In ministry you will be both called to wait and also find waiting personally and corporately difficult. So it is important to recognize that there are lots of good reasons why waiting is not merely inescapable but necessary and helpful. Here are a few of those reasons.
Because We Live in a Fallen World
We are called to wait because the broken condition of the world makes everything we do harder. Nothing in this life or in your ministry really functions as originally intended. Something changed when sin entered the world, and in rebuking Adam, God summarized that change: “cursed is the ground . . . through painful toil you will eat of it. . . . It will produce thorns and thistles for you. . . . By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (Genesis 3:17-19). Sin brought friction and trouble and pain and sweat and a thousand other “thorn and thistle” complications to absolutely every aspect of life. We find ourselves waiting because everything in a fallen world is more laborious and entangled than it really ought to be.
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Tags: Paul Tripp, Tripp
Jay Dharan is the theological editor at ROE, and also the founding contributor at Beacon of Truth, an Evangelical ministry aimed at promoting the supremacy and sufficiency of the gospel.
During a new church plant function, a local Charismatic pastor from Kerala, India, told his church members that if they believed, God would cause miracles to be wrought through their handkerchiefs and aprons, just like God did using that of Paul, as written in Acts 19:12. While this was being taught by this pastor, in a nearby church, another local Word of Faith pastor, took the people to Genesis 1 and taught them how they can also create blessings by speaking out the word like God did, when He created all things by speaking out the Word.
Where have these two pastors gone wrong?
The answer to that question in technical terms would be – in their hermeneutics. In other words, it is in their interpretation of scripture that they went wrong. Their science of interpretation also known as hermeneutics, does not see any difference between descriptive passages and prescriptive passages in the Bible. Both of them took passages in the Bible which are descriptive in nature and preached them as prescriptive. Thus what God does in creation is no longer descriptive, but prescriptive – something which we are also to do. Thus even though no believer in New Testament days imitated the apostles and sent their handkerchiefs to heal anyone, the passage in Acts 19 becomes a prescribed pattern for today’s believers.
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Tags: Jay Dharan, Jay M Nair
It is a great thing to begin the Christian life by believing good solid doctrine. Some people have received twenty different “gospels” in as many years; how many more they will accept before they get to their journey’s end, it would be difficult to predict. I thank God that He early taught me the gospel, and I have been so perfectly satisfied with it, that I do not want to know any other. Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are always shifting their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to bring forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for young believers to begin with a firm hold upon those great fundamental doctrines which the Lord has taught in His Word. Why, if I believed what some preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all grateful for it; but when I know that those whom God saves He saves with an everlasting salvation, when I know that He gives to them an everlasting righteousness, when I know that He settles them on an everlasting foundation of everlasting love, and that He will bring them to His everlasting kingdom, oh, then I do wonder, and I am astonished that such a blessing as this should ever have been given to me!
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Tags: C.H. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon
“The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” John 10:3-5
In this text there are two thoughts worthy of note: the liberty of faith, and the power to judge. You know that our soul-murderers have proposed to us that what the councils and the learned doctors decide and decree, that we should accept, and not judge for ourselves whether it is right or not. They have become so certain of the infallibility of the councils and doctors that they have now established the edict, publicly seen, that if we do not accept what they say, we are put under the ban. Now, let us take a spear in hand and make a hole in their shield; yea, their resolutions shall be a spider’s web. And you should, moreover, use upon them the spear which until now they have used upon us, and hold before them its point.
Remember well that the sheep have to pass judgment upon that which is placed before them. They should say:
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Tags: Luther, Martin Luther
Is the Reformation over?
There have been several observations rendered on this subject by those I would call “erstwhile evangelicals.” One of them wrote, “Luther was right in the sixteenth century, but the question of justification is not an issue now.” A second self-confessed evangelical made a comment in a press conference I attended that “the sixteenth-century Reformation debate over justification by faith alone was a tempest in a teapot.” Still another noted European theologian has argued in print that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is no longer a significant issue in the church. We are faced with a host of people who are defined as Protestants but who have evidently forgotten altogether what it is they are protesting.
