Tuesday is Pastor's day at Resolve. Today we feature an article extract from Tim Keller entitled 'Ministry Can be Dangerous for your Spiritual Health.'
'We want Christians to be active in ministry, not just ‘consumers of spiritual services.’ We want Christians to become volunteers, and lay leaders, and church officers, and staff members of churches and ministry organizations. There is nothing so fulfilling as to see lives touched and
changed through your service. But the Bible sounds a cautionary note. Christian leadership entails telling people every day, “God is so wonderful!” You will constantly point people toward
God’s worth and beauty, despite the fact that often your own heart is numb or dead to any sense of divine love and glory. What will you do in response to that? There are two things you can do.
The first (and right thing) to do is to watch your heart far more closely than you would have
otherwise, being very disciplined to observe regular times of daily prayer. In these times you may find your heart warming a great deal to God’s reality. Prayer then fans the flame of that reality constantly, so you can speak to others out of what God is giving you in your walk with him.
It is also possible that your heart may stay feeling spiritually dry or even dead. In that case you
keep your stated times of prayer even more diligently. And you humbly acknowledge to God
your dryness and set your heart to trust him and seek him despite it and during it.That deliberate act is itself a great step of spiritual growth and maturity. When you talk to God himself about your dryness (rather than just avoiding prayer times) it reminds you of
your weakness, your dependence on his grace for absolutely everything. It drives home the
importance and preciousness of your legal standing in Christ.
The second (and wrong thing) to do is to rely not on prayer and your personal walk with God,
but on the excitement of ministry activity and effectiveness. In other words, you can rely more on your spiritual gifts (of ministry) than on spiritual grace. In fact, you will probably mistake the operations of your 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 or grace is what we are. Unless you understand the superior importance of grace and gospel-character for ministry effectiveness, the discernmentand use of your spiritual gifts may be very dangerous.
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 heart remembers the gospel, and is
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 our heart may be continuing to do the same self-justification it has always done—seeking to control God and others by earning and proving our worth—through our ministry performance.'
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