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Willing to pay the price for being in ministry?

Ministry is another word for service. It means that we allow God to use us for his purpose. To make a difference in people’s lives, we need to be passionate about this service. We must know that to be used by God, we must be willing to pay the price to minister, to serve.

Paul says: (Colossians 1:24-25)  I rejoice in what (I- Paul) suffered for you... for the sake of the body of Christ, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness.

To minister involves sacrifices. If we are going to follow Jesus in suffering for the sake of the Church, then we, like Jesus, must be willing to pay the price required for our choice, and the price may even include  to be ill-treated and to never hear a word of thanks or praise.

If the work we do for the Lord is worth suffering for, we rejoice that the sacrifices we make produce outcomes that matter.  The church of the Lord makes sacrifices for what is worth suffering for:   the cause of Christ on earth.

If we desire a life that counts and makes a difference, we report for duty. We step out in faith. We dedicate our lives to serve God and serve others. We make a difference in this world for the Kingdom God.  

Ministry means our lives count for a lot: It touches others. It brings glory to God!

Emotionally involved with Jesus Christ.

An article written by a school psychologist who did his masters thesis on the stress experienced by teenagers participating in sports, concluded that teenage sports is often experienced like a religion. It is true that the passion for these games with cheerleaders stirring the crowd to an emotional frenzy seems like something so important that it involves matters of life and death!

Some of us continue to be emotionally involved with sports.  Others become emotionally involved with their profession, or politics or other causes in the same way.

And we rarely criticize emotional involvement, except when there is emotion with and about God and about our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Getting excited about sports is considered natural, but being emotionally involved with Jesus Christ is often considered unhealthy and fanatical.

Sports, business and politics need not be evil. But they are no gods nor are their happenings religious services. Rugby, soccer and cricket matches are no church services and cannot save your soul!

Better that you should engage in passionate worship of the God of the Bible. Better that you should become emotionally involved with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ suffered and died to pay the penalty for sin due to people like you and me.   When we see his love on the painful cross on Golgotha and hear his passion for us when he cried out “it is finished” and experienced his divine affection when we found ourselves saved from the power of sin and the daunting danger of judgment, we cannot do anything else but becoming emotionally involved with our Redeemer.

True faith is a matter of the heart. It involves your mind, your will and your emotions. It involves a total commitment to the Saviour and his Body, his people. We should turn to the unity, and common gratefulness for all he has done, sharing this commitment with other saved sinners – now called believers or called the church!

True worship of the true God involves our emotions. It makes us passionate and fuels the flame of love for the Lord in our lives.

Celebrate being part of God’s salvation banquet!

The doors of the kingdom community, of living in the Body of Christ, are thrown wide open, and the invitation extends to all.

But once you come in, there are standards. You can never act like you are not exquisitely blessed by being part of such an extraordinary celebration.

The problem with church goers is not so much that we do not take the work of God seriously! No, our biggest sin is a failure to celebrate the privilege of being included in this wedding feast of the Lamb of God.  

Living in the kingdom of heaven is like being invited to an extraordinary banquet. But simply accepting the invitation is not enough.

When the kingdom music is playing, it is time to start singing! To start celebrating!

When we find our undeserving selves to be God’s guests, celebrating God’s Son, the least we can do is to show joy, participation, praise, thanksgiving, excitement, faithfulness, love!

God’s invitation is to a feast! The person who does not come in to celebrate the Son accordingly, in other words festively, declines and spurns the invitation no less than those who are unwilling to appear at the banquet at all.

Openly acknowledge Christ before others

Think for a moment that you are in a court of law. You were summoned to appear before a judge and you are accused of being a Christ believer and follower. How will you answer to the accusation? Will you affirm or deny your faith? Will you acknowledge or disown Jesus?

In Matt. 10: 32 we hear Jesus saying:  “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.”

To acknowledge Jesus publicly is to openly and unashamedly in all circumstances declare that Christ Jesus is indeed the Son of God. It means to profess him openly as your Saviour and proclaim him as the Lord of your life.

This means that you not only acknowledge him with your creeds, your theology and with your words. It means that you imitate Christ. You honour only Jesus in attitude, values, thoughts, choices, life style and world view. You actively seek his justice, unity and peace in the world. You worship him in Spirit and in truth!

To acknowledge Jesus is to declare before others that you live for him who died for you. You trust him both in life and in death, him, who gave his life on the cross that you may find life in abundance. He gave his blood that you may be redeemed and may inherit heaven!

Jesus says that if we acknowledge him before others, he “will also acknowledge us before his Father in heaven.” It means that Jesus is saying to God:

“I died for this person. With my blood I have redeemed him/her from evil, judgment and from sin-slavery. He/she is forgiven, because I (Jesus) was judged and condemned in his/her place.

Does your love for the Lord lead to a relationship where you every day acknowledge, honour and serve Christ openly and publicly and Jesus acknowledges you before God, our Father?

May the sacrificial love of Jesus make it possible for me to always be his witness, his worker, his follower and his friend!

To follow Christ Jesus makes it worth denying ourselves.

The self denial of Jesus asked from him to be exactly the person that God sent him to be for our sake.  The cross and the suffering was his calling - and he did it for the sake of the Father and for the sake of his disciples!

This is what Jesus taught us in Mark 8: 34 – 35:  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

But our human nature is to save “our lives”.  We want to be prosperous, strong, successful and influential.  Jesus has other priorities. He, on the other hand, came to serve, not to be served and he invites us to follow him and his ways.

In its return to the Bible, the Reformation rejected a “theology of glory” in favour of a “theology of the cross.”  To follow Jesus is to live lives of service to others, to serve rather than to be served and honoured.   It is the opposite of being proud of your class and status, especially at the expense of others.

The “theology of the cross” or “to deny oneself” does not mean an unnatural kind of humility.  We do not follow Jesus by demeaning ourselves.  We are called upon to do the very best we can with all the talents and abilities God has given us.

But to “deny oneself” means to keep one’s priorities in harmony with what Jesus told us in the two “great commandments” -- love God and love your neighbour (Mark 12:28-31) and seek first of all, the Kingdom of God!

There is indeed a great hope in what Jesus said that day. “Those who lose their lives for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel will indeed save it” (Mark 8:35). To surrender our lives fully to Christ, means that I can and may serve him as the person he created me to be and also find the true purpose of why I am who I am,   and why I live where I live my life.

We are called to follow Jesus in this life.  In your life! 

Wherever your life takes you.

And we follow Jesus not only to be redeemed and one day go to heaven. No, we follow Jesus because it’s worth it.   It is worth to lay down our lives because we share in the benefits of the Gospel.

It is worth so much, that some are willing to die for their relationship with each other, with the Body of Christ, and for their personal relationship with Christ!

What are we willing to do!