Contrary to some of these contemporary assessments of the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we recall a different perspective by the sixteenth-century magisterial Reformers. Luther made his famous comment that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls. John Calvin added a different metaphor, saying that justification is the hinge upon which everything turns. In the twentieth century, J.I. Packer used a metaphor indicating that justification by faith alone is the “Atlas upon whose shoulder every other doctrine stands.” Later Packer moved away from that strong metaphor and retreated to a much weaker one, saying that justification by faith alone is “the fine print of the gospel.”
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Tags: R.C. Sproul, Sproul
Jay Dharan is the theological editor at ROE, and also the founding contributor at Beacon of Truth, an Evangelical ministry aimed at promoting the supremacy and sufficiency of the gospel.
It was a normal Sunday morning and the preacher was busy pounding on the pulpit, exhorting the people to persevere in their faith in God. Along with his passionate pleas, he threw the words of Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7 as a proof text of what he was saying. The frequency at which this verse was used to season the sermon was increasing as time went by and after a while the preacher just had to begin the verse, the congregation completed it. Even though the exhortation of the preacher – to persevere in faith till the end, is legitimate, the use of 2 Timothy 4:7 for it is not. If we analyze the context of 2 Timothy 4:7, both its immediate and wider, we would see that 2 Timothy 4:7 is not a message primarily for the pew, but rather to be preached to men who stand in the pulpit.
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Tags: Jay Dharan, Jay M Nair
“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”— Psalm 103:13
In the former part of this psalm the Psalmist sang of God’s deeds of love, his gifts, his benefits, and his acts of kindness; but here he goes deeper into the divine motive, and hence he finds sweeter incentives to devout gratitude. There is a fullness of consolation in the fact that the heart of God is towards his people. He not only dispenses blessings —so does the sun, so do the clouds, so do the fruitful fields—but he takes a warm interest in our welfare, and has a feeling towards us of kindly, gentle affection, and that of such intensity that one of the highest forms of earthly love is here used as a figure to set forth the tender mercy of our God towards us.
I have always been taught as an axiom in theology that God has no griefs,—that he is “without parts or passions” I think was the definition; but I have often inwardly demurred to such statements; they seemed to me so inconsistent with the tone and tenor of Scripture; for he appears to take pleasure in his people, and to be “grieved” with their ill-manners. Surely, metaphors that are inspired must have a meaning that is instructive. If the Father’s “bowels yearn,” if our Lord and Saviour is “moved with compassion,” and if the Holy Spirit is “vexed,” there must be something analogous to what we call emotion among ourselves in the acknowledged attributes of the Most High. At least he appears to sympathize with us, so that “in all our afflictions he is afflicted,” and he pities us “as a father pitieth his children.” “That is speaking after the manner of men,” says somebody. True; and it is exactly the way I do speak. In no other way do I know how to speak, and until I learn to speak after the manner of angels you must pardon me, and accept an apology, not only for my own ignorance of any other tongue than that in which I was born, but also for the incapacity of my hearers to understand any other than human language. Neither do I know anything, so limited is my intelligence, except after the manner of men. It seems to me that if there be any other manner or means of communicating thoughts and emotions, it must belong to some other being than man; and if it be correct to speak after the manner of men, then be it understood I do speak after that manner, and I am perfectly satisfied that I am able so to speak the truth as shall give a faithful and adequate impression to your minds.
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Tags: C.H. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon
During a new church plant function, a local Charismatic pastor from Kerala, India, told his church members that if they believed, God would cause miracles to be wrought through their handkerchiefs and aprons, just like God did using that of Paul, as written in Acts 19:12. While this was being taught by this pastor, in a nearby church, another local Word of Faith pastor, took the people to Genesis 1 and taught them how they can also create blessings by speaking out the word like God did, when He created all things by speaking out the Word.
