Grace Fellowship Church - Pre-Conference Session 3

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March 7/2025 | Preconference session 3 | Expository sermon by Michael Durham. This is the third session of the preconference dedicated to elders and church leadership.

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The following recording is from our Grace Fellowship Church Conference 2025. Please visit us at graceedmonton .ca
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to learn more about us. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.
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You can also find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please enjoy the following recording.
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Well, greetings in the lovely name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Such a privilege of mine to be here and to have the invitation to speak to you.
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I only have one shot at you today. Matt got two. I only have one, so you're going to get the whole load in one hour.
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Now, just pray for me that I will speak what God wants you to hear.
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You know, you can open the Bible if you're a Bible preacher, and you could put your finger down, and you could probably preach.
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Some of you, that would scare you half to death, but you could probably preach a biblical sermon.
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It would be based upon the Word of God, but the
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Bible speaks of a word fitly spoken, and in other words, in an appropriate time, as apples of gold set in a frame of silver.
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You need a direct communication from heaven to your own heart, and the day you don't think you need that is a day you don't need to be preaching.
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We need to be men who have had our own hearts set on fire by the text we preach.
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It has to be real to you. It has to be burning in your heart, so pray for me that I just won't be preaching another sermon, because I don't need to do that, and you don't need to listen to just another sermon.
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We want to hear what God has to say, and so the text I pray the Lord be pleased to speak to us from is the
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Gospel of John, chapter 15, and verse 5. I want to speak on the same theme that was given to Mac and I, the pastor's perseverance, but I want to direct your attention in a much different way to this word perseverance,
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John 15, verse 5. Jesus, speaking to the disciples within an hour or two of his arrest, says,
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I am the vine, you are the branches.
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He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.
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The word perseverance can be used in a very broad and universal way.
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Biblically, universally, we would say it means to make it to the end, to reach the
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Jordan and cross over and be welcomed at the celestial city, to not apostatize.
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Well, that's a universal, broad way in which the word perseverance can be used, and is often used that way in the
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New Testament, but it can be more narrow as we look at ministerial perseverance.
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What do we mean as a minister to persevere? And here most would answer and say, well, it's to not drop out, but to finish your course, and at some point appropriate, depending upon health and age, you can retire and you have persevered.
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Nothing sidetracked you, you didn't have moral compromise or failure, you finished the course, you didn't do anything to disqualify yourself.
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And so in that way, we can say a preacher, pastor persevered.
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But Jesus does not use the word persevere in the text, but he does when he uses the word abide, because to abide is to remain, to persevere.
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But he wouldn't define it in the way that we have just showed you in the two examples.
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No, he means something else, something that you and I need. We need to persevere in the way in which
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Jesus communicates it here in this text, in a parable that I call
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Christianity's parable. We're not going to get into that, of course, time would not allow. But in the midst of a parable that explains the heart and essence of the
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Christian life, Jesus says, abide in me.
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A Duke University study just a few short years ago surveyed seminary graduates, and those who enter full -time ministry were about 85 percent of the graduates.
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So that means 15 percent didn't enter into ministry after they graduated from seminary.
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And just in 2021, Lifeway Research did another study, and they discovered and printed and reported that about 10 percent of pastors remain in ministry until retirement.
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That is astonishing. I knew it would be probably 50 percent or better, but no, 10 percent of pastors remain in ministry until retirement.
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Why is that? Why is that potential that someone here today could be a part of such a statistic?
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And so I want to describe for you here in this brief text, the enemies of ministerial perseverance.
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And here again, I am not using the word perseverance as I defined it in the two ways in which it can be defined.
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And you will see here in just a few moments what I mean when I say ministerial perseverance.
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The enemy of ministerial perseverance, I think namely, is the impossibility of the task that you and I are called to do.
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John 15, 5, I'm the vine, you're the branches. He who abides in me remains in me.
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I in him bears much fruit for, here it is, without me.
