1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Review
Your Gift in Prayer Group
We Need Grace from all the Gifts
For those of you who are new today we have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and the last two weeks we have been studying verse 10 in chapter 4 about ministry in the church. Ministry is when God distributes grace to His people – especially through the use of your spiritual gifts. I desperately need a good, well-balanced diet of the various different forms of God’s grace. And each one of us has been entrusted with one of those forms. You are a steward of that form of grace, which means you decide how (or whether) it will be doled out to the rest of us. So if we are going to be a healthy church – a loving church, a discerning church, a holy church, an effective church – a church that is pleasing to the Lord, then we are going to have to be a church where everyone is serving with their gift.
The Prayer Group Ministry is Designed to be a Platform for Ministry
Now, in every church I have ever attended, this has been a problem – large percentages of the body not serving in ministry. The way churches are typically set up, you come together on Sunday and sing and listen to a sermon, and if your gift is not preaching or leading worship or working with kids – when do you have a chance to use your gift? You just sit and listen and go home. That is a recipe for a grace-starved church. So when we planted Agape, we cried out to God and asked Him to show us a way to create a structure that would give all the saints a context in which they could use their gifts. And the answer that came from those prayers was the prayer group structure that we have. Is that a perfect solution? No. Are there drawbacks to that system? Plenty. Does it guarantee people will use their gifts? No. But one of the purposes of the way the prayer groups are designed is to at least give each of you an opportunity to use your gift.
So you sit down with your group, we go around the circle and ask, “How can we pray for you this week specifically regarding your walk with the Lord?..,” and each person shares briefly about where they are spiritually and gives a request. Then what happens? Over the course of the six months that you are in the group with that person, each person in the group begins to respond to that person. Maybe he needs encouragement. Maybe he needs correction or a gentle rebuke. Maybe some instruction from God’s Word. Maybe he needs compassion and understanding. Maybe he just needs prayer – someone to care enough to really pray hard for him. Maybe he needs someone to come over to his house and help him get something fixed. Maybe he needs financial help. Maybe he needs a listening ear – someone who will just spend a little time with him once in a while.
We are all called to do those things for one another, and the way you do it will be flavored and shaped by your spiritual gifts, which will bring special grace to that person. Obviously most of that cannot happen during the prayer group hour. It’s only one hour. Sometimes we are able to minister to one another briefly right there during the group time. But mostly the hour we are together just gets the ball rolling for later in the week. When we are together the needs become known, relationships are built, love increases, and the opportunities to serve one another become evident. So the prayer groups are designed to give a platform where each one of you can spring into action with your spiritual gift to dispense grace to the rest of us.
And they give you a specific group of people to focus on. You cannot meet every need in the church, but your prayer group is small enough where if you mainly focus on them, that’s doable.
What it Looks Like
Your group needs you. We need the full spectrum of gifts. Think of the different approaches people have in the prayer groups. Maybe you have the gift of discernment. Someone in the group is saying things that are unbiblical, but no one besides you seems to notice. Either that or they do not have the courage to speak up. You are the only one who has the discernment and courage to finally say, "Wait a minute - that's not really what the Bible says…" Everybody in the room gets grace when you do that.
Or maybe you are in a group with ten people who have the gift of teaching. And one person shares a problem, and suddenly she is getting bombarded with counsel from ten counselors at once. And you are the only person in the room who can pick up on the fact that she is embarrassed or overwhelmed. And you know just how to speak up and deflect attention away from her, or say something to make her feel at ease, or whatever. That is part of your giftedness, and when you speak up, everyone in the room gets some grace from God through your gift.
Or maybe someone has a problem that no one else in the group can really relate to. But you have been through that, and you can really understand. So you are the only one who really prays earnestly for that person. We all behave in different ways of ministering, and your way is a key ingredient.
Now, maybe you are thinking, "Oh, that's a relief, because my way of dealing with situations in the church is to go sit by myself. I must have the gift of seclusion." No, there is no gift of seclusion. Your gift becomes evident in the ways that you tend to minister to people, not in the ways you tend to avoid ministering to people.
Support Ministries
So whatever your gift and whatever your calling, your primary ministry at Agape is to carry out the one-another commands. And the prayer groups are designed to give a platform for that. However, as I mentioned last time, the support-type ministries are also important. Setting things up, cleaning, serving communion, ushering, greeting, calling about overdue books in the library, building maintenance, picking up trash around the property, putting together the PowerPoint slides, helping with the website – all those things are crucial to support the ministries that enable us to carry out the one-another commands.
