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Discussion Forum : Revivals And Church History : Genuine ministry

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lwpray
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Joined: 2003/6/22
Posts: 3318
Sweden

 Re: Genuine ministry



Self-esteem, self-ability in some pernicious shape has defamed and violated the temple which should be held sacred for God. Life-giving preaching costs the preacher much – death to self, crucifixion to the world, the travail of his own soul. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man
E. M. Bounds
Power through Prayer


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/12 10:55Profile
lwpray
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 Re: Genuine ministry



The whole purpose of discipline or chastisement, which is to say, the painful dealings of God against our flesh, is to break the power of the need to be gratified now. The definition of a son is one who can defer his gratification for the reward that comes after. You do not need to receive a pat on the back after you have preached, "Well done, that was a great message!" A lot of us will collapse at this point, and compromise our message, even fishing for the compliments and the acknowledgments of men. Only a son can give total obedience to delivering the word without in any way modulating it so as to receive the gratification of applause and affirmation. If you want to see God and obtain His holiness, then this is the way.

Art Katz


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/17 0:24Profile
lwpray
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 Re: Genuine ministry


The Work of the Lord
What is the work of the Lord? What is Christian service from God’s standpoint? It is contributing to the fulness of Christ. It is in the measure of each several part ministering to that end, that all things shall be summed up in Christ, and that He shall be the fulness of all things.
That great Divine goal has many ways and many means of attainment, and it is not a matter of whether you or I are serving the Lord in the same way as someone else. That is not the point at all. We standardize and departmentalize Christian work, and we think of the activities of ministers and missionaries and suchlike functions, and we call that work of the Lord; we think of that when we speak of going into Christian service. . .
The work of the Lord is, and can be, no more than contributing to the fulness of Christ and ministering of that fulness to Him and from Him. How you do it is a matter of Divine appointment, but that is the work of the Lord. . . . You might aspire to be an Apostle Paul - probably if you understood a little more you would not! But you see, whether Paul is doing it along his Divinely appointed line, in his Divinely appointed way - or Peter - or John - or this one or that one - the object comes first, the way afterward. . .

The beginning of all service in relation to God is the servant himself. What makes a servant of God? We think of a servant of God being made by academic training, Bible teaching, by this or that form of equipment, and we think when we have all that, when we have been through the course and have in our minds all that can be imparted of that kind, we are the Lord’s servants. But that is not the way the Lord looks at it at all. . .
The Lord is going to require that He shall be able to say, “Behold, my servant,” and the servant to whom He will call attention will be the servant who is the impression of Christ. Yes, Christ registered, Christ presenced, Christ apparent, in the servant. . . God is far more concerned with having His servants in a right state than He is with having them furnished with all kinds of academic qualifications and titles.

. . . You can use the Scripture and it may have no effect at all, or you can use it and it may have a mighty effect. A great deal depends upon who uses the Scripture. It is the man of God who can use it in that way and be attested as the true servant of the Lord
. . . It is with you and with me that the Lord is concerned; it is with what we are, it is with our personal knowledge of Himself. It is that we may have within us the secrets of the Lord, that it may be true of us as it was of the Lord Jesus and of others that the key to the situation spiritually is in our hands.

T. Austin-Sparks
January, 1949


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/17 21:55Profile
lwpray
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 Re: Genuine ministry


Characteristics of Service to God
We may not be Jeremiahs, Isaiahs, or Pauls, but we are called to serve the Lord’s interests, and there may be very much more sovereignty behind our lives than we are aware of. It may be only as we go on that we shall become conscious that the Lord evidently brought us into being for something - that there is something stirring in us that gravitates in a certain direction which is prophetic of how we are to serve the Lord.

We find things taking shape in a certain way, with a corresponding deep exercise of our hearts about that. We come up against our own lack of qualification, our own unsuitability, and we are thrown right back upon the God of resurrection. We find that the very fact of our being thrown upon the Lord for everything is a sovereign act, with a view to safeguarding everything for the Lord. It is the safest thing, and perhaps one of the greatest evidences that things are of the Lord, when we feel, on the one hand, that we must, out of an inward compulsion, serve the Lord, and yet, on the other hand, that if there is to be anything at all for the Lord it must be all of His doing.