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You can do nothing, nothing. The call to ministry is to undertake an impossible task, to change what cannot be changed by human effort, to construct that which cannot be built by human strength.
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In every sense of the word, the call of the ministry leads to failure if you approach it and execute it through human means.
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Jesus means what he says, without me. You can do nothing.
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And now, that's true for every Christian here. But it's especially relevant to the life of a minister.
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You are called to do, brother, what you cannot do. You cannot save sinners and you cannot build churches.
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Only God can transform the sinner's heart from stone to flesh.
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Only he can construct his church. And the church that Jesus builds, the gates of hell shall not prevail against.
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However, when you attempt to do the work of the ministry through cleverness and eloquence or ingenuity, you may attract people.
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You may attract a following. But in the end, it will prove to be wood, hay, and stubble, fit only for the fires of the judgment.
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And I don't want that for any of you, and I certainly don't want it for me. If we try to build the church, we may gather a crowd, but it won't be a genuine church.
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Listen carefully. Only the Holy Spirit can conceive and bring forth both
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Christians and churches. I don't have time to explain the last one.
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You know about the Christians, but many of you have never even thought of it. You can build a congregation and put the name church on the building, but that doesn't make it a church.
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You can sign a covenant with one another, and that doesn't make it a church. What makes it a church?
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The life of the Spirit of Christ active in that body. And without the life of Christ in that body, as Paul defines the church in the epistle to Ephesians chapter 1, you don't have a church.
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You have a congregation. Therefore, my dear brother, listen to me.
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You cannot build the church. You're only an instrument by which, one instrument by which
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God builds his church. And you need to realize that without God's abiding presence, you cannot succeed.
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And you must be, listen, equally certain that with his presence, you cannot fail.
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You know the first one without me, you can do nothing. But do you really believe with all your heart that with him, you cannot fail?
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You must believe that equally. Many years, I remember reading
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John Piper's book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. It's a book
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I could recommend to be read by all of you. Even if you're not a preacher, you'll know how to pray for your pastor if you do read it.
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I want to take just a brief quote from the first chapter of that book.
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We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry.
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The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It's not the mentality of the slave of Christ.
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Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake.
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For there is no professional childlikeness. There is no professional tenderheartedness.
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And there is no professional panting after God. I like that last one.
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You can't professionalize. You can't even imitate a hunger for God.
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Either you have it or you don't. And my question to my brothers, my fellow pastors and preachers, do you sincerely hunger, crave, yearn for God?
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That is instrumental to your perseverance. That is instrumental to what
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Jesus meant when He said, abide in me and I in you.
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And so here we are. We're given a task by God that we cannot complete.
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We simply cannot do. My testimony is a little different than most of you all.
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I was a pastor. Then I got saved. I started preaching when I was 15 and I wasn't converted until I was 26.
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I don't have time to explain how that could have even happened, but it happened. And God in His mercy showed me my hypocrisy, that I was a
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Pharisee, a whitened sepulcher, full of dead men's bones. But thanks be to God.
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He took mercy on me and He opened my eyes and He saved me. In those 11 years of preaching,
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I pastored two churches and now I'm 33 and God's called me to a church that I didn't even want to go to.
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I lived near there. I was doing evangelism then, bivocationally at that time.
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Not too many people wanted to deal with me or have anything to do with me, having come from the background that I came from.
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They were scared to death of me, except for a good man, a pastor in Paducah, Kentucky, First Baptist Church, Dr.
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Robert White, who took me under his wings and promoted me. And so we lived in this area of this church and they called three times and I told them no each time.
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I knew all about the church. It was divisive. I mean, two deacons got in a fistfight the month before I came, so, at a business meeting.
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So that kind of gives you an idea. I mean, in the decade before me, the average stay of the pastor was 18 months.
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My predecessor increased the average. He stayed three and a half years, but he was, he resigned under duress.
