Pastor Connect 2008

A Passionate Passion for Souls

Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) poured out her life in sacrificial service for the kingdom of Christ as a missionary in India. She founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a haven for homeless children, especially the young girls she helped escape from temple prostitution. She served in India for 56 years, never taking one furlough. Her passion for souls serves as a model for us, as expressed in these lines: Oh for a passionate passion for souls.
Oh for a pity that yearns!
Oh for the love that loves unto death,
Oh for the fire that burns!
Oh for the pure prayer-power that prevails ...

A Passion for the Cross

The greatest obstacle to God's pursuit of His glory and to man's desire for joy is one and the same: sin. When sin entered the world through Adam's disobedience, it appeared that Satan had trumped God. The imago Dei (image of God) in man was marred. The light of God's glory on earth was darkened. Life and joy were traded for misery and death. All of Scripture and all of history have been about God undoing sin and restoring the world. The cross stands at the center of His work; there, the glory and righteousness of ...

Habits of Holiness

Spiritual leaders do not have an easier path to holiness than everyone else. Spiritual growth doesn’t come more easily just because I’m a pastor. Like all believers, spiritual leaders are responsible to obey the command to grow: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18). The word grow is in the present tense with an indicative mood. That simply means that we are commanded to be continually growing in the grace and knowledge of ...

Dealing with Sin

One of the greatest Old Testament heroes was David, “a man after God’s own heart.” David was a shepherd boy turned king, and has been called the “sweet singer of Israel” because of his many songs, recorded in the Book of Psalms.

Despite David’s heart for God, he was a sinner. One afternoon while walking on his balcony, David saw a woman bathing. Inflamed with lust, he took Bathsheba for himself, even though he knew she was married. When he later learned that Bathsheba was pregnant, he tried to trick her husband, Uriah, into sleeping with her, in ...

You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody

The legendary folk/rock/pop singer Bob Dylan sang: You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed;
You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.^[1] Believe it or not, that’s pretty good theology! The apostle Paul even writes ...

Spiritual Horticulture

The Bible frequently uses horticultural metaphors to help us understand the Christian life:

• The New Testament writers speak of our sowing and reaping (Gal. 6:7-9; 2 Cor. 9:6).
• Believers in Christ are compared to branches that must abide in the vine and bear fruit (Jn. 15:1-8).
• Evangelism is described as planting and watering (1 Cor. 3:6).
• According to Paul, we need to be rooted in love (Eph. 3:17) and rooted in Christ (Col. 2:7).
• We are to bear the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22; Eph. 5:9), the fruit of righteousness (Heb ...

Suffering Well

Everyone suffers, but some suffer poorly and some suffer well. The difference is not in the degree of suffering, because some suffer relatively little yet are miserable, while others suffer greatly yet are full of joy. Consider the contrast between two men who suffered. Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, lived from 1489–1556. In 1553 Roman Catholic Queen Mary I arrested and later burned him at the stake for not renouncing his beliefs. The account of his martyrdom powerfully illustrates the degree of peace and joy one can have in the worst afflictions imaginable:

Soon an iron ...

Climbing Down for the Bottom

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:4–8) The Mess The men’s dressing room was ...

The Greatest Servant

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:5-8, ESV)  Water is scarce in the Sudan, and the African people have to dig deep wells in order to find it. These are not your typical wells ...

Less Is More: Thoughts on Slowing Down

In his thought-provoking book In Praise of Slowness, journalist Carl Honore comments on the challenges of our fast-paced culture. He writes:

Speed has helped to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating. Who wants to live in a world without Internet or jet travel? The problem is that our love of speed, our obsession with doing more and more in less and less time, has gone too far; it has turned into an addiction, a kind of idolatry. Even when speed starts to backfire, we invoke the go-faster gospel. Falling behind at work? Get a quicker Internet ...

The Culture of the Self

We live in the culture of the “self.”  Both Christian and secular self-help books flood our bookstores. A Google search on the word turned up 476 million sites. Probably more than any other culture in the world’s history, the American culture and care of the self flourishes, with more diets, gyms, entertainment, and concern about defining one’s own identity. For selves that are sick, the United States offers half the world’s clinical psychologists, up from 12,000 in 1968 to 42,000 in 1990, when no other nation at that time had more than 400.[1] That ...