Ministry: for some the driving force for being a Christian. It is the reason for their value and existence on the earth today. "What can I do for Jesus and His people today?" It sounds so holy, so right and yet it is filthy in its own rights. It is that pesky, but yet formidable, little word of "I" that pollutes it all. If only we can ask in its place, "Father, what would "You" want from me today" and accept that it might be to sit still and be quiet before Him.
What we do and how we do, whatever we may do, is never as important as why we do. The why begs to know the source of "our ministry". The feeding of the hungry, the caring for the widows and the visiting of the prisoners is not good enough because they are hungry, widows or prisoners. If we feed, care for and visit because we feel a need to do so we pollute the ministry by putting our filthy hands on the plow. Filthy because the source is from us, our souls, and the acts become "soulish acts". While the very same actions will be different if Father God speaks to our spirits and directs us to feed, care and visit. Then it becomes "spiritual acts of being" rather than "soulish acts of doing".
In reality God would not speak to our spirits as much as He would move through our spirit, once we are one with Him. We must learn to become one with the Father as Jesus was one with Him. We must learn to be like Jesus and do and say only AFTER we see and hear from the Father as Jesus did. We must become childlike and wait for our daddy to direct us.
Our driving force should be to become mature sons of God which can only happen by being consumed by the holy, loving God of eternity. Once we are consumed we no longer exist but are recreated by the One who consumes. The old creature and creation is gone, along with all of its ideas of how to deal with situations, and the new creature and creation is in place with the mind and spirit of God.
T. Austin Sparks writes the following in "The Stewardship of the Mystery" pages 76, 77.
"It is what Christ is in us by His Spirit that determines everything. It determines all the values, settles forever the question of effectiveness, answers all the questions and problems. I wish we had had this understanding, this knowledge sooner. If only we could have this as the foundation of our life from the beginning, what a lot we should be saved from.
Ministry is the expression of life, and not the taking on of a uniform and a title. Once I thought that to be in the ministry was to go into a certain kind of work, to come out of business, and, well, be a minister! So one got into the thing. Many, many are laboring and toiling in it, breaking their hearts, afraid to leave that order of things, lest they should be violating what they conceived to be a Divine call. Many others cannot get out of it because it is a means of livelihood, and they too are breaking their hearts. It is all false. Ministry is not a system like that. Ministry is the expression of life, and that is but saying in other words that it is the outworking of the indwelling of Christ. Disaster lies before the man or woman who ministers on any other ground than that. When the Lord gets a chance in us, and we really will trust Him on that ground, take our position there, He will show us that there is ministry enough for us; we shall have not to go round looking for it. The real labour so often is to get us down to that ground, the delivering of us from this present evil age even in its conception of the ministry, unto the heavenly ministry.
The Lord Jesus is our pattern. You see the spontaneous ministry, the restful ministry of that Heavenly Man. I covet that! It does not mean that we shall become careless, but it does deliver us from so much unnecessary strain. That is how it should be. May the Lord bring us to it; the Heavenly Man with the heavenly life as the full heavenly resource."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
PM, this was a very insightful post. I believe the following line: "Ministry is the expression of life, and that is but saying in other words that it is the outworking of the indwelling of Christ" summarizes "Ministry of Being" the best! From our days in Sunday School to adulthood, the constant question that arises again and again remain, "What can I do for God?". It is comforting to us when we are able to answer that question with tangible things in life. Often the more we are able to list off, the better. So, in this age of doing, it is hard to understand the concept of just "being". In our "being", Father will direct our spirit to His purposes according to His way. Furthermore, this "ministry of being" will not bring us to a place of being burnt out or to the neglect of the family. There is no competition or building of kingdoms in the "Ministry of Being". We simply, like our brother Jesus, say only what the Father says and do only what we see the Father doing.
Sheeba
Anonymous / Sheeba,
You are right. If we are burning out or neglecting the family than maybe we should realize that it is in our strength that we are doing. These symptons will not be if we learn to relax and trust Father God and simply be in Him.
Thanks for your comments.
Too bad we learned these valuable lessons so late in life. But, we were taught to think of ministry as something we do and not what we are. We were told that how big our churches become were directly related to how well we MINISTERED.
Shah,
You are right. We have so much to unlearn before we can begin to be.
Thanks for your comments.
We at times seem to forget that we are called to die to bring life. Jesus says this right before He says to serve Him we must follow and be with Him. Sometimes we believe it is ours to bring, this life, so we allow our soulish constructs to dictate what He meant by dying. He did not mean to enter my "profession", talk my lingo or use my "paradigm" to be like me and bring many into the kingdom. He said be where I am, follow my lead, let me live in you and through you. I think we need to revisit what death means and what it means to us, but most importantly, what it means to Jesus......because unless we really learn to die, we remain alone, just like the lone kernel of wheat.
AMEN!!! "The Lord Jesus is our pattern. You see the spontaneous ministry, the restful ministry of that Heavenly Man." I also covet that!
Michael,
Yes, it would be a good thing to let Jesus take the lead and we simply follow Him.
Thanks for your comments.
Angel,
Yes the Lord Jesus is the One we are to pattern ourselves after.
Thanks for your comments.
Post a Comment