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But God made it very clear this was where I was supposed to be. And I remember now, the only church
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I've pastored is a Christian, praying every morning, begging God, Oh God, you've got to help me.
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I don't know what to do. I've been to Bible college, seminary, and I knew that all the knowledge from the books, while helpful, were not enough.
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I knew I couldn't build this church. I couldn't save sinners. I needed only what
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God could supply and religiously, devotedly, needy,
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I would pray every morning, God, you've got to do this. I can't.
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And for seven years, God did that. He answered that prayer.
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And by the end of that seven years, the church was the largest it had ever been. We were having to commence a building program.
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But something I noticed happened. I wasn't praying as regularly or as faithfully or as desperately.
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Lord, help me. I can't do this. I need you. Many mornings in my prayer, oh yes,
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I continued to pray. But my prayers became more mechanical. I thought I had learned how to do this now and had apparent success at doing it.
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But God, once again, loving me too much to let me get by with pride and arrogance, humbled me.
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And I won't get into that story. But for the next year, it was the most difficult year of my life and yet the best year of my life.
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And God began to strip and to break and to humble. And brothers, the older I get, the more fearful
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I am of entering into a pulpit like this today. As I was listening to Mac in the moments before coming up here,
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I prayed, Lord, what in the world, why did you have me here? If he could have done a fillip on me and transported me back home,
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I would have been just happy and content. Because today,
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I think more than ever, I realize the immensity of what I'm doing and the impossibility of what
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I'm doing. I remember a pastor in our area called me and he said, my son has been unfaithful to his wife and I'm trying to help them, but I can't.
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I'm too close to the situation. Would you be willing to take them and counsel them?
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And I agreed. And they started meeting with us, actually started attending our church.
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And every Saturday, we'd meet week after week and we were getting nowhere. I couldn't help them.
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He was still hardened, not broken yet. And I'll never forget that Saturday morning in the parsonage, exasperated and desperate,
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I got down on my knees in front of them, not trying to be melodramatic, but feeling my desperate need.
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I cried out, God, I can't help them. You've got to do something, God. You got to help us.
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And praying, crying before the Lord. The next thing I know, I heard two knees hit the floor and he began to cry out in repentance and brokenness.
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God came into the room right then and there. And that marriage was healed that moment. And we continued to work with them month after month.
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And I'm happy to say they've been married now almost 25 years later, serving the
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Lord and a local church. Brothers, do you understand what
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I'm trying to say? The enemy of our perseverance is the impossibility test.
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We can be so overwhelmed by what God has called us to do. And we feel that the onus, the burden, the responsibility of helping the sheep, bringing them through is squarely upon us.
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And we forget what Jesus has said. No, without me, you can't do any of this.
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You need me. You need me. Another enemy of ministerial perseverance is fear, which is a byproduct or consequence of attempting the impossible work of the ministry and human strength.
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Eventually your heart, if you're serious about the ministry, will become afraid.
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Those who are not serious, they'll learn the motions of ministry. They'll learn how to prepare the sermon.
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They'll preach the sermon. There'll be nothing more than sermon factories and they'll draw their paycheck.
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But if you're really concerned about shepherding the people of God, at some point you're going to be overwhelmed by the task and your heart will begin to tremble.
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It's a common thing. When you look at the problem and you know you're not capable, fear arises.
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That was the normal response to a man from death named
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Goliath who stood almost 10 feet tall. Well, yes, Saul, King Saul stood head and shoulders over the rest of his army, but he was no match to this man.
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And he sat in his tent and he trembled when the giant challenged daily.
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Or the report of the evil spies, their walls are too thick and we are grasshoppers in their sight.
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They're giants we can't overcome. They saw the impossibility of the task and they became afraid.
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Impossibility begets fear and fear begets unbelief.
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Or maybe perhaps better said, more truthfully said, is that fear is really the offspring of unbelief.
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It's really unbelief that creates the fear. The impossibility, beloved, is in you, not in God.
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Therefore the ministry is not impossible if accomplished in the power of God.
