The final session with our main speaker, Jeffery Smith, was on the cross - the pattern for our ministry. This was based on verses from 2 Corinthians 4. His two headings were
1. The paradox that Paul describes (7-9)
Spurgeon says "When it is forced home upon us, that we are less than nothing and vanity - when our very soul echoes and re-echoes that word, "Without me ye can do nothing." - then it is that we are strong."
Spiritual pride will ruin us if we are not careful. We need Io remember we are clay pots, no more.
Spurgeon says "When it is forced home upon us, that we are less than nothing and vanity - when our very soul echoes and re-echoes that word, "Without me ye can do nothing." - then it is that we are strong."
Spiritual pride will ruin us if we are not careful. We need Io remember we are clay pots, no more.
2. The pattern that Paul embraces (10-12)
There is a cruciform pattern that is essential to faithful Christian ministry. It is important to note how Paul's death leads to life for the Christian - that is the life of faith. We die, they live. This is the pattern of authentic, fruitful Christian ministry. This is what Jesus speaks about in John 12:24 and elsewhere.
Our duties as pastors were laid out honestly and challengingly. We must expect our lives to be moulded to the pattern of the dying and rising again of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He took Calvin and Bunyan as examples. We might daydream that to be Calvin would have been great. Yet the reality was not attractive. Think of how he came to Geneva in the first place and then how he was exiled and then had to return. He once wrote ‘I am entangled in so many employments that I am almost beside myself.’ There were many sicknesses too and troubles at home with an adulterous servant who stole from him.
There is a cruciform pattern that is essential to faithful Christian ministry. It is important to note how Paul's death leads to life for the Christian - that is the life of faith. We die, they live. This is the pattern of authentic, fruitful Christian ministry. This is what Jesus speaks about in John 12:24 and elsewhere.
Our duties as pastors were laid out honestly and challengingly. We must expect our lives to be moulded to the pattern of the dying and rising again of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He took Calvin and Bunyan as examples. We might daydream that to be Calvin would have been great. Yet the reality was not attractive. Think of how he came to Geneva in the first place and then how he was exiled and then had to return. He once wrote ‘I am entangled in so many employments that I am almost beside myself.’ There were many sicknesses too and troubles at home with an adulterous servant who stole from him.
Bunyan famously was in prison for 12 years. How concerned he was for his family and especially his blind daughter. He wrote how he "was made to see, that if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon every thing that can properly be called a thing of this life; even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them."
