Four Motivations for Ministry

Motivations for Ministry

2 Corinthians 4:1-14

To understand the concepts of this section it is helpful to get the big picture of 2 Corinthians.  In Second Corinthians, Paul is both describing his apostolic ministry to the Corinthian church and defending it against false apostles.  The book is divided into three primary sections: 

Paul’s apostleship and apostolic authority had been undermined and attacked by someone and or a group of false apostles in the church at Corinth.  They attacked his motives, his message and his credentials.  This of course troubled Paul and was greatly concerned about the welfare of the church plant.  In this letter he opens up his heart in a remarkable and transparent way for all the Corinthians to see his great love and godly concern for them, not for himself.  In this letter, he models what it means to be a true servant-leader of Jesus Christ. 

In chapters one and two, he explains his motives and in chapters three through five.  he describes his ministry.  In chapter three, Paul contrasts the Old Covenant with the New Covenant.  This can be seen as “in the face of Moses” contrasted with “in the face of Jesus Christ”.  He explains that the Old Covenant though it came in glory, it was a fading glory, (italics mine, 2 Corinthians 3:7).   Whereas, the New Covenant is seen in the face of Christ which remains in glory, (italics mine, 2 Corinthians 3:11, 14).  The major point that the Apostle Paul makes is that the New Covenant is superior to the Old Covenant and that he is a servant of the New Covenant.  

In the New Covenant those who behold the glory of the Lord are being transformed  from glory to glory through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, (2 Corinthians 3:18).  However, this does not mean that everything in life and ministry will alway be glorious or smooth sailing!  In fact the opposite is true.  This is why Paul shares his struggles with the Corinthian church in chapters 1, 4, 6, 11-12.  He models for them what a true servant of Christ is like and what a servant of Christ may go through.  As Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”  

It is the fourth chapter that Paul unpacks the motivation for his apostolic ministry.  Here he describes four motivations for not losing heart in being a servant of God. 

First he says, “Therefore since we have this ministry, as we received mercy we do not lose heart”, (2 Corinthians 4:1).  Paul does not lose heart in ministry because the New Covenant is ministry of life, glory, righteousness and transformation, (2Corinthians 3:6, 8, 9, 18)! In the New Covenant the Christian has been given the indwelling Holy Spirit who is at work in each one to transform them from glory to glory into the image of Christ!  So, Paul does not through in the towel when things get rough instead he remains motivated to keep pressing on toward the upward call of God.  .

Secondly, Paul stays motivated because he understands that he is in a spiritual war.  He writes to the Corinthians, “and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of the age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, ( 2 Corinthians 4:3-4).

The implication of these verses is that Paul’s antagonists claim that Paul’s gospel message is veiled or obscure.  Yet, he understands that even if the hearers don’t get it, it is because of the spiritual blinders the god of the age has established.  Later in this letter Paul refers to weapons that are divinely powerful Christians have to do battle with the evil one.  One such weapon is prayer.  

A third motivation for staying motivated in ministry is because of the indescribable treasure that is entrusted to each believer.  Paul says, “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness”, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”, (2 Corinthians 4:6).  

Paul realizes that he is carrying a divine treasure — the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He has a responsibility to reveal or to share the knowledge of this treasure and point people to Christ, not to himself.  Then Paul explains how God gets this awesome treasure to shine through our lives.  He says we have this treasure in “earthen vessels”.  And just as Gideon had his army break the “clay pots” for the torches to shine against the enemy when they attacked the Midiantes, (Judges 7) even so, trials and difficulties that the Christian goes through is not intended by God to wipe him out but to cause the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God” to shine out.  God intends this so that “the surpassing greatness of power displayed may be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Corinthians 4:7). 

And lastly, the final reason for staying motivated in ministry is seeing life through an eternal lens versus a temporal lens.   Paul writes, 

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

The Apostle Paul went through unbelievable and excruciating difficulties but it was these very difficulties that gave Paul the opportunity to show the glory of the Gospel.  Paul was not living for comfort; or promoting himself as his antagonists were. He was living in the New Covenant and with the sure hope of eternal glory!  Notice how he views the personal crucifixions of this life from and eternal perspective: momentary contrasted with eternal; light contrasted with weight and affliction contrasted with glory.

These are some of the motivations that kept Paul on course so that at the end of his life he could confidently say, “ I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing”, (2 Timothy 4:7-8).  

