Who is Sufficient for Christian Ministry!

What will God have to do to me, with me, or in me for me to be useful in His hand?  That was the single question that exercised my mind and heart as I walked the beautiful sun-kissed beach at Portstewart, Northern Ireland.  I am booked to preach twice tomorrow (Sunday), and the responsibility of this task is heavy upon me.  I know what needs to be preached, but "who is sufficient for these things?"  I feel so unworthy to stand in a pulpit with the Christian Gospel; but this is the work to which God has called me, so I will not be disobedient to God's call.
How then am I to minister?  Well, I must be utterly dependent upon God's grace, totally reliant upon God's gracious enabling; I must seek Him as never before and cast myself unreservedly upon Him.  He will help me.

Confessions and Longings of a Preacher

I am still enjoying immensely the DMLJ sermons and hopefully benefitting from them.  They are so fresh and relevant and easy to follow.  I know I can learn from his approach to preaching and hope to become a better preacher of the everlasting Gospel.  His evangelistic zeal is affecting, and I feel challenged by what I am reading.  There is certainly no 'take it or leave it' with the Doctor when he preaches the Gospel.  He appeals to his hearers, pleads with them and urges them to trust Christ as the only Saviour there is for them.  I wish I had the same warmth and intensity when it comes to closing a Gospel sermon.  I can but try to be better, but as always, unless the unction of God is upon the preacher and preaching, it will avail nothing.

But we pray on and preach on.  I am greatly encouraged by the Doctor's view that it is not great preachers or great sermons that God blesses, nor even great orthodoxy, but great likeness to Jesus (McCheyne's term) - that bit rebukes me, mind you.  I will not be a great preacher nor will my sermons be great sermons, but I can strive to be more like my Saviour, and depend much more on the risen Lord to send His Spirit upon us each Lord's day, and whenever I have opportunity to preach the Gospel of God.

IN PRAISE OF DISHONESTY

This is the ‘virtue’ that is honoured within Christian churches today.  In the olden days, this was more of a ‘vice,’ but not today.  It is this characteristic that enables the church’s leaders do whatever they wish.  It opens the way for them to admit into church membership unconverted sinners and to baptise the infants of unregenerate church members; they only have to say they are Christians for the church to accept them as Christians.  No man can see the true state of another’s heart or his standing before God, so if they say the right things, we will probe no further.

For such people to be honest and say they are not Christians at all will be for their babies to go unbaptised – perish the thought for those of Romanising mind-fix. 

Indeed, for ministers of the truth to prefer deceit is shameful.  Ministers are no longer allowed to preach in many pulpits because they have the courage to speak the truth.  Hypocrisy is preferred because that opens doors to ‘ministry’ rather than closing them.  Pretending that things in the church garden are rosy is what is expected of preachers; we do not want preachers who tell it as it is, do we? 

Every church gets on at this business.  I have not yet met a church or denomination that admits that it is having problems or it has got it wrong on some matters.  If such a church exists, please let me know.

Oh, yes, the infallible Roman Catholicism has admitted it has done a few wrong things in the past, not serious wrong, you understand; just minor misdemeanours like systematically abusing the most innocent and vulnerable within its lurid jurisdiction, and then successfully covering this up for many decades. 

But those churches that do not claim infallibility act as if they were by not admitting to any wrongdoing ever. 

You see, it is better to be dishonest in church affairs than otherwise because being otherwise only lets the side down – and we can’t have that, can we?

THE WORLD IN THE CHURCH

Without looking any further, Christ's beatitudes highlight the essential difference between the Christian and the non-Christian.  The Bible regards this difference as something absolutely basic and fundamental.  It is of critical urgency that the Church recognises this difference and acts to demonstrate that she recognises this difference. 

The contemporary church demonstrates that she has lost or blurred this distinction.  What is happening is that the world has come into the church, often invited and welcomed in by evangelical ministers, and the church has thereby become worldly.   

The difference between Christian and non-Christians is not as clear as it once was; it’s a bit like the difficulty people have in telling boys from girls.  During the church’s best periods, this distinction was as clear as could be.  But tyhat is not the case today.  And the reason?  The church has departed from her sole King and Head, Jesus Christ. 

The big concern today for many churches is to attract the man of the world into her; so in order to do that the church has to become as like that man she is trying to attract as she can.  But are non-church worldlings entering the church as a result?  No.  Just a trickle will come to some churches, but the vast majority of people just can’t tell the difference between the church and their social contacts.  The church in her brightest times has never worked in that way.  It has not worked in the past, and it never will work.  And the sooner the church learns this lesson, the better.