But let us note well that there is the vital turning point. Whatever we may have sensed before, until that day comes when the self-element gets right out of the way, until all the sense that we can do it and want to do it is thoroughly smitten and we are in the place where we really know that if there is going to be anything at all, it must be of the Lord, nothing can really arise.

But when that day comes, then all that purpose which has been waiting stored up will begin to break out and take charge of our lives in a new way, we shall know that we are girded by God for something - not perhaps what we would have chosen. It may perhaps be for the most difficult thing ever given to anyone to do. . . once the Lord has set His hand to do a work, He will sovereignly carry the vessel of that service to full accomplishment so long as the vessel remains suitably yielded in His hand.

T. Austin-Sparks
March, 1950


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/18 20:38Profile
lwpray
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 Re: Genuine ministry



There is a ‘Kingdom of reality’ that needs to be demonstrated by God’s people. And if we need to be anything as the Church, it is foremost to be eminently real, eminently loving, eminently living in the truth, speaking the truth, walking in the truth, doing the truth, being true. It is much more than merely “being correct,” or scripturally and doctrinally sound. It is something that should be suffused right into the marrow and the knit of our makeup. It needs to be in our eyes, in our speech, in the inflection of our voice, our posture and our talk.
Art Katz


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/19 6:20Profile
lwpray
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 Re: Genuine ministry



The respect for the Spirit of God as the Spirit of truth makes way for the Spirit of God as the Spirit of power.
The contemporary Church has reversed it; we have celebrated the power, the signs, the wonders, and relegated the truth to a distant consideration, if indeed, any consideration at all.
Art Katz


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/20 0:41Profile
crsschk
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Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 Re:

"Characteristics of Service to God"

Started to chop this up into parts for comment and realised, I couldn't. It is the whole of what is said here that resonates.

Question:
Where is this and the other dated post from?
Is this Art Katz? Bounds? Sparks? Couldn't be you, could it, Lars? You are much younger than that...
:-)


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Mike Balog

 2004/1/20 5:38Profile
lwpray
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 Re:



Thank you, Mike, for help.
I need to watch more carefully to have all facts in order.
Sparks made those comments back in 1949-1950.
I could not have said it then, born in 1950, I cannot say it today even if I wanted to.
Lars


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/20 5:55Profile
crsschk
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Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
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 Re:

Thanks Lars.

Quote:
I cannot say it today even if I wanted to.


Nontheless, it got said...again, thanks to you.
(Edit: The aforementioned post's have been updated, thanks Lars)


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Mike Balog

 2004/1/20 6:21Profile
lwpray
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Joined: 2003/6/22
Posts: 3318
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 Re: Genuine ministry



The Cost of Special Service to God
A thing which is to serve the Lord in a specially vital way is not born easily, and is not brought into being without some unusual suffering and travail. There is much bitterness of soul to be gone through, and many tears.
For a time, a drawn-out time, it appears that there will be nothing. The barrenness, with its attendant heartache and sorrow, seems long to remain. And yet there can be no philosophical acceptance or fatalistic capitulation. The Lord is a factor in this situation, and there is a “hoping against hope,” a wistful look toward the “God Who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). . .

So it is, when the Lord determines to secure for Himself that vessel of peculiar purpose, and cuts off all the many activities, works, and occupations which, while being in the same household of faith and in some relation to Himself, are largely by the energies of nature and the ability of man. When and where there are not those usual accompaniments and outworkings, those issues and results, the evidences and proofs; then there is criticism, taunting, pointing of the finger, and grievous imputations.

The very acts of Divine sovereignty are given a twist to mean just the opposite of God’s thought. So, one system of things taunts the other. Well, well, so be it. It ever was; it ever will be. . .
. . . When the Lord wants something for an hour of peculiar need, the methods have to be out of the ordinary. To those concerned He has to say, “Others can; you cannot.”
We are entering more and more deeply into such an hour at this time. The general thing is not meeting the situation. The Lord must bring through something which will “come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

T. Austin-Sparks


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Lars Widerberg

 2004/1/23 10:59Profile





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