Yesterday an email appeared from a friend who will remain nameless so he will still be a friend. In it he shared an amazing day of interaction with several groups of people in which he has been investing his life for the past several years. It was an encouraging and grace filled account of how God is working through the faithfulness of this man in his persistent pursuit of sharing the truth of the gospel in the midst of a culture that is at best hostile toward Christianity. He closed his short epistle with the words, “One of the few days I earned my salary.” I nearly went through the screen of my monitor and fairly melted my keyboard in response. He was flat wrong.
His error is common though. We tend to value time with people and see that as effective ministry more than we do time alone with God in digging deep into His Word. Incredible. 2 Timothy 2:15; 3:14 – 17 tells us that the foundation of any ministry is the Word of God. If we are not in it, in it regularly, and digging ever deeper in the truth there, what in the fat are we going to be talking to people about? Something we got in our study last year?
Apart from the Word of God and our continual, daily engagement with it, there is nothing for us to say. Last Tuesday the men in the workshop interviewed three of our kids. They came away with three things, summarized by one of the men in the group.
My friend and I have been consultants to a branch of a well known ministry that has forgotten the importance of continued digging in the Word of God. There is no ministry apart from the Word, my friend knows this, I know this, if ministries do not emphasize it they will become irrelevant.
Apart from the Word of God and our continual, daily engagement with it, there is nothing for us to say. Last Tuesday the men in the workshop interviewed three of our kids. They came away with three things, summarized by one of the men in the group.
- We modeled being in the Word
- We consistently engaged in getting our kids in the Word
- We were flexible and tried many ways to do that.
My friend and I have been consultants to a branch of a well known ministry that has forgotten the importance of continued digging in the Word of God. There is no ministry apart from the Word, my friend knows this, I know this, if ministries do not emphasize it they will become irrelevant.
I wonder what would happen to our world-view if we took a month and read only the Gospels and Acts? Speaking from personal experience, i found i had allowed Jesus and His teaching to drift far from the center. i love to read and to study and there is never a shortage of extra-biblical material to digest - much of it really good thought provoking stuff. The danger for me personally is that before i know it i can spend 3,4,5 hours or more outside the scriptures for every hour i spend inside God's word.
ReplyDeleteWow. What a great idea. It reminds me of what Dr. Hendricks does in his personal Bible study. He has a six year process that takes him through all 66 books. He altered it several years ago to do one gospel each year.
DeleteI am with you Charlie. It is too easy to let others do the work, they get the benefit and we get the dregs.
Good stuff. Thanks.