“Would you follow that course of life, if there were no settled establishment belonging to it, and if you were to preach under the cross, and in danger of persecution? For till you arrive at that, you are yet carnal, and come into the priesthood for a piece of bread.”
Bishop Burnett quoted in Charles Bridges “Christian Ministry”
In preparing for the Sunday’s message, I came across an article in a Christian woman’s magazine dealing with depression. In identifying the problem the article says: “What is surprising is how quick we are to accept another person’s judgment and how serious our lack of faith in ourselves can become.” Is a lack of faith in ourself the real problem? I came to another quote from one of my favorite ministerial books- The Christian Minister by Charles Bridges who hits the question head on for the minister:
“Admitting that we are called to difficult and costly service; yet have we abundant cause to be satisfied with the sustaining support and consolation provided for every emergency. All indeed may be included in the single promise- “Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” ...While he stands with you, there can be no just cause for fear or faintness. You need no other encouragement. This you shall never want, if you continue faithful: and hereupon you may conclude- “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom.”
“The lack of scriptural knowledge is the source of all evils in the church.” John Chrysostom
Thom Ascol (founders.org/blog) highlighted this quote from a book that has become one of my favorites-The Forgotten Spurgeon. Read what Spurgeon had to say here and be courageous:
We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago . . . but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and their compeers had said, ‘The world is out of order; but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our night-caps, and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.’ Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps, and the pestiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on….
It is today as it was in the Reformers’ days. Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day? We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it . . . Look you, sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear, there will come another generation, and another, and all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today. We have come to a turning-point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word. (C. H. S., Sermons, 1888, 83-84; cited in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon, 192).
“Ministerial success must be viewed, as extending beyond present appearances. The seed may lie under the clods till we lie there, and then spring up….It often happens, that God withholds his blessing for a time, in order that, when the net is cast in ‘on the right side,’ it may be clearly seen, that ‘the multitude of fishes’ enclosed are of the Lord’s giving; lest men should attribute their success to a wrong cause, and should ’sacrifice unto their own net, and burn incense unto their own drag.” We may add to this the recollection of the extensive results from ‘the day of small things.’ only two souls appeared as the immediate fruit of the vision of ‘the man of Macedonia;’ but how fruitful was the ultimate harvest in the flourishing churches in that district! (Acts 16 along with Phil. and Thess.) Our plain and cheering duty is therefore to go forward-to scatter the seed-to believe and wait.” Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry
“There is nothing to which we are more prone than to offer God pretended worship whenever He calls us to repentance.” John Calvin
“The weak things of God have become not so much despised as ignored in much of contemporary Christianity. Instead we look for the powerful things of the world. And then we wonder why we get worldly results: consumers rather than disciples…more than good acting, good sound, good staging and lighting, what we need most is a good script. We have that in God’s Word- and the extent to which we are confident in the power of that weakness, we will be faithful as preachers and hearers of God’s good news. If people are hankering after drama, perhaps it is because we are not demonstrating them the wonder of the divine drama. “ Michael Horton, A Better Way, pg. 43-44
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.” C.S. Lewis from A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’
From Chris Huffman:
This is Piper’s comments on verses 8 and 10 of Isaiah chapter 58.
Then your brightness will break like dawn. (verse 8 )
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday. (verse10)
Piper says of these verses…
” It is one of God’s many paradoxes that there is more light in the dark places of the world for those who goes there to serve. And there is more darkness in the glitz of the great malls for those who go there to escape. Jesus is the Light of the world. Living near Him is the brightest place in the universe. To find out where He lives, read the gospels and follow His path.
How’s the gloom factor in your life? Are you gloomy? Is your church gloomy? Is your Sunday school class gloomy? Is your small group under a cloud of gloom? Maybe you should stand up and say, ‘If there is a cast of gloom over us, maybe we should find some project for the hungry.’That’s what this text says. If you want the clouds to roll back, start pouring out your life for other people. Maybe you are too ingrown as a person, or a church or a small group or a family. Maybe your family has become so self-focused, nobody ever comes over. You don’t know any of your neighbors. There’s no family ministry. And you wonder why there’s a cloud over the family. Take this promise, and pray hard for the gloom factor in your life, and see if there is a prescription here for you — not a job description to earn anything, but a doctor’s prescription who loves you and wants to free you from gloom. He wants light on you, and He knows the the path that leads to brightness.”