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But we're so afraid to talk about the power of God in our circles today, lest somebody might label us a charismatic or a continuationist.
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I'm not talking about the supernatural gifts of God, whether they occur today or not.
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I'm talking about the promise of God. He has promised us power.
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You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses, a state of being, not just doing.
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Brothers, we need the power of God. Fear must be used to motivate our faith rather than minimize it.
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Mac quoted it in the last session, Psalm 56, verse 3 and 4.
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You might want to turn and look at it or just listen. Notice how David uses fear to fuel faith.
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Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. Most of us, when we're afraid, it's because we don't trust.
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Just the opposite for David. He had learned when he was afraid to run to God. Then look at verse 4.
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In God I will praise His word, in God I have put my trust, I will not fear.
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So fear drove him to faith and once he believed God, faith drove out the fear.
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Now fear can manifest itself in many different ways. For example, for the pastor,
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I think most obvious is the word burnout. You know the word, don't you? Pastoral burnout.
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But before the term burnout was invented, the Bible used the terminology growing weary, 2
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Thessalonians 3 .13. But as for you brethren, do not grow weary in doing good.
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You can only take so much stress and anxiety. The body can only endure so much. The mental capacity can only handle its capacity.
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Then what do you do? Well, stress mounts up and things begin to break down mentally, emotionally, and even physically.
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And we read of it all the time. I could give you a list of names of men that you would know who've suffered pastoral burnout.
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But it's just not the pastor. It's even pastor's wives. I read recently that of a pastor's wife, her husband was leading a very thriving church.
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I won't mention the name unless you would identify, you would know it. But behind the scenes, his, her husband's spiritual and private personal life was unraveling.
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And she reached a breaking point and gave him this ultimatum. I'm leaving the church, but I am staying married to you.
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I'll stay married to you, but I'm leaving the church. You say, I don't understand that.
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Well, I, I can understand and appreciate it. My predecessor's wife, she stopped coming to the church.
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They lived right next door. The parsonage was right next door to the church. Can you imagine having to go on Sunday morning and your wife's over there in the parsonage?
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Not sick, not physically, but sick of the church. All those people who were trying to destroy her husband, she couldn't bear it anymore.
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She broke down, actually caused much physical difficulties and sickness in her life.
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Even our mentor, the Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon suffered from ministerial burnout.
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Another enemy to ministerial preservation is this, and I want you to listen, especially you younger men, because I realize
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I don't think I'm any different than most of you or you from me. When a man's called into the ministry, dreams and aspirations and plans suddenly appear as you project your thoughts into the future.
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It's just a natural thing, isn't it? We start dreaming about what the potential, the possibility will be and how
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God will use us and what He wants us to do. But like every man called before us into the ministry, it never usually ends up the way we planned or thought or dreamt.
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And disillusionment can set in when you don't see the success. I mean, doesn't it bother you?
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I mean, I don't know, maybe I am different than everybody here. When I was pastoring and we went three or four months and nobody was converted,
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I got bothered by it. Does it bother you? No, we run and hide behind the sovereignty of God.
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That's a sovereign thing of God. No, wait a minute. There should be a burden on our heart for lost people.
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I was talking with Pastor Shane just the other day. When God opened my eyes to the doctrines of grace, man, evangelism became exciting to me.
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It actually became a law of numbers. If I just talked to enough people, I'd eventually find somebody
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God had chosen before the foundation of the world. It was motivating to me.
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But today we seem to use it to excuse our burden for evangelism.
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And I want to say to you brothers, God will probably in most cases not let your dreams and aspirations come to pass because He loves you too much.
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He loves you too much. He knows what you want isn't really necessarily all that good for you.
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I know personally, God loved me enough to not let me see my dreams come to pass because He knew those dreams would ruin me.
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I wasn't trustworthy at that time in my life to handle that kind of success.
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But listen to me most carefully. No matter how much ministerial success you experience, it does not equal spiritual fulfillment.
