It's been suggested to me by a number
that there might be some profit in our
having this opportunity at the end this evening.
Not so much a time of questions, or
at least questions which I would answer, but
a period when we might be able to
share together, perhaps on the lines of some
of the things we have been thinking of
in these evenings.
Problems that we may have, questions that may
arise, and I would hope that at the
end of the time when I speak this
evening, which I hope will be briefer, although
I can make no promises, but I hope
that we might be able to have some
of our more mature and senior brethren able
to be free to help us, those of
us who may have some things that are
on our hearts, and that we have brought
to this conference as real problems out of
our own pastoral situation.
Now may we turn to the Word of
God, the tenth chapter of the Gospel according
to St. John.
St. John's Gospel, chapter 10, reading from
the beginning.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that
entereth not by the door into the sheepfold,
but climbeth up some other way, the same
as a thief and a robber.
But he that entereth in by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him the force are open unto us,
and the sheep hear his voice, and he
calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth
them out.
And when he putteth forth his own sheep,
he goeth before them, and the sheep follow
him, for they know his voice.
And a stranger will they not follow, but
will flee from him, for they know not
the voice of strangers.
This parable spake Jesus unto them, but they
understood not what things they were which he
spake unto them.
Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, I am the door
of the sheep.
All that ever came before me are thieves
and robbers, but the sheep did not hear
them.
I am the door.
By me, if any man enter in, he
shall be saved, and shall go in and
out, and find pasture.
The thief cometh not, but for to steal,
and to kill, and to destroy.
I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly.
I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep.
But he that is an hireling, and not
the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not,
seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep,
and fleeth.
And the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the
sheep.
The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling,
and careth not for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd, and know my
sheep, and am known of mine.
As the Father knoweth me, even so know
I the Father.
And I lay down my life for the
sheep.
May the Lord bless his word to us
this evening.
I hope there has been some measure of
progress and point to the pattern that we
have been following in these evenings, where in
the first evening on Monday we focused our
thinking upon the calling of the minister to
be primarily a man of God.
And last evening we were looking at that
second element in our calling to be ministers
or servants of the word of God.
And I suggested too that this evening we
might look together at the calling we share
to be shepherds of the flock to which
God has sent us.
And our theme therefore this evening will concern
that area of our work which is commonly
understood by the term pastoral ministry.
May I repeat now what I said on
a previous occasion, that it does seem to
me that there is a false conception of
the pastoral ministry to which all of us
call, which has created a hiatus between what
a man does in the pulpit and what
he does in the home and in the
vestry.
There was someone who said to me the
other day, the work that I do between
one Sunday and the next, hawking round people's
houses is the price that I am reluctantly
willing to pay to get into the pulpit
on Sunday.
And I think that that is an awful
distortion of a truly pastoral ministry.
May I remind you again of the words
of John Orme, that the true work of
a pastor is to feed the flock of
God.
And it does seem to me that the
truest understanding of the ministry is that the
whole of our ministry is a ministry of
the word, whether it is exercised in public
or in private.
It's unifying purpose is that wherever we are,
we labour in the word and doctrine.
And our purpose in private dealing with people
ought to be in the same sense to
be drawing them under the gracious influence of
the word of God.
The fact is, you see, that some of
the most profitable pastoral work that you will
do will be thrown up in the context
of the exposition of the word.
Is not this your experience?
Those of you who have an expository ministry,
that out of this very ministry itself, some
of the most vital pastoral work develops.
And I do believe that there is a
sense in which some pastoral work so called
can be purely a social concern.
And I think we need to be careful
here what we understand by a pastoral ministry.
Yet even within this context, there are many
things that we need to learn, I believe
brethren, about the shepherdly work of pastoring a
flock.
And the shepherd language of the scripture is
in a very peculiar sense fitted to describe
this area of our ministry.
Because the one word which expresses the relationship
between the true shepherd and his flock is
the word care.
In John 10 our Lord describes the pastoral
ministry and makes it clear that there is
a true and a false pastor, you will
notice.
And he distinguishes his own ministry from that
of the thief and the robber and the
hireling in this specific context.
That the precise point where the distinction occurs
is in this question of caring for people.
The hireling fleeth, John 10, 13, because he
is an hireling and careth not for the
sheep.
And the essence of the true shepherd is
to be found in this whole matter of
caring for men.
Now, while it is obviously true that our
Lord's shepherdly work is unique, it is unnecessary
to remind this company this evening of that.
