Ministers

Quoting Jonathan Edwards:

It is not only our great duty, but will be our greatest honor, to imitate Christ, and do the work that he has done, and so act as co-workers with him. The ministers of Christ should be persons of the same spirit that their Lord was of—the same spirit of humility and lowliness of heart; for the servant is not greater than his Lord.

They should be of the same spirit of heavenly mindedness, and contempt of the glory, wealth, and pleasures of this world. They should be of the same spirit of devotion and fervent love to God. They should follow the example of his prayerfulness; of whom we read from time to time of his retiring from the world, away from the noise and applause of the multitudes, into mountains and solitary places, for secret prayer, and holy converse with his Father.

Ministers should be persons of the same quiet, lamb like spirit that Christ was of, the same spirit of submission to God’s will, and patience under afflictions, and meekness towards men; of the same calmness and composure of spirit under reproaches and sufferings from the malignity of evil men; of the same spirit of forgiveness of injuries; of the same spirit of charity, of fervent love and extensive benevolence; the same disposition to pity the miserable, to weep with those that weep, to help men under their calamities of both soul and body, to hear and grant the requests of the needy, and relieve afflicted; the same spirit of condescension to the poor and lowly, tenderness and gentleness toward the weak, and great and effectual love to enemies.

They should also be of the same spirit of zeal, diligence, and self-denial for the glory of God, and advancement for his kingdom, and for the good of mankind; for which things sake Christ went though the greatest labors, and endured the most extreme sufferings. And in order to our imitating Christ in the work of the ministry, in any tolerable degree, we should not have our hearts weighed down, and time filled up with worldly affections, cares, and pursuits.

The duties of a minister that have been recommended are absolutely inconsistent with a mind much taken up with worldly profit, glory, amusements, and entertainments.

I’ve Made A Lot Of Money; So Why Don’t I Feel Like A Success?

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

The longer I live – the stronger is my conviction that true success can only be obtained when we understand the purpose for which we were created. The kind of success I am talking about here is not the success you might achieve because of what you have to do; the success I’m writing about comes from the heart’s desire to fulfill a life’s calling. It is the work that you hunger to do and when you do it, you feel God’s pleasure. Success is often measured by what others see us achieve, but true success is measured inside a person and the outward achievements follow. I like these words from Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” Success only has value when driven by the purpose for which you were made by God.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Abraham Kuyper (1837 – 1920) was a Dutch theologian and politician. After serving as a pastor for eleven years, he founded a Calvinist-oriented newspaper and was elected to the national assembly (1874). To provide Calvinist training for pastors, he founded the Free University at Amsterdam (1880), and in 1892 he founded the Reformed Churches in The Netherlands. He was prime minister of The Netherlands from 1901 – 05.

Abraham Kuyper was a man of value. What was the great heart-filled desire that drove him to such achievements? As I was reading one day, I ran across a quote of Kuyper’s that provides a very insightful observation of his life. I think of this quote often. It has been a challenge to me. Kuyper said:

“One desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. And sooner should I seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of life fail me. It is this: That in spite of all worldly opposition, God’s holy ordinances shall be established again in the home, in the school and in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which the Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God.”

Please don’t misunderstand me; you do not have to be a preacher or Bible scholar to be a success in life. However, you must be doing that one thing (does not have to be your job) that your gifts have caused you to love – and you must do it to the glory of God who is the Source of those gifts!

I have had one job for most of my professional career and I always tried to honor God in my work. I had many visible successes and some failures. The interesting thing to me (and this is purely subjective) was that I really felt God’s pleasure most when I was teaching adults. Since I had a job which required me to do only a small amount of teaching adults, I also began (Actually, I was drafted the first time.) teaching adults in Sunday School. There, I believe, I truly experienced God’s pleasure to a greater degree than in anything else I did. I love God’s Word and I love teaching it to adults. This was my real key to loving what I did, being successful, and glorifying God!

I have been an adult Sunday School teacher for about thirty years now. I give thanks to God for the precious opportunities I have had to teach His Word to His people. On the other hand, if your heart’s desire is to be an auto mechanic, then do it to the glory of God! If God has gifted you to be a carpenter, then do it to the glory of your Creator. All work is made noble when you honor God in it. The whole of life is not a division of the sacred and the secular. God is still sovereign over every area of life. If you can take pleasure in what god has given you to do, and glorify God in doing it, God will be most pleased with you. Christians are to always live, work, and play in the presence of God. If you do this, then you will be a success – whether you make a lot of money or not!