Think about Jesus. He washed feet. In that time that was not a symbolic, religious ceremony. He was carrying out a menial task that needed doing that no one else would do because it was the slave’s job. Jesus was not above that kind of work.
If you have one of those ministries like teaching or music or evangelism or prayer group leader, you could start thinking, “I have this important spiritual ministry – I don’t have time to help out with any of those support-type ministries.” That is kind of like a man who says, “I’m the bread winner in this house. That’s my calling. I can’t be bothered with taking out the trash.”
What does it mean for your kids to be good brothers and sisters to each other in your house? You want them to learn to show kindness and humility and respect and love, right? And you want them to work hard at school and various other responsibilities. But you don’t want them to be so caught up with those things that they fall into the whole “not my job” syndrome. Do you know what that is? This is an example of the not-my-job syndrome.
“I’m not getting paid to move that stick.”
Someone once said the not-my-job syndrome is the story of four people. Their names were Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
If you want to see this principle in action, just watch what happens in your home when the dog throws up in the middle of the carpet. Suddenly everyone in the house becomes blind as a bat.
“That’s not my job.”
And so you work to teach your kids that yes, there are certain things that are assigned to each family member as responsibilities, but there are also those times when you should just see that something needs to be done, it is not really anyone’s job, but you notice it needs doing and you just need to take some time out of your busy schedule and do it. That is the way it is in your household, and that is the way it is in the household of God.
If God has called you to teach or preach or lead worship or whatever, should you neglect that calling so you can work in the nursery? No. Should you neglect your family so you can come here and do a million tasks around the church? No. But should you have enough love for your brothers and sisters in the household of God that you are sometimes willing to make some sacrifices to do things that need doing? Yes. We teach our kids, sometimes you need to clean up after the dog even when it’s not your turn just because you noticed it, and you love your mom and dad and siblings. And in the same way each of us in God’s household needs to pitch in and help with those tasks that nobody likes doing, but need to be done – just because you love your Father and your brothers and sisters and you want to be a servant of all, like Jesus.
Gifts Are for Glory
Must Serve in a Way That Glorifies God
OK, so all that is from verse 10. Verse 10 explains what our gift is for and commands us to use it to serve one another, but now in verse 11, Peter is going to get more specific about exactly how to go about doing that. It is not enough to just serve with our gifts, we need to serve one another in a certain way.
1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, let him do is as speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, as from the strength God provides
Why Peter?
...so that in all things God may be glorified
• The final objective in ministry is not to just get work done.
• The final objective is not to build an organization.
• The final objective is not even to help people.
• The final and highest objective for all ministry is for God to be glorified.
God is glorified when His glory is shown. God’s glory is all that is wonderful about God that we can see and experience. Everything that is great and delightful and impressive and amazing and satisfying about God that can be known by man – that is what the phrase “glory of God” refers to. So to glorify God means to expose His glory. Our view of God’s greatness and love and power and goodness is obscured by ignorance and sin and a host of other limitations, so when we do something to clear up that obscured view of God, that is what it means to glorify Him. It means to make God more beautiful, more impressive, more powerful in the eyes of the people around you. His glory is already there, but we glorify Him by uncovering and exposing and showcasing that glory.
Speaking and Serving
So how is that done? How do you use your gift of mercy or helps or compassion in a way that exposes glorious things about God? Peter is going to give us the answer to that by isolating two aspects of ministry: speaking and serving.
11 If anyone speaks, [let him do it this way] and if anyone serves [let him do it this way].
Some of the gifts are more oriented toward speaking, and other gifts are more service oriented. For example, the gift of encouragement is mainly a speaking-type gift. The Greek word is parakaleo, and it is used a lot of different ways in the New Testament. Sometimes it means to encourage in the sense of lifting someone’s spirits, or refreshing them with your words. Other times it means to urge or plead with a person or even beg them to do the right thing. Other times it is used of rebuking or correcting a person. So it is pretty much any time you try to help someone spiritually by opening your mouth and speaking words. That is the gift of encouragement.
And obviously that gift comes in a thousand different forms. But all of them major on speaking. Scripture mentions three other gifts that also major on speaking. One is the gift of teaching. Two others are the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. I believe the word of wisdom probably refers to rhetorical skill in preaching the gospel – someone who is good at public speaking. And the word of knowledge is very similar – skill in explaining and applying God’s Word to people for living the Christian life.
