These are the pastors of the Cedar Springs Ministerial Association praying together before our UNITED service. We truly are united. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful group of colleagues who will put aside any denominational differences, to simply focus on winning people for Christ!
I hope other pastors can learn from this group and experience the blessing of being united.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Beautiful Grapes
If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain but what He pours through us that really counts. God’s purpose is not simply to make us beautiful, plump grapes, but to make us grapes so that He may squeeze the sweetness out of us. Our spiritual life cannot be measured by success as the world measures it, but only by what God pours through us—and we cannot measure that at all.
From My Utmost For His Highest
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)
The Holy Spirit wants to bring to maturity ALL of these fruit in my life. Not so that I can pat myself on my back and say, “Look at how fruitful I am!” But so that God may squeeze me out where He needs me.
So I’m pondering…
Did you know that the origin of the word clergy comes from the Latin meaning “learned men”? These are the men and women who are supposed to lead our churches, because they have the education that others don’t. They are professionals.
Now compare that with the definition of laity: “the people outside of a particular profession, as distinguished from those belonging to it.”
Did you catch that? The laity are outside and uneducated. They are amateurs.
The origins of clergy is traced back to the 12th century, and laity first appears in the 16th century. But long before this, the Apostle Paul had a different idea —
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? (1 Corinthians 1:26-28 from The Message, emphasis added)
There is a HUGE PROBLEM when we think that only the professional clergy is equipped to do the ministry of the church! What makes a healthy church (like the first century church we read about in the book of Acts) is when EVERYONE is actively involved in ministry.
These words from Howard Hendricks are tough to hear, but right on target:
“I believe a great problem in evangelicalism today—whether in the local church, missions, seminary education, or what have you—is we have too many big-time operators! And too few servants. …
“The typical church hires a clergyman to rob them of the privilege of exercising Christ’s gifts. … The greatest curse on the Church today is that we are expecting a small group of professionals to get God’s work done.”
I hope I haven’t stepped on too many toes with this one. My intent is not to offend, but to get the church thinking. I want to see EVERYONE that calls themselves a Christian actively involved in ministry.
Do you have any habits? I’ll bet you have more of them that you realize! In fact, most of our day is made up of habitual things: same wakeup time, same morning routine, same route to work of school, same lunch choices, same way of thinking, same way of coping with stress, and so on.
For many families, a new school year begins today. Even if you don’t have school-aged children, the Tuesday following Labor Day is sort of the (un)official start of the fall season. And it’s a good time to take a look at your habits.
“Take your mind out every now and then and dance on it. It is getting all caked up.” —Mark Twain
Good advice! We usually learn things through four stages:
The problem is with both of our unconscious zones. Unless we pull out our habits and look at them every once in awhile, we may never know what’s holding us back.
QUESTION: What new habits are you going to try to make/break this fall?
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Don’t Live In The Past
The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the prideful self-satisfaction of a past experience, but is not working that experience out in his everyday life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it shows in your life.
From My Utmost For His Highest
“I remember when…”
“Wasn’t it wonderful when God…”
“That retreat / missions trip / revival service was so meaningful…”
Although they were wonderful and meaningful, I cannot live on these past experiences. If what took place in the past still seems like the most wonderful thing that God ever did in my life, I haven’t grown very much.
God’s mercies are new every morning. And my experiences with him should be new every morning too. In fact, they shouldn’t even become one-time experiences with God, but daily encounters with Him.
Craig T. Owens 