You have to love Paul’s humility. Here was a man in his sixties who has been preaching for years asking for prayers for a clearer delivery. Read his words carefully:
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Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. (Colossians 4:2–4)
There was no pretense with Paul.
We who love to fish know that the better the lure, the more deceptive it is. We try to appeal to the appetite of the fish by hiding the hook in a worm.
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We use a certain kind of lure that’s attractive, with eyes that sparkle or a body that glitters.
The fish gets caught because it thinks it will get something soft and delicious, but it gets something sharp and painful. That’s deception.
The pastor is not to be deceptive. I love Paul’s simple declaration:
Our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit (1 Thessalonians 2:3).
Paul was who he was . . . wherever he was. He made no empty promises. He didn’t pilfer from the ministry’s money. He didn’t say one thing in one place but something else in another.
