In the past three postings I’ve written about three ways we who lead God’s people can take steps to “guard our hearts” in ministry.
I’ve mentioned the importance of God-centered motives, the need to stay cross-centered in our lives and ministry, and the challenge we face to become Bible-centered in our lives and service for God.
Today I end this series with a closing challenge.
A Closing Challenge
In Scripture, only a portion of those who led God’s people finished their ministry well. Professor Clinton, whose research I mentioned yesterday, claims that the number is around 30%. That means that 70% of those involved in spiritual leaders did not finish well in their lives and ministry. That is a very sobering statistic. It causes us to ask – How will my service for God end? It is something worth pondering.
To a large degree, the answer to that question depends on my “guarding my heart.” The quality of my relationship with God is linked with the quality of my service for him.
Several years ago I read the testimony of a Christian worker serving in the Middle East. It’s one of those stories that lodged itself in my mind and I often find myself thinking again about what he wrote. He’s just a short excerpt from his story,
I tried to analyze those who had been successful evangelists in our context. Something about them was attractive to non-believers, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
First, I notice they were people of the Bible. They loved their Bibles and when someone asked them a question, they instinctively opened their bibles and gave them the answer. Second, others experienced them as men or women of God. Their life with God was an integral part of their entire life.
I knew however, that there was something else, a third characteristic they all had in common but I couldn’t figure out what it was. An older brother helped me find the missing piece. He told me, “I’ll tell you what makes all of them fruitful in ministry… It is the cross. Look once more at the life stories of each of those people you are examining. You will find that each of them passed through some sort of crisis that broke them – an experience where their only hope was in God, an experience that caused them to die to themselves… He was right. I began to understand that what made them attractive to unbelievers was the presence of God in their lives. And for that to happen, God had to break them.[1]
[1] Roland Miller, “The ” in MMC: The Messenger, the Message and the Community. 2006. www.rmuller.com