So those are word-oriented gifts. Others are more action-oriented. Serving, giving, mercy, helping, leadership, and administration. Those gifts involve more doing than talking.
Although, I don’t want to go too far in differentiating between speaking gifts and serving gifts because the reality is, no matter what your gift – using that gift is going to involve both speaking and acting at some point. So Peter is simply saying, "When you get to the talking part - do it this way…, and when you get to the actions part - do it this way." It is like what Paul said in Colossians 3.
Colossians 3:17 whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus
Here Peter is saying, "However you serve, whether in word or deed, do it a certain way.” Which way?
Use God’s Words
Well, when it comes to the words - any time you are in ministry and words are involved, Peter says do it as speaking the very words of God. If you are at your prayer group or some other context and you open your mouth to minister to someone - whether it be to rebuke them or comfort them or show them compassion or instruct them or encourage them or correct them, use the words of God. We are going to see in a minute that the whole point of this is so that God will get the credit when your ministry works. And that will happen when you use His words from the Bible.
If the purpose is to distribute grace to the person, what better way than by applying God's Word to the person's heart? Acts 20:32 refers to the Bible as the word of his grace. We have two slogans at Agape. Our mission slogan is "Spreading and deepening delight in God." That is the main thing we are about. But how do we accomplish that? What is our method? In a nutshell - we do it mainly by applying the Word of God to people’s hearts. That is the method slogan – “Applying the Word of God to the hearts of men.” That is where the power is. There is no power in human wisdom.
In fact, there is anti-power.
1 Corinthians 1:17 Christ [sent] me to preach the gospel--not with human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
The only power human wisdom has is the power to drain the gospel of its power. Does this mean every word has to be a direct quotation from Scripture? No, but it does mean that whatever wording you are using, the purpose of those words is to communicate a principle that came from the Bible.
It is so easy in ministry to revert to human wisdom. Especially in our prayer groups. Someone says, "I'm really struggling with this…" and immediately someone pops off with some advice. "Why don't you try doing this - tie a string around your finger and…," and they give some solution that came from their own mind. And how often do those solutions transform anyone's life? It does not happen. All they do is belittle the person's problem by implying that this thing they cannot overcome is really easily solved with a simplistic little human idea. In order to administer grace to someone's life when we speak we have to speak the words of God.
Psalms 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, renewing the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 8 The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
If you want to get beyond shallow advice and really renew someone's soul, or impart wisdom, or give them joy or enlighten their eyes, the only words that have that kind of power are God's words. So instead of shooting off some words of advice after giving it ten seconds of thought, how about going home, and spending three or four days in study and prayer about it? And if you don't know what God's Word says about that issue, get a good book on practical theology. (Practical theology is the study of how to put the principles from Scripture into practice and live them out.)
And it does not always have to be a direct quotation from Scripture, although there is certainly a lot of power in that. If someone just says to you, “Don’t worry, God will take care of you,” that does not have near the impact of actually reading to them Jesus’ words about worry at the end of Matthew 6. If someone just says, “Don’t forget – the Lord is your Shepherd,” that is one thing – but when you are in trouble and someone takes the time to actually read the Twenty-third Psalm to you – that is like soothing balm on a troubled soul. Let’s use the language of Scripture and illustrations from Scripture and principles from Scripture. They said that C.H. Spurgeon was so saturated with Scripture that if you cut him he would bleed Bible. That is the way I want to be – so full of God’s Word that if you just bump me, some principle from Scripture will spill out.
Use God’s Strength
So when you get to the speaking part of that ministry, use God's Word rather than your own, human wisdom. And when you get to the serving part of ministry -
11 …If anyone serves, let him do it as with the strength God provides
It is not good enough to just bring someone a meal. You need to bring them a meal in a way that shows the strength as coming from God. It is not enough to set up chairs or give someone a ride to church or run the sound or serve on the praise team. Whatever you do to serve, it must be done in such a way that points to God as the Author of the strength you are using.
