“Surely there are few figures so pitiable as the disillusioned minister of the Gospel. High hopes once cheered him on his way: but now the indifference and the recalcitrance of the world, the lack of striking visible results, the discovery of the appalling pettiness and spite and touchiness and complacency which can lodge in narrow hearts, the feeling of personal futility- all these have seared his soul. No longer does the zeal of God’s House devour him. No longer does he mount the pulpit steps in thrilled expectancy that Jesus Christ will come amongst His folk that day, travelling in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save. Dully and drearily he speaks now about what once seemed to him the most dramatic tidings in the world. The edge and verve and passion of the message of divine forgiveness, the exultant, lyrical assurance of the presence of the risen Lord, the amazement of supernatural grace, the urge to cry, ‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel’- all have gone. The man has lost heart. He is disillusioned. And that, for an ambassador of Christ, is tragedy.”
“Don’t listen to the lugubrious voices that incessantly deplore the deadness of the age, and groan about the thankless uphill task of the Christian ministry and the desolating lack of response. It is a thrilling hour in which to bear the commission of your Lord.”
“Therefore I counsel you- let no fog of spiritual defeatism chill your ministry. Refuse to listen to the lying voices which insinuate that this is an unpropitious hour for the proclamation of the faith. You are to be heralds of a religion which once saw the blackest, most desperately unpropitious hour in history- the hour of the crucifying of Jesus- turned into history’s crowning glory and mankind’s brightest hope. Go forth, then, in the heartening assurance that this present cataclysmic hour is alive with spiritual potentialities.”
(HT David Strain)
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