These days, according to baseball people, Yankee star Alex Rodriguez is “in a good place.” That means he’s hitting and fielding well. Having come through tons of personal problems–most of his own doing, if I’m any judge–and physical difficulties, he’s now living up to the hype that has surrounded him through the years.

Yankee skipper Joe Girardi said on TV the other night, “Alex is in a good place.” A few minutes later, Rodriguez said, “I’m in a good place right now.” And sure enough, someone else said it of him a minute or two later. Apparently, it’s the hip testimonial du jour.

I identify with the term.

To be “in a good place” to me, as a minister of the Gospel, means you’ve reached a point in your spiritual and professional development where you are doing your best work.

It will seem strange to some for me to make that kind of assessment about my own preaching. But it’s true. Absolutely true.

I remember my first feeble attempts at sermon-finding, sermon-building, and sermon-delivery. Each stage was stressful and as difficult as anything I’d ever done. At this point–I’m thinking of my first pastorate, Unity Baptist Church of Kimberly, Alabama–I’d not been to seminary yet, and as a history major in college who had planned to teach that subject, the business of preaching was not something I was prepared for.

The Bible was like a closed book to me. Oh, I’d read the Bible since early childhood. I loved it dearly. But believe me, opening the Word to find the Lord’s sermon for your people next Sunday is a lot different from reading for your own edification.

My heart goes out to the small crowd at Unity (we ran 30 and 35) who were patient with my poor attempts to preach and lead the church.

Two things made the difference over the years: each time I moved to a new church, I was able to begin anew to practice lessons learned in the previous pastorate, and seminary. In seminary, you sit around with young pastors and pastor-wannabes who are also struggling to figure out what the Bible means, how to put it into sermon form, and how to find the most effective way of delivering a sermon. You sit under the hands-on mentoring of veteran ministers with a lifetime of experience and insight to share.

No minister ever fully arrives, of course. You never reach the point where you feel you are the example for all those other preachers. What you do is get to the place where you feel you are doing your best work, a time in your life when you can say, “I’m in a good place now.”

There’s a great deal of joy in opening the Bible almost at any place and knowing where we are and what’s going on there. I took the Hebrew and Greek courses, but this kind of comforting knowledge comes not from language study but from reading the Bible and thinking about what you have read and teaching it to others.

This sweet-spot in life is not for preachers only.

Any believer who owns a Bible should be devoting him/herself to learning its contents and growing in Christ.

When you enrolled in the first grade, had the principal handed you a book and said, “Keep this. It will be your only text for the rest of your schooling,” you would have devoted yourself to mastering its message.

It is to the everlasting shame of a great segment of people calling themselves disciples of Jesus Christ that they do not know their Bibles. They are easy prey for the cultist who comes knocking at their doors and the atheist who knows how to misquote and twist certain passages.

The writer of Hebrews shamed believers of his day: “By this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you.”

A friend and I were talking this week about our mentor-in-common, Dr. George Harrison, retired Old Testament and Hebrew professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I said to him, “It used to grieve me to think of Dr. Harrison’s taking all that vast knowledge of the Bible to Heaven with him. But then I realized this is the way of life. Each generation of believers has to do its own digging.”

If you are in a good place in your ministry, in your understanding of Scripture, and in your love for the Lord and His people, give thanks and enjoy it. If not, recognize the need for spiritual growth and give this top priority.

A pastor told his people recently, “It’s not as hard as you might think to tell if you are growing in the Lord. Are you doing anything right now you never thought you’d be doing? Do you know anything about God and the Word you didn’t know a year ago? If so, you’re growing.”

My constant prayer for the churches where I serve is that Christ will be glorified, the church will be strengthened, people will come to Christ, and the leadership will be encouraged.

Everytime a member grows spiritually, the church is strengthened. Everytime a member begins to tithe, the church is strengthened. Everytime one gets serious about his prayer life, the church grows stronger.

To be “in a good place” in your ministry does not mean you’re doing better than anyone else, but only that you are doing your best work.

I hope that’s true of me at this time in my life. I think it is. But I’m not the judge. The One who is my Judge knows, and my only desire is to earn His “well done.”