How do you do that? Suppose a couple of you came in tonight after we all leave and shampooed the carpets. One of you did the sanctuary, and the other did the foyers and hallway. And suppose the one who did the foyer followed this verse and served in a way that showed that the strength was coming from God. But the other person didn't. How could you tell the difference? What would that first person be doing different? Peter says the reason for this is so that in all things God may be glorified. When people walk in to the building next week both areas are equally clean – the carpet in here is clean; the carpet out there is clean, but God is glorified by the work of the one who did the foyer but not by the work of the one who did the sanctuary. How does that work? What did the two people do differently? How can you clean carpets in a way that points to God as the Author of your strength?
Faith
Peter does not say. He just assumes that the readers’ knowledge of the gospel would be enough for them to know how to do this. So if we sit back and think, “What is the general, overall message of the New Testament regarding how to serve in a way that glorifies God and points to Him as the Author of strength?” – what comes to mind? How about faith? Isn’t that the one thing that the Bible always points to as the way to make sure God gets the glory? We show Him to be the source of our strength when we trust Him and rely on Him. That is faith. 1 Timothy 1:4 states that the stewardship from God is by faith. And in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, it says that the work of ministry that was being done was produced by their faith. So let’s think through what this looks like. What is the difference between cleaning carpets by faith or not by faith?
Understanding
It begins with knowledge. You have to be aware that the strength is from God. When you have a gift, it is easy to forget that you are still dependent on God to use that gift. Most people would just come in and think that the carpet cleaning ministry is totally within their own power to do. After all, couldn’t an atheist run a shampooer? Sure. However, there is a lot more to the ministry than just running the machine over the carpet. The goal is spiritual fruit.
Imagine a young couple visiting here for the first time. They are new believers, and they have no idea how to pick a good church. They do not know what expository preaching is, or how that feeds the soul, they do not know any doctrine – they have no idea what to look for. And they visit here, and even though they don’t understand much about what they should be looking for – they do find that their visit was very pleasant. It was pleasant for many reasons – and one of those reasons was the cleanliness of the carpets. There were dozens of other factors, but the cleanness of the place was one factor. And that was just enough to tip the scales to make them decide to come back. So they make this their home church, and then they start learning and growing, and make all kinds of spiritual progress in the years that follow through the various ministries. And maybe if the carpets had been gross that day, the scales might have tipped the other way and maybe they end up in a church where there is bad doctrine. If we make this place unpleasant and uncomfortable and unwelcoming and it looks to people like if you put your kid in the nursery , and he comes in contact with the carpet he will probably die – that makes it hard for people to come back and receive all the grace that is to be had here. You would be surprised how often people tell me that when they started coming here it was for some shallow, unimportant reason, but then after coming, in some cases they got saved, and have grown spiritually in all kinds of ways.
But will that automatically happen just because the carpet is clean? No. Picture another scenario. Suppose that same person comes and the carpets are clean as can be, but his wife trips and falls in the parking lot. And she does not notice anything about how clean the building is because her knee is throbbing the whole time. Or maybe she doesn’t fall, but when she comes into the church, even though it just got cleaned, ten seconds before she walks in someone spills a cup of coffee right in the middle of the floor, and when she walks in that is all she sees – something happens, and for whatever reason the whole experience ends up being so unpleasant, that the scales tip the other way and they don’t come back. What determines which of those will happen? God does. The cleaning of the carpet may or may not result in spiritual fruit in someone’s life, depending on whether God blesses it. And the more you understand that, the more you will have an attitude of dependence on God to make your ministry fruitful.
An Attitude of Dependence
But there is always a temptation to drift from that and depend on ourselves. After years of preaching I might fall into an attitude of thinking, "I've got this. All I have to do is make sure I study, work hard, do the commentary work and exegesis and spend enough time in meditation, and the sermon will be there, and it will be edifying to the people." You can do the same thing with your ability to talk to people, your ability to trust God in times of trouble, your gift of giving, your gift of helps or mercy or anything else. When you have had a gift for a long time, you can get so you forget it is a gift and start thinking it is within your power.
I believe that is what happened to Samson. I always used to wonder - why did Samson tell Delilah the secret about his hair? (If his hair were cut he would lose all his strength.) She had made it crystal clear that whatever he told her, she was going to tell the Philistines while he was asleep. So he knew for a fact that if he told her about the hair, he would be waking up bald as cue ball to a room full of Philistines. So why did he tell her? I think he had gotten to the point where he just believed that strength was inherent in him. Early on he knew his strength was a special enablement from God. But now, after all these years, he started to think he was just tough. He never remembered a time when he was weak, never knew what it was like to lose a fight - he had been told that his strength was a special enablement from God and it would be gone if he violated the Nazarite vow and cut his hair, but it was getting hard to believe that. Muscles are muscles, and evidently when he finally gave in to Delilah he was thinking, "Go ahead. Cut off all my hair. I'll still pound those Philistines into the ground." It just felt like it was within his own power. And of course the result was a disaster. He woke up with no strength at all, and they captured him, put out his eyes, and made a mockery of him.