There is a sense in which there is
a pattern here in terms of the factors
I was reminding you the other evening, that
there is one sense in which all our
ministry derives from our Lord's ministry.
You can find many of the terms that
are used to describe human ministry in the
words that are used to speak of our
Lord's ministry.
He is the chief shepherd, the shepherd and
bishop of our souls.
He is described also as, his ministry is
a diaconia.
And you find the words that are used
for our Lord's ministry can be applied to
our ministry.
Of course, our Lord's ministry differs from ours
so fundamentally in that it is a redemptive
ministry.
He is the good shepherd who giveth his
life for the sheep.
But even here, as I hope to show
towards the end, there is a pattern which
is to be seen in our ministry too.
Now, I want to suggest to you, brethren,
this evening that in a time of drawing
aside like this from our own ministry to
seek God's face and to examine our own
hearts, it's not unnecessary for us to remind
ourselves of this calling that we have of
God to care for men.
I have missed the discussion on evangelism, but
this I would want to say, that the
thing that marked out some of the most
gracious evangelists of a generation in the church
in Scotland which produced men like Andrew Bonner
and Robert Murray McShane and William Chalmers Burns,
the thing that marked out these men who
had such a zeal for the souls of
men and were so wonderfully blessed of God
in seeing multitudes brought to Christ, the thing
that marked their lives, I would suggest to
you, is a deep and gracious and loving
care for the flock to which God sent
them.
And an indescribable longing that these people to
whom God had committed and bound them might
be drawn into the fullness of the blessing
of the gospel of Christ.
And this is the kind of pastoral heart
that I pray God may give to us.
You know there is a story told of
Andrew Bonner that when someone went to his
door one Saturday, a thing that congregations ought
to avoid doing, but they went to the
door of Andrew Bonner's house one Saturday and
someone was telling me that when the servant
opened the door, that shows you how long
ago it was, there was a servant and
the man's servant opened the door and the
person waited in the hall and above they
heard the squeaking voice of Andrew Bonner, he
appears to have had rather a high-pitched
voice and the person asked the servant, what's
that?
And the answer was, that's the maester crying
to the Lord for sinister.
Now you know, brethren, you can't read the
pages of Bonner's diary, which I commend to
you.
You can't read the life of William Chalmers
Burns without catching something of this tremendous sense
of care for the people.
A care which was proved in its reality
in the case of a man like McShane
when he was ready honestly to be glad
before God as he left his people, that
another man had been used to bless them.
Now there's a real test in the ministry,
is it not?
That a man is ready to rejoice with
all his heart before God, that God has
taken him away out of the road for
a time in order that another man might
come in and his people be blessed and
visited.
And McShane's letters to Burns are a real
study in themselves in this kind of pastoral
heart for his people as he writes back
from the Holy Land to them.
This is the kind of thing that I'm
speaking about this evening and I suggest to
you that this is the shepherd's heart that
we need to grasp.
May I just in these moments this evening
pick out some marks of it and suggest
to you that we need to seek that
God would lead us into this.
I would suggest to you that the first
mark of it is this very genuineness of
which I've been speaking in the case of
a man like McShane.
That genuineness which stands the test of being
truly and really freed from personal concerns as
to who it is that God uses to
bless this people.
A genuineness which is ready himself to be
put out of the way if only God
will come and bless this people.
Now it is you see a mark of
the false shepherd and the false hireling that
he pretends a care for the sheep which
he doesn't really possess.
This is the mark of the false shepherd
you see.
He comes in amongst the flock but whenever
the wild beast appears the falsehood of the
man is immediately exposed.
And the fact that he doesn't have a
true care for the sheep is seen because
immediately he himself is in danger.
He leaves the sheep and flees and the
wolf catches them and scatters the sheep because
they are not really his own.
His care is not genuine.
He is proved to be a false shepherd.
I wonder if you know of the firm
which sent out a duplicated letter to all
its customers in an attempt to increase sales
around the Christmas period.
And the idea was that they might get
this sense of a warm family care you
know on behalf of the management and the
board of directors for all the customers who
came into this huge department store.
And when they got the letter the customers
didn't know unfortunately that it had come to
grief in the typewriter.
And what in fact happened was that they
read we would like you to know that
we try to fake an interest in all
our customers.
You know brethren I get the impression that
there are many of the people in the
congregations in our land who are getting the
impression that the ministers who are sent to
be the shepherds over them are faking an
interest in them.