Imagine

I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall no over gods before Me!  Exodus 20:2-3

This is the starting point of life.  Everything — every life and every society is to be built upon and centered on this most indispensable and preeminent truth.  This is the first Truth to be anchored to. If we are untethered here, we end up a drift into personal and cultural chaos.

Life - our life does not start with us.  It starts with God.  If we start with "us", we have no objective truth to define who we are or why we are here.  We have no underlying basis to treat the rest of humanity with dignity from the womb to the tomb.  We end up creating our own gods — in our image for us to control and yet we come undone.  This is precisely what happens to any individual and society who rejects  God (see Romans 1:18-32).

Look among the nations who have government as god and not God as God.  The State takes the place of God and defines our worth and value.  How does the State treat its people — with compassion or as chattel?  Are children considered a blessing or burden?  Does the State promote the sanctity of marriage (between one man and one woman) and family?  Or does the State redefine both according to its whim?  How will the State treat the elderly when its medical system cannot bear the economic weight?

For example, we partner with an orphanage is an Asian country where false gods are the religion of that country. The children of the orphanage have not lost parents or relatives but they have been abandoned by them. They are left to either die or else they get taken to be shipped to a neighboring country and sold into slavery as sex slaves.  

The State is impersonal and you and I are merely its pawn or a number.  In contrast, The LORD is the eternal-personal-Covenant-making-keeping God.  He sets us free to live within the bounds of His righteous nature.  He is eternal:  There is no other.  He alone dwells in immortality and is sovereign over all.  He is personal:  He is not an it.  He is not an impersonal force or law.  He knows us, loves us and is with us! He is the Covenant-making-keeping God.  He brings us into a covenant relationship with Himself based on His performance, not ours.  He alone is the One who determines our worth and value as created-dependent beings.  We are to treat each other with care and compassion; with justice and mercy; with grace and truth because this is who God is.  

Imagine - what we would be like, what a country would be like, whose God is the LORD!  

Psalm 33:12,

doug

citizens of heaven

I was moved. Afterwards, I told the group I was with that every American ought to attend one of these at least once in their life.

Tuesday of the past week, a group of about nine of us went to the Harry S.Truman Library for Ming Xue Liu's (Michele) citizenship ceremony.  Michele is Chinese and she and her husband own a Chinese restaurant in Lee's Summit, MO.  She has been attending our ESL (English Second Language) training so she can get her U.S. citizenship.  She has worked very hard and in the process we have become good friends.

We sat in the audience and witnessed forty-nine men and women from 27 countries (example: China, Togo, Cuba, Honduras, Iraq, Mexico, Vietnam, Bangladesh ...) become U.S. citizens.  The Judge warmly welcomed these "aliens" to our country.  The reference to God was woven all the way through the ceremony.  A high school choir sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  Each of the attendees stood up one by one and announced what country they came from.  And then .... they all stood up and declared their allegiance to the U.S. so help them God.  They are now Americans!  I was moved.

Then, I reflected on a day to come, when all of God's people from every nation, every language, every ethnic group will stand one day before The Throne of Grace where the Sovereign Lord rules, reigns and sustains.  And we will declare from our heart our allegiance to Our King and Redeemer.  We will all bow our knee and declare Jesus is LORD!  Their will be a choir - angelic!  And we will enter the Kingdom of God in all of its splendor and majesty, not as subjects, but as sons and daughters of the King; not as slaves but as kings and priests before the King of Kings and High Priest forever!  The scene was poignant.

I was in tears.  I cannot wait for that day!

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

Summer Asia Travels 2013

Asia trip June - July 2013

We left for Asia on June 24th.  There were three of us who stayed for one month and there were others who came for various lengths of time.  

Our first location was in Taichung Taiwan where we spent time with a new Great Commission Church plant.  This church is located in an area where there are no known churches in northern Taichung.  It is very close to a university campus. So, our team spent time with the leadership church team to build into their lives, we went to the campus to share the Gospel, we prayed over the city, and I had the privilege of sharing at the new church Sunday gathering with communion.  