So that is one kind of self-reliance - the Samson syndrome. But there is another kind of self-reliance that shows up on the other end of the confidence scale. Low confidence people have the same problem. We could call this the Moses syndrome. God called Moses to do a great work and Moses resisted because he felt inadequate.
Exodus 4:10 Moses said to the LORD, "Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." 11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? … Is it not I, the LORD?
God says, “Moses do you remember that you are talking to Someone who invented mouths?” Gideon had the same reaction when God told him to do a great work. He said, “God, I’m the weakest man in the weakest clan in Israel. It will never work. I'm not strong enough." Of course you're not strong enough – that is the whole point! God purposely picked the weakest clan to show the strength was from Him.
If you are hesitant to do something God is calling you to do because you do not think you have the strength or ability or knowledge or whatever - that just shows that your confidence is in yourself. Of course it is possible that God is not really calling you to do this particular thing. That was one wise thing Gideon did do - he double checked and really made sure it was God who was calling him to do it. But once it is clear that God wants you to do something, and you hesitate because you do not think you have it in you, that means you are trusting in your own strength instead of His. Where God guides God provides.
So whether it is over-confident self-reliance like Samson or under-confident self-reliance like Moses; either way it is self-reliance. And your ministry is never going to point to God as the source of the strength if you are relying on yourself instead of Him. Whenever you do something, deep down you have one of two attitudes. The outcome of this depends mostly on me, or the outcome of this depends on God. And only the second one glorifies God. “But how will it glorify God? How will it reveal anything to people about God if it’s mainly just an attitude? People can't see my attitudes, so how is this going to show the strength as coming from God?”
It will show God as the source of the strength because attitudes always result in actions. Having that attitude of faith will cause you to serve in ways that do show God as the Author of your strength. Let me close our time by giving you seven examples. Seven ways this attitude will shape the way you serve in ministry so that your work glorifies God. And you can use these as tests. If these things are in place in the way you do ministry, that is a sign that you are serving by faith. If they are not, there is probably some heavy doses of self-reliance corrupting your work. (And this is not an exhaustive list. But hopefully they can help get your thinking started.)
Seven Tests for God-Glorifying Ministry
1) Prayer
If you have an attitude of depending on God for success in your ministry, it will make you pray hard. You pray hard for things that you need but that are outside of your power to do. If your child has a cut, you put a Band-Aid on it. But if your child has an inoperable brain tumor, you drop to your knees and beg God to heal him. So how do you see success in your ministry? Is it like the Band-Aid – something that is in your power to apply? Or is it like the tumor – either God steps in or all is lost. You can tell by how hard you pray for God to step in.
2) Gratitude
Another impact will be joyful gratitude. If you see the strength as coming from God, then every time you serve in ministry it will feel to you like opening another Christmas present. And that will affect everything about the way you do ministry.
No Grumbling
You will find that there is no longer any grumbling. Where there used to be complaining and griping about how hard the word is, or how no one is helping, or this problem or that problem – instead you will speak and act like someone who is excited about having been given something wonderful. Gratitude instead of grumbling. You do not grumble about getting wonderful gifts. You grumble about loss, not gain.
No Need for Recognition
But when you are thankful for the privilege, not only do you not grumble, but suddenly it is no longer a problem when no one thanks you or recognizes your work. If no one appreciates or even knows all the hard work you are doing – it will not matter to you because you are just thankful for the privilege of being able to do it. If you require thanks for your work, that shows that you think of yourself as the giver rather than the receiver. If your ministry feels like you are receiving a gift, no one expects to be thanked for receiving a gift from God.