And the one thing that everybody was absolutely
persuaded about in Jesus ministry was that his
care for them was utterly genuine.
And in this sense one of the prime
necessities and one of the fundamental qualities in
a true shepherd and in the ministry generally
is integrity.
Integrity of life, integrity of character, integrity of
speech so that people know that you mean
what you say and that you're not just
indulging in professional chit chat.
I met two people who came to my
manse some time ago and both of them
were talking about places they had moved around
Scotland quite a bit and they had gone
to two different ministers.
And one of them said to me words
which I later wrote down because I think
they were so important.
When he had been a distinguished graduate going
through certain deep difficulties both intellectually, morally and
spiritually but in a clear and real sense
seeking God.
And he had gone to this particular minister
and here is what he said to me.
I got the impression that I was only
of significance to him as a potential fish
he might catch and add to his spiritual
aquarium for everybody to see.
And someone else came to see me not
long afterwards to speak about a minister we
both knew in Glasgow.
And she said this to me and I
know that he was a man who at
that particular period when she was with him
was overwhelmed with work.
He made me feel that he had all
the time in the world and I was
the only person in the world at that
time.
Now it seems to me brethren that this
is a very important thing that we need
to come before God about the genuineness of
our care for people as people.
You know how often people can get the
impression that we are only interested in them
as souls.
Caring for people as souls.
I don't know how you can detach a
man's soul from the rest of him and
be interested in him as a soul.
And I think it's a terribly important thing
that we should learn what it is to
care for people in the whole realm of
their life.
The genuineness of that care you know will
be severely tested when we are dealing with
unlovely and unlovable people in unlovely situations.
Difficult people, odd people, people who can sometimes
be objectionable.
And that's where the genuineness of the shepherd's
heart is really put to the test.
You know I wonder sometimes if this whole
question of the reality of our lives as
ministers is not part of a deeper problem.
The problem that many of us find in
just being ourselves in the ministry.
Just being natural you know.
I've never been able to discover who said
it but somebody evidently once did say that
the most heavenly music is played on the
key of be natural.
And it's very true you know.
It's a strange thing how there is a
certain train about so many of our lives
when we are talking with people so that
we find it very difficult to be real.
And to be in a very real sense
human you know.
And yet you know brethren I believe that
one of the great works of the grace
of God in a man's life is to
restore in him a true humanity.
So that he is not only more Christ
like he is more gloriously human when God
has been at work in his soul.
Yet some of us do give the impression
don't we to people of being just a
little bit either sub or superhuman you know.
And perhaps the real reason that some of
us are afraid to be ourselves is that
we are afraid to be caught off our
guard.
We are rather afraid of the real self.
You know we sometimes find ourselves saying if
I was caught off my guard.
You know it's rather a bad thing if
you need to be on your guard.
And it does seem to me that it's
a vitally important thing that we should learn
to be ourselves and to be real with
people.
I think it's not a commendable or happy
thing that many of us have given the
impression to men and women that we are
in the worst possible sense the Lord's peculiar
people.
I think that people ought to see in
us that warmth and humanity which marked the
Lord Jesus who was truly man as well
as being truly God.
Well may I commend that first thought to
you.
I am the true shepherd says Jesus.
May God make us true men in the
ministry.
The second mark I would suggest to you
of this shepherdly care is focused in the
word gentleness.
This is the characteristic of Jesus' shepherdly ministry
which is both foretold of him and claimed
by him in the scriptures you will remember.
In Isaiah 40 for instance he shall feed
his flock like a shepherd.
He shall gather the lambs with his arms
and carry them in his bosom and shall
gently lead those that are with young.
And when he came amongst men in the
flesh in Matthew 11 29 we read I
am gentle and lowly in heart.
And when the apostle Paul is dealing with
men as their pastor it is through this
very characteristic of the pastor heart of the
Lord Jesus that he appeals to them.
I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness
of Christ.
Now of course this gentleness is part of
the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the
life of the child of God.
But it seems to me that it must
be supremely seen in the shepherd.
Indeed it will sometimes seem as if he
is more like a nurse with children than
a shepherd with sheep.
The apostle in 1 Thessalonians 2 7 writes
we were gentle among you as a nurse
taking care of her children.
Now those of you who have children will
know something of the exasperation of a nurse
who has to deal with them.
But this points to the fact of course
that the great need for a nurse with
children is the great need of a shepherd
with sheep.
And that is patience and forbearance.
And it is in this context that Paul
writes to some of the believers as my
little children.