The next week we spent 4 days at the American Life Camp.  We helped start this camp many years ago.  The camp is designed with the four dynamics of transformation in mind (spiritual dynamic, relational dynamic, experiential dynamic and instructional dynamic).  This year we had 60 Taiwanese college students and or graduates.  We broke out into 5 households.  We lived together for four days like a family with the Taiwanese.  During this time we shared how we celebrate Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July in the States.  Each of our “families” lived out each one of these holidays and as we did this we were able to clearly share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

We shared our life stories. I shared many Bible stories especially the Prodigal Son story. And asked them who they were in the story. I also asked them why the story ended with out and ending.  At the end of our camp I challenged them again with this story and how were they going to finish the story from their own life.  Below is a picture of my Taiwanese "family"

One of the members of our household lives is a missionary and lives in Taichung. He has been doing a fantastic job of following up with the Taiwanese students.  We are planning a reunion when I go back.  (picture of team)

We then went onto other locations. We put on a business/leadership camp. It was a three day camp also designed with the Four Dynamics in mind.  We had twenty-four Asians at the camp and broke up into five team/households.  Each team designed and opened a restaurant.  In the process of defining what kind of restaurant, name, slogan, mission, team building exercises and leadership principles we got to know each member of our team very well.  We again shared our life stories and the Gospel through personal conversations.  Up to four Asians came to Christ.  One of them is named Jessie. She hung out with us the day after the camp.  A week after camp we had a lunch provided by the sponsoring church to have as many “campers’s come back for follow through.  Ten Asians came back - seven from the camp and three that the campers invited.  We had lunch and broke up into another set of five groups where we ate and shared the Gospel for three hours.  Two more got saved. One of the newly saved was a friend that Jessie had invited to come and whom she had been sharing Christ with during the week.  We shared discipleship themes such as - Assurance, Baptism, Opposition, The Word, Prayer, The Church, The Holy Spirit and Sharing the Faith.  It was a God moving experience.  (picture)

One of the new Asians that came - Mandy has a music teacher who has been sharing the Gospel with her and I got to share with as well.  She is very close to the Kingdom - pray for her.  We met her friend, Echo and with three other students the next day close to campus.  Once again, we ended up sharing the Gospel in three small groups with these students who were all ears.  Their teacher was with us as we shared and he with one of our Asian church partners is following up with these students.   This is a picture of the music store and teacher with some of his students that we shared with.  

We held another camp in a different location - Hong Kong.  It was a leadership camp designed around John 13.  The theme was Leadership - Jesus style and it was also build around the Four Dynamics.  We partnered with a HK church.  We started with their church service.  We ate a meal after church and then with ten students the eight of us went to a three day camp in a mountainous region with the sea next to us.  We had barbecue in the a thunder storm.  We planned on visiting the homeless and ready to give them some clothes, a coupon for a restaurant, a bath and we were planning on asking if we could demonstrate love and dignity for them by washing their feet but we got rained out.  Instead we were able to go to the beach next to us and clean up the filthy place.  The host church loved the leadership camp idea and want us to come back and grow this with more of the members.  

Ching Yu and I went to another location to meet a friend of mine.  We were introduced to possible new partners for future camps and future leader trainings.  While we were meeting in this location one of our team members, Tami, went back to follow through more with Jessie.  She invited Tami to her home.  Her parents had never had a foreigner in their home before and were very excited even though they are not followers of Christ.  They were not real pleased that their daughter had become a Christian but they still openly welcomed Tami into their home and invited her to come back.  I was impressed that Jessie had already shared with her parents that she became a Christian - pray for her.  

In summary, the trip was very fruitful and is still bearing fruit.  We made many new friends.  We made new partnerships with a couple of churches and other ministries.  We have three new volunteer representative for e3 Leadership in various places that will help us with logistics, set up and administrative issues.  

We are tired but very blessed!  

How do you spell abide?

“The iron is in the fire, the fire is in the iron.”  

This is the idea of what it means to be abide in Christ.  Jesus said, Abide in me and I in you . . .  I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him , he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.  John 15:4-5

The secret to the life of Christ - His words, His wisdom, His works, His fortitude, His compassion, His endurance et al came from His unbroken fellowship with the Father.  And Jesus is now telling His disciples in John 15 that they must learn to remain in fellowship with Him!  

There is no cookie cutter methods or a formula for abiding in Christ.  Christianity is not a formula.  It is a relationship!  We all connect with God differently but there are somethings we have in common.  

How do you spell “abide”?  T I M E.  We must make time, invest time, spend time with Jesus.  This is the idea of the iron in the fire and the fire in the iron.  In order to have the fire in the iron, the iron must have time in the fire.  It is then that the iron is moldable.  The blacksmith is able to bend, mold, and shape the iron when the iron abides in the fire and the fire abides in the iron.  