Is there an answer to this malady?  Yes, and it’s this.  When the church is as different as she can be from those she is trying to attract and win, then she is successful.  This is ironic.  Opposites attract.  Men of the world are fed-up with having ‘more of the same.’  They are looking for something different, something that is challenging.  When she finds a church that is categorically different from itself, her message has that drawing power that Christians have long prayed for.

When the church’s life and message is different from those of the world, people sit up and listen.  At first they will hate and resent that challenging message; but they will come to see that this is the truth.  This has been the pattern in every revival the church has known.  When Christians and the church seeks to become as like Christ as they can be, they will be so unlike the world they are trying to win to the Saviour. 

Now, there’s a challenge for you!

Walking By On The Other Side - Graceless Ministers

The Priests and the Levites haven't gone away, you know!  They are still alive and well within the Christian Church.  They are still doing what they know best; walking by on the other side.  They cannot be seen to be associating with 'the unclean,' or 'the great unwashed.'  No, no.  That would never do.  After all, we are middle class churchmen who work in middle class churches.

"We cannot be seen to associate with 'lesser' mortals.  Just think of the effect that might have on us as individuals, the disgrace, the talk at ministerial fraternals, and also our future.  We have to be careful to endorse whatever the church says and does, be it right ot wrong, if ever we want to become Moderator or Archbishop or President.  Can't mess that one up, can we?

What makes this really astonishing is that many of these men claim not only to believe the doctrines of grace, but preach them.  Yet, they refuse to help the outcasts or have anything to do with them.  They only associate with the pure and perfect.  They have no facility in their hearts to accept the repentant and the forgiven.  Therefore they have no grace!

If pressed, such preachers will admit that they just do not believe in what Paul describes as "Christian, or spiritual, warfare."  There is no devil, no Satan, therefore no such thing as Satanic attacks.  Because there is, in their view, no devil, there can be no such thing as Satanic attack.  That all went out when men came of age.  In the old days when men were not well educated they believed in all this weird spiritual stuff; but not today.  We are educated and clever and sophosticated; we have moved on from there and no longer believe in "spiritual forces of wickedness in high or heavenly places."  Poor Paul; he was a man of his age who did not have the knowledge of psychology that we possess.

Today, everything can be explained by human psychology.  The Bible is outdated."

Now, if you believe in practice any of the above, you must re-examine the foundations of your profession of faith.  You might well have drank in the unfaithfulness of liberal theology, which, I'm sure, many of you were taught at seminary or college.

If you do not believe in the above, then thank God that He has not only saved you but kept you from the destructive influences of all forms of theological liberalism.  That teaching does not believe in the existence of the devil, so it does not believe in a personal devil who attacks and seeks to destroy the children and servants of God.

Hazlett Lynch's Books

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Thank you.

LEADERLESS CHURCHES

What is the most effective way to ensure the church follows your personal agenda?  Easy.  Do not allow any discussion about those things that matter.  Bring down the guillotine fast.  Cut off those who want to oppose your plans.  Refuse any input from those who see things differently.  Those who support the minister’s materialistic plans as providing ‘good leadership’ have missed something inportant somewhere.

But, really, who is calling the shots in such churches?  Unless I am totally mistaken, it is the young people in the churches who are setting the entire church agenda.  They have to be catered for at all costs.  Their changing needs must be accommodated and met at all costs. 

And that brings me to another point.  When young people, people who may or may not be Christians, even though they are church members, write the agenda for the entire congregation, that church is in very serious trouble.  First, they do not have the spiritual knowledge or maturity, not just to take but to be given that role.  Their experience is still being formed (which is true for all of us, though older Christian people have loads of life experience as well as Christian experience).  They are still being educated, will go off to university, some will not return to their home area again, and when they start earning, they will link themselves to their local church and contribute to that.  The home church that they helped to plunge into enormous debt will receive nothing of their financial contributions. 

People in Northern Ireland are crying out for what they call ‘common sense politics.’  In the church scene, some mature church people are asking for the same but are not finding it.  Hair-brain ideas are proposed and no one knows where the money will come from to fund such projects.  True, I believe that God Himself will provide the resources for His work; but there’s a condition, as Hudson Taylor once famously said: “God’s work done in God’s way will not lack the resources.”  The question has to be asked of many enterprises: is what is proposed doing God’s work in the way He approves?

How easy it is for ambitious ministers who (secretly) want the new build to be named after them, to let their imaginations and their desire to be named in stone run away with them.  And for what?  Worldly fame.

Can anyone honestly say that when personal ambition enters a project, that work is being done in God’s way?  When people want to make a name for themselves, like they did at Babel (Gen.11), they merely succeed in drawing down God’s displeasure upon all involved.

But some are prepared to do just that!