3) Seeking Grace
So test #1 – am I praying hard for fruit? Test #2 – do I feel a strong sense of gratitude instead of grumbling and requiring thanks all the time? And here’s a third test – Am I doing all I can to get grace? If you see your ministry as depending on God’s grace for success, then you will put most of your energy into going after the things that deliver grace. Instead of just using the Bible to provide a few verses to back up what you are doing, you will devour it like a dog trying to get meat off a bone. Instead of saying some perfunctory prayers about your ministry, you will cry out to God in earnest prayer. And instead of just putting up with the other people involved in the ministry, you will see each one of them as stewards of certain forms of grace that your ministry desperately needs and will welcome their involvement. And you are also going to major on your spiritual gift – because that is where the grace comes from. An attitude of dependence makes you run hard after grace.
4) Seeking Guidance
And it also makes you run hard after God’s guidance. At every turn in the ministry you will be asking God for direction.
“Holy Spirit, open my eyes to wisdom. Let me see the right way to do this. Show me which direction to go with this ministry right now. How should I proceed? This will only work if I follow in Your way, so teach me, Lord.”
5) Tenacity
Test #5 is the tenacity test. How much resistance or hardship does it take for you to quit? When you rely on yourself, then when the going gets a little too rough, and you feel like you can’t handle it anymore, you bail. But when you see all the strength and resources as coming from God, then it is never a question of “Can I handle this?” If the strength is from God, and the thing is God’s will, then of course you will be able to handle it. God never gets into a tough ministry situation and says, “Oh man, I should have thought this through better. I thought I had enough grace for this, but now a problem came up and My supply of grace has run dry.” There is always enough grace. So when you are relying on God, then once you know for sure He has called you to something, you are unstoppable. Everyone else in the ministry can be unfaithful, the leadership can be unsupportive, people can be uncooperative or even spit in your face and it is still not going to stop you. You know the strength for tomorrow will be there tomorrow, and so you do not even think of quitting unless you know God is calling you to quit.
6) Holiness
Test #6, Am I committed to holiness and righteousness? If more of God’s favor means more power in ministry, I am not going to do things to provoke Him to withdraw His favor. And whenever we sin against God we forfeit a certain amount of grace. So if I feel desperately dependent on God’s favor in my ministry I am going to be that much more motivated to strive to do that which pleases Him.
7) Joy
And finally – if your ministry is based on trusting God, the way you go about doing that work is going to be characterized by joy. Why? Because you will trust Him to bring about marvelous results. If I prepare a sermon with an attitude of dependence on Him, knowing that only what comes from Him will bear fruit, then once that sermon is prepared and delivered, I can trust Him to make it fruitful. Maybe to my ears the sermon sounds boring, or unhelpful. Maybe five people come up afterwards and ask me if I am feeling OK, because it really was not my best effort. Maybe I can’t see a lot of fruit coming from it. But if I am sure it was the Word of God that I delivered, and I was depending on God throughout the process, I can trust Him to bring fruit from it regardless of how things seem, and that brings me joy! The same goes for children’s ministry or greeting at the door or helping with the website or scrubbing the floors. If it is done by faith then you can trust God to bring eternal fruit from your work, because He always blesses work done by faith – always. And that motivates us to pour ourselves into the work.
1 Corinthians 15:58 Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
We trust Him to do something great with our little loaves and fishes we offer Him.
And you will also trust Him to reward you for your work. Even though He had to supply all the strength, still, God rewards you. And over and over and over again that promise of reward is offered to us in Scripture as our motivation for ministry.
1 Corinthians 3:8 each one will be rewarded according to his own labor.
If God offers a reward and that really motivates me to work hard in ministry – that shows I trust Him and it brings Him honor and glory because it shows Him to be a generous rewarder. But if God offers me a reward and it does not really motivate me much, that shows I do not really trust Him to give much of a reward, and that dishonors Him and paints Him as someone whose rewards are not really worth much. That is why being motivated by the promises of reward is such a crucial part of the Christian life.
Conclusion
Be a good steward of the grace entrusted to you. Serve in ministry, using your gift, and when you get to the speaking aspects of ministry, use the Words of God. And when you get to the serving parts, do it in faith, trusting God so that everyone can see by the way you serve that God is the source of the strength. Do that and He will receive glory and honor through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.
Benediction: 2 Thessalonians 1:11 With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 12 We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1:25 Questions
1. What could you do to make your speech more flavored with God’s Words?
2. What changes could you make in the way you do ministry that would show God to be the source of your strength?
3. If you serve in a way that glorifies God your ministry will be characterized by prayer, gratitude (not grumbling or requiring thanks), use of the means of grace, seeking God’s guidance, unstoppable tenacity, and holiness. Which are the strongest and weakest in your life?