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It doesn't. It cannot satisfy that deepest longing of the heart.
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It will not. It cannot. It must not replace Jesus. It can't, but yet it so often does.
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Men get busy in the work. People begin to be added to the church. And sooner or later, if that pastor's not careful, that local church's system, even the one he's helped to construct, will take over his life.
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Takes over. Now you're trying to keep it all like plates spinning on little sticks or juggling balls in the air.
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It consumes you and it squeezes out Christ and devotion to Him and love to Him for Him and to experience
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His love for you. And so, I want to share with you the remedy to these enemies.
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And there are others. We just don't have time to list them. But the answer is really very simple and it will solve all enemies to enemies to ministerial preservation.
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And that is to maintain a heart for God. Now we're going to get back to the text because I think this is exactly what
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Jesus is advocating to His apostles and to you and I.
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The enemy of ministerial burnout, dropout, whatever you want to call it, is maintaining, above all things, a heart for God.
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Now listen guys. Listen closely. I keep forgetting that I am getting older.
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I don't because I don't think. I still see myself in my late 40s, 50s, but I'm not. I'm older than that.
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I want you to hear me. Your ultimate responsibility is not your congregation, spiritually speaking.
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Your ministry responsibility priority is not the church. It isn't your family either.
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Your first priority of ministry is your own soul. You, your heart, should be your priority.
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Because if your heart's not right, you can't minister to family or church or anyone else.
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The key to ministry is the same key to the Christian life. One and the same.
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It is to love God supremely. And it's at this point you're tempted to check me out.
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Stop listening because you already know this. But I want you to hear not me, but Jesus.
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John 15, 5 again, the text. I'm the vine. You're the branches.
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He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit.
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For without me you can do nothing. This text is part of a sermon or a discourse that's actually just a few verses longer than the
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Sermon on the Mount, the most famous of Jesus's sermons. And this parable from which our text comes is the main illustration of his sermon or discourse.
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It's illustrating what he's been saying starting at the end of chapter 13 and runs all the way through the 17th chapter with his high priestly prayer.
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You see it in John chapter 15, verse 9. Look, the context. As the Father loved me,
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I also have loved you. And he uses the same word again. Abide, minnow, remain in my love.
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You go back to verse 7. He replaces abide in me, the personal pronoun me, with abide in my words.
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Another explanation, clue to what he means by abiding in me.
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Here in verse 9, abide in my love. Go back to chapter 14, verse 23.
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Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word.
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You see, your obedience comes because you love him. He's not saying obey me and you will love me.
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He is saying because you love me, if anyone loves me, he will keep my love.
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He will obey me. He will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.
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He will abide. He will remain. He will dwell with us.
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You must not start thinking in terms of salvation right now, conversion, the indwelling of the
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Spirit, because you'll miss what Jesus is trying to say. I'll speak more about that in just a moment.
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But you do remember the greatest commandment, don't you? Are Canadians pretty poker -faced people?
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Not very demonstrative like we southerners from Texas. Okay, I get it.
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But if you can do that or this a little bit, that'll help. You do know what the greatest commandment is, right?
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Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Beloved, dear preachers, you're first lovers of God before you are preachers of the
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Word. Too many become preachers and they stop becoming, stop being lovers of God.
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The Lord said to Abraham, beautiful words, I promise I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.
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The writer to the Hebrews tells us that God is our rewarder, Hebrews 11 6. But God goes further with Abraham and he tells
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Abraham that he is not only the rewarder, but he's also the reward. I am your exceedingly great reward.
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God is the aspiration of the soul, not ministry success, not effectual sermons, not more baptisms.
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God is his own reward. I tell people, my wife is my best, best friend.
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I call her my soul's twin. And she can't travel much with me because we have a special needs daughter who care and has to do everything for.
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And, and my wife can make me so content, she can touch a part of my soul.
