and I was excited. There is great relief when these events are finally ‘in the can.’ I got to the church very early as I normally do, and immediately a young first-timer came up to me to talk. He was looking for one of the pastors but decided to share his situation with me. He was burdened by several things, and we had a great discussion. I prayed with him and invited him to join my small group. It was one of those God arranged interactions, and I thought it was so great for the morning to start out that way. God was on the move as He always is.
I made my way to a table near the platform, and shortly thereafter the event leader and a few of my small group members showed up to sit down as well. Soon 204 men filled the room, a large crowd for a typical summer. The event leader also brought a Catholic friend of his and we began to get acquainted.
He soon brought out a book that he was reading and shared how much he was enjoying it. As I looked at the cover there was a description noting that the writer, Patrick Morley, was also the author of The Man in the Mirror. I was a bit shocked in the moment, because through my research I planned to use a quote from that book, but credited a different person. As this man shared just minutes before my talk, I scrambled to do a search with my smartphone on another possible book with a similar title. But no, my source was from an article written by the head of an organization with the same name, founded by Morley following his publication.
I quickly committed Morley’s name to memory, and almost immediately was welcomed to the stage. More than the shock I felt, I was filled with thankfulness that God had directly arranged for me to avoid the embarrassment that would have come with this error. The author is well known, and certainly many in the audience would have recognized the mistake. It had been so many years since reading the book, I had forgotten the name of the author.
After my near disaster and still enormously amazed, I told the story to my wife when I got home. What an incredible God this is who would intervene on something relatively minor to save me from making a public error that could have diminished my credibility, and even the credibility of the church I was representing. Consumed with a massive sense of gratefulness, I sat down to take it all in.
And then it hit me, or more likely the Holy Spirit hit me. I searched for Scripture to process my revelation and was drawn to Isaiah 48:9-11. John Piper describes this passage as the one text that “reveals the passion of God for his own glory.” When I am so easily self-centered in thinking about my circumstances and the world around me, God brings clarity to what life is really about. We find His words in Isaiah:
For my name’s sake!
For the sake of my praise!
For my own sake!
For my own sake!
How should my name be profaned!
My glory I will not give to another!
The most fervent heart for His own glory is God’s heart. God’s consuming focus is to preserve and display the glory of His name. And only He is worthy of all glory, praise and worship.
I was certainly the benefactor of His actions that day, and there is no doubt in my mind that He directly intervened to save me and the church from this error—but ultimately this was about the glory of the Most High King of the universe. And how awesome it was for a moment to be the one to peer into that glory!