And tells them that he was going through
travail again for them.
My little children for whom I travel again
until Christ be formed in you.
Now this is the kind of care which
the true pastor needs to learn under God
for his flock.
The Lord's servant says Paul in 2 Timothy
2 24 and 25.
The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but
kindly to everyone.
An apt teacher forbearing correcting his opponents with
gentleness.
That's a quality that comes to some of
us more easily of course than to others.
The whole question of personality and natural endowment
comes in here doesn't it.
And that kind of gentleness and meekness as
we have often reminded our congregations I imagine
is not a soft and sickly sentimentality.
Meekness and weakness we have often said are
not to be confused with each other.
But it is a strong unselfish love of
which the New Testament speaks.
A strong sense of care which yet has
the capacity to be gentle and meek and
forbearing.
Now there are some of us who might
find that that came to us more readily
than others.
But I believe we all of us need
to ask God that he will work it
into our character.
And make us men who know what it
is to be gentle with the flock.
That doesn't mean there will not be times
when we will know what it is to
be firm and disciplining.
But it does mean that we will learn
this basic fruit of the Spirit of being
gentle among you.
And maybe one of the most difficult places
to show it is precisely where the Apostle
refers to it in 2 Corinthians 2 24
and 25.
Correcting his opponent with gentleness.
That's something we need to exhibit one to
another brethren.
As well as in the context of our
flock that gentleness of Christ.
Because the opposite of it you see sometimes
can derive not from conviction but from self
-inflation.
And one of the most difficult things in
the world I think is to learn to
be a man absolutely burning in your convictions
and unshakably founded upon them.
And yet to be gentle and loving and
meek with those who disagree with you.
A gentleness which will draw men where its
opposite will often repel them.
Third thing I would suggest to you is
a knowledge of which certainly Jesus speaks in
this tenth chapter of John.
And it's a knowledge which is three dimensions.
The good shepherd knows his sheep.
This is one of the great characteristics of
the true shepherd who knows the sheep and
is known by the sheep.
But I would suggest to you that there
are three areas in which this knowledge operates.
And first of all you will notice it
is a knowledge of the Father.
Primarily the foundation of Jesus' knowledge of the
sheep and their knowledge of him is the
knowledge that he has of the Father and
the Father has of him.
I am the good shepherd verse 14 and
know my sheep and am known of mine
as the Father knoweth me even so know
I the Father.
And I lay down my life for the
sheep so that there is a link between
his knowledge of the sheep and his knowledge
of the Father.
And the primary knowledge which the shepherd needs
to have in the context in which we
are looking at it this evening brings us
right back to what we were speaking about
on Monday night.
The people that do know their God shall
be strong and do exploits.
And it is our knowledge of the Father
which is the primary knowledge which we need
as pastors of the flock.
It's possible you see in an unbiblical way
to emphasize the need for knowing the sheep.
Getting out amongst the flock and getting to
know them.
It doesn't do a man any good if
he knows the sheep and his knowledge of
them is better than his knowledge of the
Father.
The first knowledge in the pastor's heart is
the knowledge of the Father.
But the second knowledge you will notice is
the knowledge of the pasture.
And this takes us back to last night.
So that there is a kind of progression
through which we have ourselves been moving.
Verse 9 I am the door by me
if any man enter in he shall be
saved and shall go in and out and
find pasture.
Now the point about the shepherd's leading of
the sheep of course is that he is
leading them into the pasture.
He leadeth me says the psalm and the
place that he leadeth me to is the
green pastures.
Now it is the function of the shepherd
to lead his hungry sheep to the pasture.
He knows where just the right pasture for
them is to be found.
And it is part of his relationship with
the flock that he not only knows them
but he knows the pasture and leads them
into the place where just the right pasture
for their present needs is to be found.
And he leads them to it.
Now this you see is an application of
what we were speaking about last night in
this particular sphere.
It is the task of the shepherd that
he might know the pasture that the sheep
need at this particular moment and that he
might graciously and gently lead them into that
particular pasture for which they are at that
time starving.
Now this is the context of our pastoral
ministry brethren.
We are not meant to be amateur psychiatrists.
We are meant to be men who are
leading the flock of God into the kind
of pasture on which they need to feed.
And this is why our primary knowledge is
of the Father.
Our second knowledge is of the pasture.
So that we may take them to this
and say now this is where your need
will be fed and met.
And thirdly it is the knowledge of the
flock.
Typical of this is Jesus' concern to know
the sheep by name.
