Living the Wrong Life

In 1 Corinthians 9, 16, the Apostle Paul declares, For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, For necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me, If I preach not the gospel. Years ago, I attended a biblical preaching institute conducted by Dr. Stephen Olford. I was the only man there, out of place.

I wasn't a pastor, but a businessman. I came more out of curiosity than anything else. I was interested in preaching, but not interested in being a preacher.

Like I said, I was a businessman who wanted to hear a man like Stephen Olford preach. Stephen Olford was different from other preachers. He preached with conviction and with a voice of authority.

And I admired a man who excelled at what he did. And Dr. Olford excelled at preaching. And while I listened to him over a four-day period, I came to a startling realization.

I saw for the first time that I was living the wrong life. God had allowed me to choose my own career path. And he had allowed me to become successful at it.

But it wasn't the path he had chosen for me. But I didn't know that until I sat under the preaching of Stephen Olford. And I caught a glimpse of eternity.

And right then and there, I saw that I was living the wrong life. It was a good life. I had plenty of money.

And much of the good things in life I had rose to the top of my profession, to where I was in so much demand that other companies would recruit me and then pay me handsomely to go to work for them. Why, just the previous week to my going to that Stephen Olford Institute, a firm had just cut me a check for $253,000 just to go to work for them. Like I said, I had a good life.

I was at the top of my game and enjoying the fruits of my labor. But I was living the wrong life. I've always wondered where I'd be now if I had never attended that Institute for Preaching.

I guess I would have had more of the world than I did even then. But I would have ended up living the wrong life. Because what I experienced under the preaching of Stephen Olford was Holy Spirit conviction that I was living the wrong life.

I wasn't living the life God had intended me to live. That day, God fled me like a pancake, turning my life upside down and the course of my life right side up. I cannot tell you, friends, what has transpired between that time and this, because we'd be here for hours if I did.

But I'll say this, I wouldn't be preaching to you right now if I hadn't obeyed God back then. We all have a choice in the life we live. Most of us live far below our potential.

Many of us live the wrong life, knowing deep down it is the wrong life. But we stay with it because it's a familiar life and it has security. The unknown frightens us.

The unknown keeps us back from entering into what God wants for us. We have such inferior men in ministry today because the better ones are cowards. They're too afraid to go out on a limb for God by faith and thus enter into the life God had prepared for them all along.

But they missed it. I believe the great judgment day will be a great revealing day because it'll be a shock to many that the life they lived was not the life they should have lived. We settled for the world instead of reaching for eternity and lives have been lost in the balance.

I believe the most miserable person on this planet is not the sinner living in sin. No, that person is having a good time for a season. The most miserable person on this planet is the one living the wrong life.