A Word in Season: Not losing heart (2 Corinthians 4:1)

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Christians can lose heart, or be in danger of losing heart.

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The Word of God is preached, it's proclaimed in the world, and perhaps it seems to have very little lasting impact.

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Perhaps people don't even get offended by what they hear, they're just not that bothered. There are few conversions, and little advance for the

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Gospel in the world. And then in the church it seems as if things don't seem to happen.

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The people of God can remain careless or casual. The Word of God seems to wash over us and leave us unchanged and unaltered.

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And perhaps the greatest grief is that we ourselves hear that Word, and it doesn't seem to accomplish a great deal in us.

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We long to long for it, we desire to desire it, but too often we think that it's not doing very much in us or to us.

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That's true as much for ministers of the Gospel, preachers of the Word, as it is for anybody else, perhaps even more so, because to them has been entrusted this particular ministry.

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They preach the Word in the church, they preach the Word in the world, they go out to make disciples, and it seems like few disciples are made.

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They try and teach people the things which they themselves have received from the Lord Jesus Christ, and there doesn't seem to be much appetite.

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Perhaps the congregation seems marked more by lethargy or laxity, by this carelessness or coolness, and they mourn and they grieve because there doesn't seem to be much effect from the preaching of the

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Word. And they plead with God, and they stand up again in the pulpit. And I hope if you're a

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Christian you'll have faithful ministers of the Gospel who will stand morning and evening in the house of God, among the people of God, on the

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Lord's day, and they will make known the glories of Christ. And they'll do so earnestly and they'll do so zealously that they may be struggling to sustain their hope.

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They may be striving to keep confidence that there is value and there is purpose and there is accomplishment in the work that they do, whether they're proclaiming more or less to those who are outside, or more or less to those who are inside the kingdom.

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What is it that sustains hope? What is it that keeps the confidence of God's men and God's ministers alive?

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In 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 1, Paul says, We do not lose heart.

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Paul is persuaded of the character, the nature of the ministry that has been committed to his charge.

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It is not the ministry of death, he says beforehand, it's the glorious ministry of the

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Spirit. It's the declaration of Jesus Christ in all the clarity and beauty and purity and glory of his being and his doing.

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It's a liberating gospel. It frees us from sin and death.

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It's a transforming gospel. For as we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we are transformed from glory to glory just as by the

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Spirit of the Lord. And Paul knows that that's the ministry that is in his hands and from his mouth.

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We have received mercy, he says. God has called us to this, not of ourselves.

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We have nothing to boast of. God has equipped us for this. He's formed us for this purpose and he's working in us to enable us to do this work.

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And it's God, by his mercy, who will sustain us in this. And so he says, having this ministry, having received mercy, we do not lose heart.

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You may not be one of those who preaches. You may be one of those who do. You might know some of that pressure, that downward dragging by which we can become despondent or wonder whether or not anything will be accomplished.

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Well, if you're a hearer and if you're a preacher, then you preach the word. Remember the ministry that you have received.

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Do pray for those who will preach to you. Do pray for those who will minister the word to you, that they might not lose heart and that you might not lose heart, but that the glorious ministry concerning Jesus Christ, liberating and transforming under the influence of the

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Holy Spirit, that God might yet use it to do great things in the place where he has put you.