You will notice verse 4.
When he put us forth his own sheep
he goeth before them and the sheep follow
him for they know his voice.
And verse 3.
The porter openeth and the sheep hear his
voice and he calleth his own sheep by
name.
I am the good shepherd verse 14 and
know my sheep and am known by them.
Now this of course is so much in
it that I don't intend to spend time
upon this evening.
But it does imply that you will want
to get to know your people and get
to know everything about them that you can.
There is a certain danger as I was
suggesting to you last night.
In a detached and doctrinaire interest in expository
preaching.
Which doesn't really bring it into a real
living contemporary situation.
And apply the word of God to the
people who are really there.
And I suggest to you brethren that in
the great majority of our ministries this involves
getting to know your people.
I know there are some churches where people
come from distances and it's impossible in that
context to get to know them.
But that's not true of 99% of
us.
We have been set by God amongst a
people.
And we need to get to know them.
And to care for them and for the
things that matter to them.
To get to know their background.
To get to understand the roots from which
they have sprung.
To understand their culture, their burdens, their fears,
their problems and so on.
And I believe that there is a clamant
need in our time for this kind of
pastoral heart amongst people.
I would suggest to you, you may disagree
with me, it's a personal conviction of my
own that this means that in the early
stages of a man's ministry in a particular
place.
He may well find himself spending some time
in his pastoral visitation just getting to know
people.
It was Tom Allen who once said to
me when he came down to visit us
in New Mills one day to see the
church where he was brought up.
Because he was born and brought up in
our area and was brought up in our
congregation many, many years ago.
He said to me, do you know one
of the things that I'm learning these days?
And as you probably know Tom Allen, who
is now with Christ, moved in his theological
position a very great distance over the years.
And moved spiritually and grew as a man
of God as the years went by.
And many of us have speculated and wondered
just what he would have become if it
had been in the providence of God for
him to live longer.
But he said to me when he came
this day, you know he said one of
the things I'm learning these days is that
you've got to earn the right to speak
to men.
You've got to earn the right to speak
to men.
I'm sure what he meant was this, that
it was necessary to be ready to show
men that we really did have an interest
in them as people.
And that we cared for them as people.
And this can mean that you may well
spend some time in the early stages just
getting to know them.
In a wider sense I would suggest to
you that this means that in your reading
you ought to be ready to submit yourself
to the discipline of finding out about modern
man.
And about the situation in which he lives,
the way he's thinking and so on.
You see it's no good knowing about men
a hundred or two hundred or three hundred
years ago.
Although in a very real sense men don't
change.
We all acknowledge this.
But the pattern of life and the cultural
background of our kind is very different and
we need to get to know it I
suggest to you.
I was greatly taken aback some years ago
when I was speaking to one or two
young people who came out to our evening
service one Sunday night.
And one of them said to me when
we were discussing together, you know he said,
I wonder what you would think of Colin
Wilson's Outsider in this connection, in the connection
of what we were speaking about.
And you know I had to confess that
I had neither read nor heard of Colin
Wilson's Outsider.
And yet it does seem to me that
it's one of the important books for people
to read and know.
An inquiry into the sickness of modern man
in the 20th century.
Now I don't want to suggest that we
are discouraged into thinking that we've got to
cope with all the vast amount of rubbish
that is exuded upon an unsuspecting public in
our time.
But I do believe that we need to
be aware of the world in which we
are living.
And it's in this wider context that I
think we need to know men.
Of course, let me say again, the supreme
way to come to know men is through
the word of God.
And through our Lord Jesus Christ who is
the great cardiognostice, the searcher of the heart.
But I believe that that doesn't disqualify us
from the need for studying man in his
modern context.
May I suggest to you last of all
that the mark of the true pastor's heart
will not only be genuineness and gentleness and
knowledge, but what I can only focus in
one word of sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
It's here that I want to link up
with verse 11 in John chapter 10.
I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep.
And the true shepherd again is distinguished from
the false in that when there is cost
to be faced and danger to be met
and tribulation to be undergone, the hireling flees.
The good shepherd stays and he gives his
life for the sheep.
The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling
and careth not for the sheep.
Now of course I say again the context
of this and the point of it is
that our Lord is speaking of his own
sacrificial and atoning death.
But there is a sense in which we
are identified with this in our ministry.
And I would suggest to you that this
is something at least of what the Apostle
Paul is meaning in 2 Corinthians chapter 4
when he is speaking about the ministry and
this treasure that we have in us and
vessels.
