What Warms Your Pastor's Heart? (Part 1) Series

Sermon Preached by Pastor Larry. C. Brincefield on 12/8/04 at Belleview COTN

Title: What Warms Your Pastor’s Heart (part 1)

Text: Ephesians 1:15-16

Introduction

1. Being a pastor is a wonderful thing!

I love being your pastor!!

Sometimes pastoring can be a challenge…

Sometimes it is difficult…

But I have never ever been tempted to leave the pastorate.

Beyond the fact that God has called me to be a pastor…

And that’s certainly good enough for me…

There are many fringe benefits…

For one thing, I get paid to read the Bible and pray!!

I get to read Bible commentaries and Bible dictionaries…

And it is “work”!!

2. There are many things about being a Pastor that I enjoy…

But there are a few things that truly warm a pastor’s heart.

I’m sure that these are things that are fairly universal…

Pastors of all denominations in all places of all times…

Find themselves strangely warmed by the same thing.

In fact, we find them in our text.

Paul was a traveling missionary on his 3rd missionary journey when he stopped in Ephesus and ended up staying there for almost 3 years.

Later, after he left, he found himself under house arrest in Rome.

But he found time and energy to write letters to several people and churches.

One of those letters is Ephesians.

And in our text Paul expresses some things to the Ephesians…

That you can tell are very meaningful to him.

Let’s stand together as we read…

Ephesians 1:15-16

As we study our text, we will find 2 things that really warm Paul’s heart…

And we also find Paul’s response.

1. The First thing that Paul mentions that really warms his heart…

He says, “I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus”

A. We don’t know the details of HOW Paul heard about their faith…

But, somehow, even under house arrest…

word came to him that the people in the church at Ephesus had a deep faith in the Lord Jesus Christ…

And not only did they have faith…

But their faith had evidently been having an impact outside the church…

Because the word was being spread about the people in that church.

Which might only seem mildy interesting in our day of instant communications…

Email…

Air flight…

And so forth…

But, when you realize that Rome was about 800 miles from Ephesus, as the crow flies…

And that people in Paul’s day certainly couldn’t take a direct flight…

By boat, it would be over 1,000 miles…

And by land, it would be even longer.

And somehow, under the constraints of distance…

And time,

And difficulty in travel…

And being under house arrest…

Paul heard something that really warmed his heart about the church in Ephesus…

He heard about their faith in Jesus Christ…

He knew that they were being faithful to Christ…

He knew that they were living out their faith in such a way that it was having a deep impact in that area…

And the news of that somehow reached Paul in Rome…

And how it must have warmed his heart!

In fact, it was likely this is the very thing that motivated Paul to write this letter to the Ephesians in the first place.

And as we continue to study the book of Ephesians in the weeks and months ahead…

We will find that Paul DIDN’T write them to address some sort of problem in the church…

As he did in some of his other letters…

But it is a letter that is positive, uplifting and encouraging….

Written to a church that was excited about Jesus Christ and wasn’t afraid to show it.

B. I can sort of identify with Paul in a small way…

I’m certainly not far removed from my church…

Thankfully I’m not under house arrest…

But, as I live in this community…

And as I interact with people…

And people find out that I’m the pastor of the people at Belleview Church of the Nazarene…

Many times, people will say, “do you know ‘so and so’ who goes to that church”?...

And if they are referring to someone who is coming to our church since I have been your pastor…

I’ll say, “sure”…

And they will go on to tell me about how wonderful that person is…

They will go into some detail to let me know about what a find Christian that person is….

And what that person did to help them personally.

And I can tell you that it really warms this pastor’s heart to hear that!!

What a blessing to have the realization that my people aren’t living one way on Sunday…

And then going out during their interactions with the community and acting differently…

Their Christianity is a part of how they act all week long…