Pure Church

C. Michael Patton:

Friends (and especially young zealous husbands or soon to be husbands), don’t make the mistake of having your passion for ministry end your marriage. Your first ministry is your marriage. If you don’t get that, you are not qualified for ministry. In the spirit of Priscilla: Do you not think that God is powerful enough to call you both into ministry or do you think he only has enough power to call one of you? If so, then he is not a God worth your time anyway. In short, if God does not call your wife, he is not calling you. Period.

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For several years at Westminster Chapel, Lloyd-Jones chaired a monthly Ministry Fraternal with pastors and seminarians from around London. Each meeting featured discussion, a presentation, and a lot of fellowship and counsel. On one occasion, the topic turned to depression in the ministry. Here is Lloyd-Jones' counsel to the group gathered that day (from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quoted in The Fight of Faith, vol. 2 of Murray's biography, p. 705-6):

I can assure that depression in the ministry is not a problem of temperament. Men of every conceivable temperament get this trouble--the feeling that everything is on top of us. The one possible exception is the phlegmatic type who is not concerned about anything. He is so bucolic, ox-like, that he is not likely to feel a call to the ministry! Men in the ministry are sensitive men. I have met few others. The way to approach this problem is not along lines of temperament--that is incidental.

The big thing is not to start with the problem. Start with the question, what is your calling? Why are you in the ministry? What is the object of the ministry? Is the church mine? Why am I troubled? Am I concerned about my reputation? Why am I hurt? ... Our reactions are too often due to a wrong view of our calling. Remember Paul: "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self" (1 Cor. 4:3). I have found this to be the answer so many times. Paul had to go through it all. In Corinth men were praised more than Paul who were not worthy to shine his boots. Paul's concept of the ministry lay in his calling to be faithful. We should not make it a personal issue.

Isolate, then, your calling. Get that right. The antagonism we encounter is generally against the calling and most of our problems arise because we get immersed in day-to-day problems and forget what we are. "Should such a man as I flee?" (Neh. 6:11). Nehemiah was talking about his calling. That is the way to look at it. Certain things then become unthinkable and you will not hand in your resignation.

Let us remember who we are. We haven't entered a profession. We are servants of the living God!

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus, To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord" (2 Tim. 1:1-3)

Two radical things from these opening lines:

1. Paul was certain that his apostleship was "by the will of God." He knew He was sent by Jesus. He knew it. No, I mean he knew it! It's so characteristic of his letters that it's almost a calling card, a signature for the apostle. He was so certain of this call from God that he defends it in Galatians 1-2. The great apostle Paul. How much of his greatness stemmed from this soul-deep certainty that he was sent by Jesus in accord with the Father's will? How much of our weakness stems from not having this certainty of God's calling?

2. Here is a serious monotheist mentioning God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord in the same breath! We hardly think anything of it. But for a first century Jew, asserting the Lordship of Jesus in the same breath as the Father was a radical disclosure of who God is. To get a modern-day comparable, one might think of Muslim reactions to Trinitarianism. How radical it is for a Muslim to go from tenacious monotheism to Trinitarianism. How radical it was for Paul to come to this knowledge of God. It is astounding that a person's centuries old view of God could be changed in an instant! How kind of the Savior to disclose Who God is to babes.