Where he acknowledges his trouble, his perplexity, the
persecution that he is passing through, his being
cast down.
And sums it up in these terms, we
are always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus.
For we who live are always delivered unto
death for Jesus' sake.
Death worketh in us and life in you.
Now as it was true in the saving
ministry of our Lord that he gave himself
for the sheep and his burden was that
they might have life and have it more
abundantly.
There is a principle that is written into
the word of God brethren that the way
to see life working in the souls of
men is through our being ready to be
conformed to his death and to be sharing
in his suffering.
So Paul is able to say I die
daily.
I am always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus.
I am crucified with Christ.
So then death worketh in us but life
in you.
And some of the sheer weariness and costliness
and agonies through which a true shepherd of
a flock passes through are what the apostle
is speaking about when he speaks about being
in death fast.
Within the context of this same epistle he
is speaking about the God who comforteth us
in all our tribulation.
We have the sentence of death in ourselves.
And I believe that so much of what
he describes at the end of chapter 4
almost surprisingly as our light affliction is in
this very context of what the care of
all the churches meant to the apostle.
Brethren I believe that we will discover this
operating in our own lives.
The very same principle that our Lord opened
up to the disciples in John chapter 15
where he spoke of fruit being produced by
the father who is the husbandman coming with
his pruning knife and cutting deep into the
vine in order that it may produce fruit.
And my father who is the husbandman says
Jesus when he sees the vine bearing fruit
he prunes it that it may bring forth
more fruit.
Amy Carmichael has a very lovely passage in
this in one of her writings where she
pictures the wounds that are inflicted that to
someone who is a stranger seems so odd
and so unnecessary.
Some of the trials and hardships which seem
so utterly remote and unconnected with the real
ministry.
And she says as this bleeding stump is
left after the husbandman's knife has been laid
upon it we rest in the knowledge that
in the hands of a tried and trusted
husbandman there is not one random stroke in
it all.
Nothing lost that it would not be lost
to keep and gain to lose.
And this is the costliness of the ministry
brethren except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die it abideth alone but
if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.
And I tell you there are many deaths
to be died in a ministry that is
going to be fruitful and telling and effective
for God in the world in these days
and some of them are to be found
in the sheer costliness of a true pastor's
heart going out for his people.
And this is something that those of us
who are married will need to come to
a clear understanding about with our wives is
it not?
For they cannot be divorced from it and
there are many of us who are going
to find this.
We are going to find that in our
own experience we know the words of the
hymn I lay in dust life's glory dead.
O joy that seeketh me through pain I
lay in dust life's glory dead and from
the ground there blossoms red life that shall.
Now there is the thing see are
you ready to lay in dust life's glory
dead whatever that may mean and to allow
God to prune and cut wherever he will
so that there might be fruit to his
glory.
Then we will say with the apostle for
this cause we do not lose heart for
though our outward man perish yet the inward
man is renewed day by day.
For our light affliction which is but for
a moment worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory while we
look not at the things which are seen
but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal
but the things which are not seen are
eternal.
That's what gives confidence to the apostles ministry
he is living for things that are eternal
and ready to pay the price of a
ministry that is going to be of eternal
worth.
May God give us the same heart that
is ready to be offered up in the
same sense for the glory of his name.
Now before we turn to our time of
questions may we bow before God together.
O Lord our God who has been patient
and forbearing with us beyond our understanding whose
compassion fail not we praise and bless and
adore thee this evening.
For thy grace and loving kindness which thou
has shown to us for thy patience and
long suffering with us when we have been
thy difficult children and when we have been
thy faceless servants.
We bless thee that our salvation as well
as all our ministry is all of thy
grace and we are dependent on thy grace
alone O God.
And we come to thee this evening to
cast ourselves afresh upon thee and to beseech
thee that thou wilt so work in our
hearts and lives so send thy words through
us to ransack our souls.
That we may be molded and fashioned by
the hands of the master prophets into vessels
that thou wilt be pleased in thy mercy
to use and even though we acknowledge ourselves
to be earthen vessels we gladly would be
that the excellency of the power may be
of thee O Lord and not of us.
So wilt thou give us grace this evening
that we may learn to love with thy
heart of love and that we may learn
something of the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
So that our lives as well as our
ministries as we move amongst men may be
a savor of Christ to them.
Lord hear our prayer.
We do not come to thee with our
lips alone.
Our hearts are now drawn out to thee
and we ask that thou wilt hear our
prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.