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Thank you so very much for your reply! I always treasure your insights, dear Mad Dawg.

However, neither is sufficient to justify drawing an audience. There are diversities of gifts, and displaying the fruits of the Spirit does not demonstrate that one has the vocation or gifts of a theologian or teacher.

I absolutely agree with you! No one should present a credential and say "you must listen to me because..." That would be wrong.

And the only audience which counts is the one that the Father draws:

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. - John 6:44

So when anyone asks me whether or not they should listen to another person concerning Spiritual matters, I direct them to the Scriptures for counsel: the test of spirits (1 John 4), the good tree/good fruit test (Matt 7 and Gal 5), the Berean test (Acts 17) and the leading of the indwelling Spirit (John 14-17, Romans 8, I Cor 2)

I apply all of those tests to my own words - so if anything I say fails on any of those points in the eyes of another person, that person should not listen to me either.

After all, one of my earnest continual prayers is that His Light will shine unobstructed by me.

After all, one of my earnest continual prayers is that His Light will shine unobstructed by me.

I have an image for you (No, not THAT kind of image ...): In VA the summers are dry. And on my farm I had several humongous lengths of hose to water all the sheep in all the different paddocks. And sometimes there's a leak in one of the hoses, or where two hoses are linked. How you know the location of the leak is that that's where the grass is greenest. You can't see the hose, you can't see the leak. You can see the growing grass.

Now THERE's a vocation!

When I was a Pepsicola priest I had a "high" theology of preaching: If I beg God to give me good utterance, and you beg God to give you good hearing, then we have a reasonable hope that this sermon will have a discernible relation to what God wants spoken and heard.

So when I began,"In the name of the Father ..." somebody might have thought I was claiming some authority. Not at ALL! It was just Church talk for "This is dedicated to the one I love," and I encouraged "my" people to listen in the same vein. I guess one difference is that when I thought I was truly ordained (as I do NOT now think) I thought that God would use my mouth, if I offered it to Him.