Ministry Can Be Dangerous

Lord, Your timing is indeed perfect! The following is an adapted excerpt from Tim Keller's article, Ministry Can Be Dangerous. You can download the full article here.

It is always gratifying to see Christians become active in church ministry rather than remain mere consumers of spiritual services. There is nothing so fulfilling as to see lives touched and changed through your service, whether you are a volunteer, lay leader, church officer, or staff member.

But the Bible sounds a cautionary note. By its very nature, Christian leadership involves extolling the glory and beauty of God above all else. It means pointing others to God’s worth and beauty even when your own heart is numb to any sense of divine love and glory. As someone who ministers to others, how will you survive when that happens? Following are two things to remember.

1. Do Watch Your Heart

The first—and right—thing to do is to watch your heart with far more diligence than you would have otherwise, and to be very disciplined in observing regular times of daily prayer. In these times you may find your heart warming to God’s reality. Prayer can fan the flame of that reality, allowing you to speak to others out of your daily sustenance from God.

Even so, your heart may continue to feel spiritually dry or dead for an extended period. Such a condition requires that you keep your regular times of prayer even more diligently. Humbly acknowledge your dryness to God and set your heart to trust him and seek him despite it and during it. This deliberate act is itself a great step of spiritual growth and maturity. When you speak to God about your dryness, rather than avoiding prayer times, it reminds you of your weakness and dependence upon his grace for absolutely everything. It drives home the importance and preciousness of your standing in Christ.

2. Don’t Rely On the Excitement

The second—and wrong—thing is to rely not on prayer and your relationship with God but on the excitement of ministry activity and effectiveness. In this way you can begin to lean more on your spiritual gifts than on spiritual grace. In fact, you may mistake the operation of spiritual gifts for the operation of spiritual grace in your life.

Gifts are abilities God gives us to meet the needs of others in Christ’s name: speaking, encouraging, serving, evangelizing, teaching, leading, administering, counseling, discipling, organizing.

Graces, often called spiritual fruit, are beauties of character: love, joy, peace, humility, gentleness, self-control. Spiritual gifts are what we do; spiritual fruit is what we are.

Unless you understand the greater importance of grace and gospel-character for ministry effectiveness, the discernment and use of spiritual gifts may actually become a liability in your ministry. The terrible danger is that we can look to our ministry activity as evidence that God is with us or as a way to earn God’s favor and prove ourselves.

If our hearts remember the gospel and are rejoicing in our justification and adoption, then our ministry is done as a sacrifice of thanksgiving—and the result will be that our ministry is done in love, humility, patience, and tenderness.

But if our hearts are seeking self-justification and desiring to control God and others by proving our worth through our ministry performance, we will identify too closely with our ministry and make it an extension of ourselves. The telltale signs of impatience, irritability, pride, hurt feelings, jealousy, and boasting will appear. We will be driven, scared, and either too timid or too brash. And perhaps, away from the public glare, we will indulge in secret sins. These signs reveal that ministry as a performance is exhausting us and serves as a cover for pride in either one of its two forms, self-aggrandizement or self-hatred.

Here’s how this danger can begin. Your prayer life may be nonexistent, or you may have an unforgiving spirit toward someone, or sexual desires may be out of control. But you get involved in some ministry activity, which draws out your spiritual gifts. You begin to serve and help others, and soon you are affirmed by others and told what great things you are doing. You see the effects of your ministry and conclude that God is with you. But actually God was helping someone through your gifts even though your heart was far from him.

Eventually, if you don’t do something about your lack of spiritual fruit and instead build your identity on your spiritual gifts and ministry activity, there will be some kind of collapse. You will blow up at someone or lapse into some sin that destroys your credibility. And everyone, including you, will be surprised. But you should not be. Spiritual gifts without spiritual fruit is like a tire slowly losing air.

So let’s examine ourselves. Is our prayer life dead even though we’re effective in ministry? Do we struggle with feeling slighted? Are our feelings always being hurt? Do we experience anxiety and joylessness in our work? Do we find ourselves being highly critical of other churches or ministers or coworkers? Do we engage in self-pity? If these things are true, then our ministry may be skillful and successful, but it is hollow, and we are probably either headed for a breakdown or doomed to produce superficial results. Abraham Kuyper wrote that Phariseeism is like a shadow—it can be deepest and sharpest closest to the light.

Christian ministry changes people. It can make us far better or far worse Christians than we would have been otherwise, but it will not leave us unchanged.

