"The Working Of His Power" Series

MADE A MINISTER

The first thing I want to impress upon you as we begin, is that just because we’re talking about the Apostle Paul does not mean that you or I or any other believer is excluded from receiving these truths, and having them applied to the life.

In verse 8 of this chapter Paul calls himself ‘the very least of all saints’. This is not false humility coming from Paul. Of course, you and I would not agree that he was the least of all saints. But we are reminded when we read those words that Paul never forgot his persecution of the church, or the self-pride and hypocrisy of his former life.

That is not to say that the guilt remained, and that he carried this great weight on his shoulders for the rest of his life. No, if anyone understood the grace of God and the complete forgiveness and cleansing of his sin that Christ’s blood provided, it was Paul.

But he never stopped being amazed at that grace and mercy that saved him and called him as Apostle to the gentiles. So when Paul says ‘the very least of all saints’, he may as well be saying, ‘the most blessed of all saints’. Each of us should feel that way, when we think back to where we have been, and realize where God has brought us. No one is blessed more than any other in reality, but each of us should feel as though we are blessed the most; and the appreciation that wells up in us should make us at the same time, feel as though we are the very least of all saints.

“Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”

-Watts

So as we progress I want to ask you to keep in mind, that any one of us may at any time be a recipient of the grace and calling of God that was bestowed upon Paul.

Are you a believer? Are you born from above and do you have the Holy Spirit of God given to you as a pledge of your greater inheritance? Is the love of God poured out within your heart through the Holy Spirit who was given to you?

Then you have the same filling and the same power available to you as to the Apostle. Please remember that as we continue.

Paul was made a minister. He was made a minister.

He did not just ‘become’ a minister. He did not wake up one day and tell himself, “Today I’m going to take on a new vocation; I’m going to be a minister”. He was going his own way, doing his own will according to the flesh, or so he thought.

But as he told the Galatians, “...He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the gentiles...” (1:15,16)

Believer, what has God made you, that perhaps you are not even aware of yet? How do you classify yourself? What is the label you give you? Teacher? Lab Technologist? Builder? Florist? Lawyer? Dispatcher? Homemaker? Student?

We have lots of labels, don’t we? If we like what we do and we know we do it well then we take a certain amount of pride in it; and that is good. But our labels are not God’s labels. He doesn’t categorize us according to what we do to put food on the table and pay the rent.