The Comfort Of Trusting In God’s Providence

In our study of the providence of God, there is one expectation that should be clear to everyone: God expects Christians to have a steady commitment to His glory. This must shape your worldview because it is the guiding principle of your conduct. If God’s glory is accepted as the greatest purpose of your life, then you will be a useful servant to God. Trust God, acknowledge His Word, seek His Wisdom, and His Sovereignty by obeying Him and being thankful for His Providential care. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

God has committed His kingdom of providence, as well as of grace, into the hands of our exalted Savior: Jesus Christ has all the power in heaven and earth to give eternal life to as many as are given Him. If providence brings a difficult situation into your life, the love that is in Christ should and will make for a contented spirit until a way of escape is provided. When different and difficult choices must be made; God’s Providence has brought the Christian into such difficulty in order to enhance and grow our love for His Name, His Word, and His Glory. We should always look at these trying circumstances as occasions to wait upon the Lord and to trust in His Providential care.

God’s love for us in Jesus Christ and a realistic understanding that providence is within God’s absolute control, is our affirmation of Christ’s Honor. It will keep our torch of faith from failing and our souls from being bitter because providence seems to have afflicted us. Such conformity in faith is very desirable. Providence brings the effect of God’s Spirit upon the heart and soul.

Too often, Christians wish to see in what providence has provided an immediate message to their personal concerns. Yet the outcome of the work may be years away from understanding its end. Do not long too hard for immediate signs from God. Begin to wait upon the Lord and He will share His Wisdom at just the right time. Often, we are self-deluding when we too quickly see a spiritual answer to our present circumstances.

Christian, if you love God, you must trust in His Providential care. Accept and believe in His Providential care. Know that whatever circumstances may befall you, that His Providence will eventually work it out to your good. Remember Joseph; his trial lasted a good deal longer than a few days, weeks, or months. Years later, he understood God’s plan perfectly.

Love God’s Providence, for it is His love and care for you. Know that you are completely in His hands. He will never let go of you. He will never leave or forsake you. I pray that the comfort of God’s Providential care will fill all of us completely.

Charles Spurgeon On The Will

Charles H. Spurgeon

From the desk of Charles Spurgeon:

Blessed be the God of grace that it is so! He has a people whom He has chosen from of old to be His peculiar portion. These by nature have wills as stubborn as the rest of the froward sons of Adam; but when the day of His power comes and grace displays its omnipotence, they become willing to repent and to believe in Jesus. None are saved unwillingly, but the will is made sweetly to yield itself. What a wondrous power is this, which never violates the will and yet rules it! God does not break the lock, but He opens it by a master key which He alone can handle. Now are we willing to be, to do, or to suffer as the LORD wills. If at any time we grow rebellious, He has but to come to us with power, and straightway we run in the way of His commands with all our hearts. May this be a day of power with me as to some noble effort for the glory of God and the good of my fellowmen! LORD, I am willing; may I not hope that this is a day of Thy power? I am wholly at Thy disposal; willing, yea, eager, to be used of Thee for Thy holy purposes. O LORD, let me not have to cry, “To will is present with me, but how to perform that which I would, I find not”; but give me power as Thou givest me will. (“Faith’s Checkbook”)

God’s Glory and the Deepest Joy of Human Souls Are One Thing

John Piper

From the desk of Pastor John Piper:

Jonathan Edwards writes:

God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation of his glory . . . implies the . . . happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself, because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God’s glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused . . . he seeks their glory and happiness.

Thus it is easy to conceive how God should seek the good of the creature . . . even his happiness, from a supreme regard to himself; as his happiness arises from . . . the creature’s exercising a supreme regard to God . . . in beholding God’s glory, in esteeming and loving it, and rejoicing in it.

God’s respect to the creature’s good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.

Jonathan Edwards

In his book, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (with the complete text of The End for Which God Created the World (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998), John Piper offers fifteen implications for the truths cited above.

1. God’s passion for his own glory and his passion for my joy in him are not at odds.

2. Therefore, God is as committed to my eternal and ever-increasing joy in him as he is to his own glory.

3.The love of God for sinners is not his making much of them, but his graciously freeing and empowering them to enjoy making much of him.

4.All true virtue among human beings must aim at bringing people to rejoice in the glory of God.