Time in the Word - John 15:7.  Not just reading the Scripture but meditating, ruminating, contemplating, deliberating on Scripture so that we submit to it, yield to it in order that it might teach us, reprove us, correct us and train us.  2 Tim 3:16-17.  Here the idea is to get in the Word in such a way that the Word gets in you.  Just as the iron is in the fire and the fire is in the iron.  

Time in God’s love - John 15:9.   God has a special affection for you — you are beloved by God.  1 Thessalonians 1:4.  Are you aware of God’s love.  I don’t mean that you know intellectually that God loves you but that you know (personally, experientially) God loves you.  Ephesians 3:19.  How have you experienced His love, or sensed His love?  What declarations of God’s love from Scripture do you know?  How are you dwelling or remaining in the love of God?  What does that look like for you?  

How do you abide in Christ?  What will you do to improve your abiding in Him?

in the grip of His grace,

Our God is "too small"

O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His Name together, Psalm 34:3  To magnify - means to make something larger than it is.  When we magnify God, we don’t make Him larger, but our understanding of God grows larger.  To magnify the Lord is to make everything else small.  Our tendency is to magnify our problems and shrink our view of God.  This is backwards and upside down thinking. It is just plain wrong. The Lord is a great God and great King above all gods, Ps 95:3  In Prince Caspian of the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan says to Lucy, “you will find me bigger.”  It is not that Aslan grows bigger.  It is Lucy’s understanding of Aslan that grows bigger.  Let’s follow the David’s exhortation in Psalm 34 and magnify the Lord and together, let’s exalt His name.

Thinking about marriage and culture...

Same Sex Marriage — What Say You?

“If we truly love each other why don’t we have the freedom to marry whomever we want regardless of gender?”  

Sounds right doesn’t it?  I mean who is against freedom?  

However on second thought what do we mean by freedom and is it true we are free to do whatever we want?  Really?  Freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want but the power to do what is right.  

I heard a man on the radio use this analogy. He said, “ just as we should not discriminate and prohibit people from two different races from marrying so also we should not prohibit two people of the same sex to marry. They should be free to marry whomever they want.”   Is he serious?  As Dennis Prager has stated, “There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not.”

We are not free to marry whomever we wish and there are many good reasons for this.  We are not free to marry a family member — incestual marriage is an illegitimate marriage.  We are not free to marry another if we are already married — polygamy is illegitimate.  Why are these two examples taboo?  And what right do we have to continue to say these are illegitimate marriages if we permit same sex marriage?  In doing so, don’t we open Pandora’s Box to all sorts of possible so-called marriages?  If not, why not?  

Why should we care who marries whom?  Marriage is the oldest institution of mankind.  It is over 5,000 years old and exists in every single human culture around the globe.  Every culture, every civilization, every religion has recognized marriage as that of between the two sexes: a man and a woman.  Why is this?

Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason asks the question, “Which came first, bricks or buildings?”  Of course bricks came before buildings. Bricks are the building blocks for buildings.  Even so, marriage came before civilization.   If civilization came first then marriage is simply a matter of social order.  But if marriage came first then marriage is the foundation of family and family is then the foundation of civilization.  When we alter marriage, we are altering the very foundations on which society is built.   And history shows us that when we mess with sexual mores we end up in a societal mess.  

For example, Philip Yancey writes in the “Lost Sex Study” about scholar J.D. Unwin’s “Sex and Culture”.  “He studied 86 different societies.  His findings startled many scholars - above all, Unwin himself - because all 86 demonstrated a direct tie between monogamy and the "expansive energy" of civilization.  He found with no exceptions that these societies flourished during eras that valued sexual fidelity. Inevitably, sexual mores would loosen and the societies would subsequently decline, only to rise again when they returned to more rigid sexual standards.”  

The real issue here is not one of freedom.  It is an issue of authority.  On whose authority do we define marriage?  Is this authority up to each individual to decide?  Is it the domain of government to determine what makes a marriage?  Or is there a higher authority, namely the One who designed marriage for the benefit of mankind — our Creator.   Jesus, who came to testify to the truth said,  “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”  Matthew 19:4-6.

In removing the sacred boundary of marriage between a man and a woman we reject God’s original design.  We reject His ways and claim we have a better idea.  Yep, we think we know better and can determine for ourselves what is right and wrong.  

Here we go again – swallowing the fruit.