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Her love for me gets deeper than the superficial. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? You that are married, you know what
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I'm talking about. If you have a good relationship with your spouse, you know, they can touch a part of you that's just not superficial.
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It's just not joy or happiness, something fleeting. It's deeper than that. But she can't touch me where God can.
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The love of God poured out into my heart goes so deep. It gets to the very core of who
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I am. And I, I tell you of all the joys of this earth, including marital bliss,
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I have not discovered anything like the love of God manifested, experienced in my heart.
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Have you? Or do you even know what I'm talking about? Our hearts are so shallow, so puny, so small.
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It didn't take very much of the love of God to fill them. But brothers, this is that getting to the heart of what
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Jesus is saying when he says, I want you to abide in me. I want to abide in you.
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I want us to have a love relationship that is conscious. It is the love of God and the, our love for God that makes us to leave all that we do to do the work of the ministry.
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But please listen, the ministry must not replace that love. And sadly it happens.
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It happened for me. It's happened probably to every pastor in this room, unless Brother Melvin, who's only been preaching for pastor for less than a year, but it will come.
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God made you a worshiper before he made you a worker. Your labor for God must, listen, must come out of the overflow of your love for God.
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If it doesn't come from that compartment, then brothers, it's carnal, it's fleshly, and it will not achieve the purposes of God.
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That's why when you get up in the morning, the first priority is as old Mueller used to say, get my soul happy in the
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Lord. And you must with the word of God and through prayer, you can experience the love of God for you.
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And out of that experience of the love of God for you is the power of your ministry, because it'll help you to love people who aren't lovable.
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It'll make you merciful to people who don't deserve it. It'll make you to be able to endure the difficulties and the hardships of, and heartbreak of being a pastor.
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When you watch people not follow your counsel, biblical counsel, and they self -destruct, it'll help you get through it.
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The love of God. Jesus said, if you love me, you keep my commandments.
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You see, you can labor without love, but you can't love without labor. Labor comes automatically, naturally.
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But the ministry has this sly and subtle way of becoming the priority and making
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Jesus secondary, and you don't even know it's happened to you. Almost every minister
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I've ever talked to about this has to confess to me the battle between the love of ministry and the love for Christ.
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You might object and say, well, our ministries result from our love for God. Therefore, they are inseparable.
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Well, you would think so. You'd think so. And because we see them as inseparable, this becomes our tragic mistake.
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We fail to realize that we shouldn't love the ministry, but we should only love Christ. Love for our
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God should have no competition. You must remember that love for God is the fuel for ministry.
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How many has read the excellent two -volume biography written by Ian Murray on the life of Martin Lloyd -Jones?
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You have? If you haven't, get it. The first volume is good, but not as good as the second volume.
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It's worth plowing through. And in the second volume, it's
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January of 81, the year that Karen and I got married. Lloyd -Jones has two months to live, and Ian Murray is interviewing him for the very last time for the purpose of the biography, as well as to check on his old boss and friend.
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And Murray asked him some questions about where he was at spiritually, mentally, emotionally with the death process.
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And he says to Murray, I am so thankful to be a sinner saved by grace.
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That was his response. Murray took umbrage. He said,
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I've heard, I've read that of the old divines, but it just never made sense to me.
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Dr. Jones, your world, you're known worldwide, the books you've written, the impact you've had for the doctrines of grace and reformed theology, not just here in Great Britain, but across the world.
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Doesn't that give you some consolation in these days? He says, no, not at all.
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Not at all. And then he directed
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Murray to that text when the disciples had come back after casting out the devils and doing the work of the ministry, and they rejoiced.
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The demons are even subject to us in your name. And he said, do not rejoice.
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Do not rejoice that the demons are subject unto you, but that your names are written in heaven.
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And then he said again, I'm so grateful for the grace of God to save a sinner like me.
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Beloved, when you come to your deathbed, it will not be your great sermons that will give you consolation.
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It'll not be how many people were saved under your ministry that will give you the consolation you need to cross the chilly waters of Jordan.