5.It also follows that sin is the suicidal exchange of the glory of God for the broken cisterns of created things.

6.Heaven will be a never-ending, ever-increasing discovery of more and more of God’s glory with greater and ever-greater joy in him.

7.Hell is unspeakably real, conscious, horrible and eternal – the experience in which God vindicates the worth of his glory in holy wrath on those who would not delight in what is infinitely glorious.

8.Evangelism means depicting the beauty of Christ and his saving work with a heartfelt urgency of love that labors to help people find their satisfaction in him.

9.Similarly Christian preaching, as part of the corporate worship of Christ’s church, is an expository exultation over the glories of God in his word, designed to lure God’s people from the fleeting pleasures of sin into the sacrificial path of obedient satisfaction in him.

10.The essence of authentic, corporate worship is the collective experience of heartfelt satisfaction in the glory of God, or a trembling that we do not have it and a great longing for it.

11.World missions is a declaration of the glories of God among all the unreached peoples, with a view to gathering worshippers who magnify God through the gladness of radically obedient lives.

12.Prayer is calling on God for help so it is plain that he is gloriously resourceful and we are humbly and happily in need of grace.

13.The task of Christian scholarship is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it.

14.The way to magnify God in death is by meeting death as gain.

15.”It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.” (C. S. Lewis)

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Jonathan Edwards: Pride As A Cause Of Unrighteous Anger

Jonathan Edwards

Quoting Jonathan Edwards:

Pride is one chief cause of undue anger. It is because men are proud, and exalt themselves in their own hearts, that they are revengeful, and are apt to be excited, and to make great things out of little ones that may be against themselves. Yea, they even treat as vices things that are in themselves virtues, when they think their honor is touched, or when their will is crossed. And it is pride that makes men so unreasonable and rash in their anger, and raises it to such a high degree, and continues it so long, and often keeps it up in the form of habitual malice… If men sought not chiefly their own private and selfish interests, but the glory of God and the common good, then their spirit would be a great deal more stirred up in God’s cause than in their own; and they would not be prone to hasty, rash, inconsiderate, immoderate, and long-continued wrath, with any who might have injured or provoked them; but they would in a great measure forget themselves for God’s sake, and from their zeal for the honor of Christ. The end they would aim at, would be, not making themselves great, or getting their own will, but the glory of God and the good of their fellow-beings. (“The Spirit of Love the Opposite of An Angry or Wrathful Spirit”, 1 Corinthians 13:5)

Pride And Leadership

J. C. Philpot addressing church leadership:

Pride, self-conceit, and self-exaltation, are both the chief temptations, and the main besetting sins, of those who occupy any public position in the church.

Therefore, where these sins are not mortified by the Spirit, and subdued by His grace; instead of being, as they should be, the humblest of men; they are, with rare exceptions, the proudest.

Did we bear in constant remembrance our slips, falls, and grievous backslidings; and had we, with all this, a believing sight of the holiness and purity of God, of the sufferings and sorrows of His dear Son, and what it cost Him to redeem us from the lowest hell; we would be, we must be clothed with humility; and would, under feelings of the deepest self-abasement, take the lowest place among the family of God, as the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all the saints.

This should be the feeling of every child of God. Until this pride is in some measure crucified, until we hate it, and hate ourselves for it, the glory of God will not be our main object. (“New Years’ Address, 1857″)

The Beauty Of Our Lord

Charles H. Spurgeon

“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” (Psalm 17:15)

The portion of other men fills their bodies and enriches their children, but the portion of the believer is of another sort. Men of the world have their treasure in this world, but men of the world to come look higher and further.

Our possession is twofold. We have God’s presence here and His like-ness hereafter. Here we behold the face of the Lord in righteousness, for we are justified in Christ Jesus. Oh, the joy of beholding the face of a reconciled God! The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ yields us heaven below, and it will be to us the heaven of heaven above.

But seeing does not end it: we are to be changed into that which we gaze upon. We shall sleep a while and then wake up to find ourselves as mirrors which reflect the beauties of our Lord. Faith sees God with a transforming look. The heart receives the image of Jesus into its own depths, till the character of Jesus is imprinted on the soul. This is satisfaction. To see God and to be like Him-what more can I desire? David’s assured confidence is here by the Holy Ghost made to be the Lord’s promise. I believe it. I expect it. Lord, vouchsafe it. Amen.