Guilt and Shame

Guilt and Shame touch every heart.  For me, it is probably my biggest battle.  It is a battle against half truths and flat out lies about who we are.  The full Truth is that Jesus Christ bore our sin-shame and victimization-shame on the cross.  He took the punishment we deserve.  He took the shame that results from our sins and the sins of others against us.  But will we accept His gift?  Will we accept His forgiveness and/or accept His healing and give that shame up to Him?

Jesus rose from the cross. Shame remains nailed to the cross.  In His resurrection, Jesus conquered sin, Satan, death, hell and absorbed the wrath of God. We can be freed from our guilt and shame if we would only give it (and ourselves) to the Lord Jesus.  You can be freed from guilt and shame if you surrender it (and yourself) to the Lord Jesus. 

Recently the CCEF (Christian Counseling and Education Foundation) and Ed Welch have been speaking out on topics of guilt and shame.  In October there will be a conference where teachers will be addressing shame.  Check it out.

Where We are is of God

CT:  You seem to have a strong sense of place, of the importance of one’s location.

EP:  I enjoy reading the poet-farmer Wendell Berry.  He takes a small piece of land in Kentucky, respects it, cares for it, submits himself to it just as an artist submits himself to his materials.  I read Berry, and every time he speaks of “farm” and “land” I insert “parish.” . . . The pastor’s question is, “Who are these particular people, and how can I be with them in such a way that they can become what God is making them?”  My job is simply to be there, teaching, preaching Scripture as well as I can, and being honest with them, not doing anything to interfere with what the Spirit is shaping in them.

CT:  What does it mean to experience all the material of our lives as an act of faith?

EP:  That I’m responsible for paying attention to the Word of God right here in this locale.  The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it.  So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.

CT:  As a pastor, then, you see grace in some unlikely situations.

EP:  Yes, and my job is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them to see the grace that is operating in their lives.  It’s hard to do, because our whole culture is going the other direction, saying that if you’re smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems. . . . The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are — the particular circumstances of our lives — to recognize grace and say, “Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or my kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and this suffering?”

Interview with Eugene Peterson, Christianity Today, 3 April 1987, pages 25-26.

Where we are is of God

is a post from: Ray Ortlund

The Gospel's Very Heart

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Romans 8:1

Now.  Not five years from now when you are a better Christian.  Right now.  At this instant.

No.  None at all.  Not even a little.  Zero.  Gone.

For those in Christ Jesus.  And only because we are in him.  We provide everything that deserves condemnation.  He provides everything that deserves acceptance and even glory.

This is the clear message of the Bible, because God not only does not condemn us in Christ, he doesn’t want us feeling condemned in Christ.  He wants us feeling freed.
James Montgomery Boice, Romans (Grand Rapids, 1992), page 789: “Verse 1 is not only the theme of Romans 8.  It is the theme of the entire Word of God, which is only another way of saying that it is the gospel.  Indeed, it is the gospel’s very heart.”

The gospel’s very heart

is a post from: Ray Ortlund

“It is finished, there is enough”

“If today you feel that sin is hateful to you, believe in Him who has said, ‘It is finished.’  Let me link your hand in mine.  Let us come together, both of us, and say, ‘Here are two poor naked souls, good Lord; we cannot clothe ourselves,’ and He will give us a robe, for ‘it is finished.’ . . . ‘But must we not add tears to it?’  ‘No,’ says He, ‘no, it is finished, there is enough.’
Child of God, will you have Christ’s finished righteousness this morning, and will you rejoice in it more than you ever have before?”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), II:675.  Style updated.

“It is finished, there is enough”

is a post from: Ray Ortlund

Glory Hallelujah!

When things seem bleak, you are bloodied, bruised and there seems no light at the end of the tunnel, wait on the LORD.  Be strong and take heart and wait on the LORD (Ps 27:14).  Look forward to redemption for it is coming.  It is always darkest before the dawn.  He will show Himself mighty.  When all is said and done, Jesus wins.  

You Can Stand Any Test

Feeling pretty defeated today. This post from Ray Ortlund came in perfect timing:

“The cross is practical, it is God moving in love to meet violent men and women, facing violence and suffering for us.  Your faith was born in violence.  The Christian is not scared when the whole world is shaking.  Your faith was born on Calvary.  It can stand anything.  It is an all-weather faith.

Don’t imagine you can only be a Christian when everything is smooth.  Christians shine better when everything is just the opposite.  Your faith was born in blood and sweat in the loneliness of Calvary.  You can stand any test.”

Bishop Festo Kivengere, When God Moves in Revival (Wheaton, 1973), page 16.

You can stand any test

is a post from: Ray Ortlund