Risk Taking, part 2

Everything we do as a church is designed to help people come into spiritual maturity in an effort to spread the Gospel. Look at how Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:11: “And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” 

If the church in America is guilty of anything, it is guilty of heaping Bible knowledge upon us without doing anything about it. We have a wonderful hunger for Bible knowledge, and that’s good. But what value is it if it doesn’t really cause us to go do something for Jesus? Our purpose as pastors is to equip you for the work of ministry.

I’m not saying that there is no value in knowing a lot about the Word of God. There is! David wrote, “ I will hide Your Word in my heart so I won’t sin against You. But what I’m asking is this: “What are you - what am I - doing with all your/my knowledge?” What if we knew everything there is to know about prayer, but never actually prayed? What if we could answer all the questions about the subject of fasting, but never fasted ourselves? Is knowing everything about deliverance the same as having delivered someone of a demonic spirit? Everything begins with knowledge, so that’s good; but to have knowledge without any subsequent action is like having faith without works. 
 

A zealous, soul-winning young preacher recently came upon a farmer working in his field. Concerned about the farmer’s soul, the preacher asked him, “Are you laboring in the vineyard of the Lord, my good man?”
 

Not even looking at the preacher, but continuing his work, the farmer replied, “Naw, these are soybeans.” “You don’t understand,” said the preacher. “Are you a Christian?”
 

With the same amount of interest as his previous answer the farmer said, “Nope, my name is Jones. You must be looking for Jim Christian. He lives a mile south of here.”
 

The determined young preacher tried again, asking the farmer, “Are you lost?” “Naw! I’ve lived here all my life,” answered the farmer.

“Are you prepared for the resurrection?” the frustrated preacher asked. 

This caught the farmer’s attention and he asked, “When’s it gonna be?” Thinking he had accomplished something, the young preacher replied, “It could be today, tomorrow, or the next day.” 
 

Taking a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his brow, the farmer remarked, “Well, don’t mention it to my wife. She don’t get out much and she’ll wanna go all three days.” 

We all need zeal, but zeal without knowledge is not always good. What I know is: zeal is often the thing that catapults us into ministry.
 

In order to be a good minister, we must have to want to

One of the greatest mistakes many pastors make is assuming that most believers have the “want to,” to go out and evangelize. I sometimes wonder if we are offering the “how to’s” of evangelism to people that have no “want to?” It doesn’t matter how useful a tool is, if the person who owns it is not interested in it, it doesn’t matter what the tool does. Having the tool but not utilizing it renders the tool ineffective.

Continued tomorrow