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No, it'll be that you are loved by a God of grace, an undeserved sinner, recipient of the love of God.
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Undeservedly, now and throughout all eternity. That's the fuel.
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And I challenge you daily to refuel on that fact, on the gospel itself.
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That's the enemy. That subdues the enemy of burnout and all these other things that causes ministers not to persevere.
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New ladies would understand what I'm about to say. You understand accessorizing your clothing, right?
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What does that mean for us guys? Well, it means they buy a dress or they have some clothes and then they'll add a piece of jewelry or a pretty belt or a scarf.
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They're accessorizing their outfit. Christ doesn't need any accessories.
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He doesn't even need your ministry. The ministry must occur only because you've received the love of God.
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If you live for the ministry, it's because slowly, slyly, it's taking priority in your heart and you're guilty of idolatry.
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You're an idolater, my friend. If you're in love with the validation you receive from the ministry, you have left your first love of Jesus.
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If you love the approval of those who you minister to, then you have fallen. You've fallen from grace.
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It's real sin and it's real idolatry. And my dear friend, you can become an idolater and be deceived thinking you're serving the
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Lord Jesus Christ and all of your ministry is rubbish.
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No, we need a heart that burns for God supremely. Would you turn in your Bibles to Philippians 3?
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We're going to get back to John 15 5, but I want to illustrate what I'm talking about here when he talks about abiding.
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John, excuse me, Philippians 3 verses 7 through 10. This is the old apostle, not the young new upstart who's just met the resurrected
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Savior on the road to Damascus. No, no, this is an experienced apostle now near the end.
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And listen to what he says. Verse 7, But what things were gained to me, these
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I have counted loss for Christ. These things were, past tense.
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I have counted loss, past tense. What's he talking about? He's talking about that resume that he lays out there before his readers in the early part of the chapter.
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Verses 2 and 3. All that's in my past and I count it gone, count it loss for Jesus.
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But then read verse 8. Yet indeed, I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
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Lord. This is present tense. He's not talking about his life before the
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Damascus experience. He's talking about presently right now. It's present tense. I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
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Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish that I may gain.
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Future tense now. He switches now to the future tense. What's he talking about? What does this mean?
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He is evidencing a heart burning for God above all things including his ministry.
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Listen, the man is saying all the churches I have written, all of the sermons that God has used me, even the miracles,
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I count it all loss for one thing, the excellency of knowing
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Jesus. And here brothers, don't read the word knowledge to mean academic intellectual understanding.
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He's not talking about that. He's talking about something deeper, more spiritual, an experiential knowledge.
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I count all that effort. He's not saying it wasn't important to him. He's not demeaning those things.
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He's showing you his heart's burning aspiration to know him.
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We'll talk more about that tonight in the first session of the conference. That I, verse 10, may know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death.
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There it is, a heart burning for God. Oh, I have an unwritten group in my mind.
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There's no charter, no rules who can be in and out.
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It's just in my mind as I travel around I can identify. I know men who
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I call the fellowship of the burning hearts. They're men who love the word of God, but they use the word of God as our brother exhorted us in the last session to get to know more intimately the
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Jesus who died for us. That's the passion of their hearts.
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I can't tell you. I wish I could. I'm sorry to say not every pastor I meet has that.
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In fact, I wish I could say, but the majority do. I can't even say that either.
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I'm not trying to be cruel or harsh or impose some unbiblical standard to brothers, but it seems to me that's what
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Jesus is saying. Let's go back to John 15, 5, and let's see if we can better understand this word abide.
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I'm divine. You're the branches union with Christ. What a beautiful illustration.
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He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. If you think that Jesus is talking about salvation here, you're going to miss all that he's really talking about.
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Who's he talking to? That is a question. Feel free to answer. Who is he talking to?
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The disciples. How many of them are there? 11.
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Correct. Because Judas filled with the devil has already in the process of selling out his
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Lord and on the way to meet him in the garden to betray him.
