BY JACK WARD
PASTOR, TOMAHAWK MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH

“If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 9:12)

What Paul says is, “I’m not standing up for my rights. I want to be a soul-winner.” And he says, “I’ll be a soul-winner even if it means my rights are trampled on. The most important thing to me is getting out the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

I tried to apply that to my own life, saying, “Jack, are you more interested in your rights or are you more interested in getting the gospel out?” I thought about that and concluded that I will always be more interested in getting the gospel out than I am in my rights.

Adrian Rogers tells this story: Joyce and I went out to lunch and, while we were having lunch in this particular restaurant, I began to witness to the waitress. We had a wonderful witness to this waitress. She had a lot of difficulties, a lot of problems. It was not only a witness, but it turned into a counseling session, and I spent much time with this waitress, telling her about the love of Jesus. She finally had to go, and she was off, so she left the restaurant.

Well, when I got the check, she had overcharged me. She had overcharged me several dollars more than what she should have charged. I didn’t have enough money with me and didn’t have a credit card. I only had some cash, just enough money to pay the bill and to leave her a tip, but now I was on the horns of a dilemma.

If I go up there and, after all of this witness and testimony, and tell the employer this woman has overcharged me (even though that would be the normal and natural thing to do), it would just embarrass her to pieces. I knew that because she was a woman who was already so unsure of herself, a woman already who felt that she was such a failure (that’s part of what we were talking about). It would devastate her if I had to go to her employer and he were to say to her, “You overcharged this man.”

So I said, “Well, I’ll suffer the wrong. I’ll pay the overcharge.” But then I thought, “If I pay the overcharge, I won’t have enough money to leave her a tip. What am I going to do? I can’t tell him and leave her a tip, but I can’t leave her a tip if I don’t tell him.”

You know, the crazy thing I had to do was this: I had to say, “Joyce, you sit here in the restaurant; I’m going out to the car, drive all the way home, get some more money, and come back here, so I can (a) give a tip to the woman who overcharged me, and (b) pay the overcharge and not say anything about it. Unless she’s here tonight, she doesn’t know anything about it.”

I thought about that. I had a right to say I was overcharged, or I had a right not to leave a tip, necessarily, to a person who overcharged me. But that didn’t make any difference to me. I’d far rather be overcharged and far rather her not know about it, and no one else would’ve known about it, had I not told you, than to fail to get the gospel of Jesus Christ out.

We shouldn’t always stand up for our rights.

I think Bill Gothard has well said, “When we stand up for our rights, we have a revolution. When we stand up for our responsibilities, we have a revival.”

It’s not all about us. For us it’s all about Christ.

Hear Pastor Jack’s sermons and get sermon outlines and more at www.tomahawkmbc.com.