Living the 1 Peter Life
I am in the middle of finals week and it is nuts. So, I will post more about immigration when school is done.
In the meantime, a pastor from around here is blogging from a conference up in Seattle. He reports:
This spoke to me. I don't think he means "our lives will be a mess" in an out-of-control way. I think he is just trying to emphasize the role of suffering in following God (and "suffering" can mean so many different things).
In the meantime, a pastor from around here is blogging from a conference up in Seattle. He reports:
The Reform & Resurge conference is on full force. Three speakers today. First was Darrin Patrick of The Journey Church in St. Louis. Darrin is an SBC'r and a church planter with Acts29. His talk was just perfect for me, exactly what I needed.
He said that your biggest challenge in ministry is yourself. He used James 1:1-4 to talk about how those who walk with God will be a mess because God wants to build our character through trials. The process of going through trials is painful, but we need to focus on the product of trails not the pain of trails. Why would we want to avoid trials when it's the trigger to God's power?
This spoke to me. I don't think he means "our lives will be a mess" in an out-of-control way. I think he is just trying to emphasize the role of suffering in following God (and "suffering" can mean so many different things).
posted by Jonathan Ziman at
4:17 PM
1 Comments:
good point- and not reserved just for those in "the ministry" - Our own fallen nature- and more to the point, our own misguided thoughts as to how God uses us, get in the way of God actually using us. We feel more comfortable operating from our own strengths- but God often works out of our places of weakness and we can easily interfere with His work in us and through us to others. That's partly how I'm reading this pastor's blog. We get in our own way when ministering to others- so busy trying to come up with the right thing to see, re-framing the other's distress in our own experience- and we can easily miss where God is in the whole interaction.
A pastor from my church in Virginia gave a sermon about something that touches on this. God is always in the process of molding us and transforming us- and using us along the way as part of that transformation- When we are in a ministering relationship with each other, we are being transformed as much as the other person is. But we get scared, tired, rebellious and we ABANDON THE PROCESS- and so then God has to patiently begin all over again. The message was/is- don't abandon the process. Let yourself be used in all your mistakes, weaknesses, mistarts, etc.. - let all of you be used by God and don't abandon the process.
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