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There's 11. That's all he has there. Let me ask you a question.
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Are these 11 men regenerated? The answer is, of course they are, right?
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They're regenerated. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my
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Father, which is in heaven. Peter was converted. He was a man who had been regenerated and therefore he believed and he was converted, saved.
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And so are the others. Listen to how he prays for them in John 17 at the end of the discourse.
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And they heard it. They heard the prayer that he prayed. He's praying for them, not for the world, but for them that have believed because of the word, the word that I have cleansed, pruned, cleansed them by, as he will say in verse 3, 2 and 3 of John 15.
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No, no, these men are already converted. So he's not talking about entering into Christ.
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It's not an evangelistic or a salvation theme here, nor is it to be dealing with the indwelling of the
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Spirit, even though they had not yet been indwelt by the Spirit. And I pray you'll forgive me for not following that rabbit.
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It's quite tasty once we get to him. I like a good fat fried rabbit, but this is not what he's talking about.
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No, he's talking about something else. He's talking about a fellowship with him, a fellowship with him that is much deeper than just the act of conversion itself.
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And again, I'll deal more with this tonight in the first session.
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He is saying, I want you to abide, remain in me, in my love, in a way that you experience my fellowship.
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And beloved, that's how you persevere in the ministry. It's a life of fellowship, which means prayer now becomes not just important, but life -saving, not in the sense of salvation, but to maintain this life of fellowship.
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Why do I say that? Because prayer is the greatest tool given to us to practice relationship with God.
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When I'm traveling like this, I'm so grateful for the technology. I remember many years ago when
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I'd travel overseas. And before I entered email, I mean, you had the old landlines and they were quite expensive calls.
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You could only talk for a minute. And there would be this long delay when I would call my wife, let her know
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I made it safely. And it was staticky. Now I can hit a button and I can see her and she can see me and we can communicate.
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And so every evening, because you're an hour behind us in time, I dismiss myself from the family and I go up and I spend about an hour with her and we talk.
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Why? Because conversation, engagement is the main way in which we practice our relationship.
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Beloved, prayer becomes a valuable thing when it's genuine prayer, not saying your prayers, but praying, communicating, sharing your heart with the one who already knows it.
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Prayer is a mystery to me. Why did you want me to tell you things you already knew before I would even know them?
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But that's the beauty of prayer and the mystery. It's that God has ordained a way for you to express your heart to him.
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And then, oh, praise be to God. He has given us his heart in the written word, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.
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God has spoken out of the abundance of his heart and he's recorded it for us. And so now when
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I pray, my Bible is open. I'm hearing him and I'm expressing my heart about what he's saying to me.
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And in that, faith is emboldened and I experience his presence.
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Now, if you want to call me a charismatic, that's your mistake, but it's also your privilege. No, I'm just a
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Bible -believing Christian who believes that my God is not in some corner of the universe, mute, speechless, incommunicative.
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No, no, he's alive. He's real. He's a person.
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And he's the source of everything I am and hope to be. Oh, brothers, that's your first priority in the ministry.
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And from that is the fuel of the ministry. And from that, God will help you to bear much fruit.
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Don't let past experiences dictate what you can believe God for in the future.
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How many of you ever heard of praying Edward Payson? Yeah. I've been at his grave there in Portland, Maine.
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He said, if we would do much for God, we must ask much of God. We must be men of prayer.
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But friend, listen to me closely. You will never ask much of God until you know much of God.
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And I don't mean necessarily just intellectually and doctrinally, although that's, that's why you have a
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Bible, but also experientially, that the book that tells you about this
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God somehow by the Spirit quickens until it's not just about God, but it is of God and from God.
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And there is true fellowship. Well, may God help us.
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May He revive our hearts to pursue Him above the ministry and let the ministry flow out of this abiding in Him.
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For without Him, we can do nothing.
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But with Him, we can do all things.
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Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.
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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our
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Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.