Love: Our Responsibility in Ministry

I want to now focus on another aspect of true ministry. Our responsibility. Many times we will accept God’s mercy, but will we accept that He has charged us with showing the same mercy to others? After all, we are His children; his representatives. This would stand to reason that we should be just as He is. He wants us to do that for one another. Every now and then, God will come and put a life in our hands and give us a choice. When we know someone’s sin, we have their lives in our hands and we can either give them a new start or accuse them. We can stone them or let them live. God trusts us to see our brother’s nakedness and cover them because we really want to reveal Him in the situation. God wants to be glorified through us revealing His heart of compassion in a life when we know the worst about a person. We can help people to see that although they have done so much wrong, God still loves them. He can reveal this through us but only if we allow Him to. Remember we are talking about real ministry. As a leader God has placed people in my discernment. He has allowed me to know things about people but when I deal with them I consider myself. I am not naive to their sin of the past or even their sin of the present but I consider myself. I always consider the following scripture.

Galatians 6:1-2

1. Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

2. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

When a brother or sister has sinned but still finds their way to the church, we have to take that into consideration. A person may have sinned Saturday night but if they have enough drive to come to church Sunday, can we not show mercy? Something within them is driving them to walk with us even in their wrong. They may feel like a hypocrite or may appear to be one but the fact is there is something tugging at their heart and this should cause us to keep walking with them and be merciful. This is what Jesus did with the disciples. Not only did He know that they didn’t believe Him but He also knew they would betray, deny and forsake Him in His worst hour. But in all of that He also recognized a conviction in them that kept them walking with Him for three and a half years. The disciples walked away from everything to follow Jesus and He never forgot that. He depended on the good that was in them. This is true ministry; the Jesus ministry of the Scriptures. It is not that a minister is naive to a person’s negative ways but that he or she recognizes that even in sin, there are ones that are still being drawn and reconciled to God by the power of the Word. If a minister really loves people, he or she will focus on what keeps driving them to gravitate to God. This is one thing that we must reconcile with. People already know when they are wrong. The lady accused of adultery knew she was guilty and she knew she was deserving of death according to the Law of Moses. She did not need Jesus to tell her of her wrong, she needed Him to love her and wipe away her past. God has done this time and time again in our lives. He has shut the mouths of our accusers and given us a chance to repent. When we repented, God took our sin, balled it up and threw it into the sea of forgetfulness. This is not to say that we should take His kindness for weakness but He is trusting that His love will draw us.

Jeremiah 31:3

The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.

Now God expects us to follow His example. He has given us mercy so that we can give it to others. He has shown us love so that we would know how to love. He has kept our secrets, now can we keep one another’s? Love is the best minister. God wants us to love a person enough to focus on the good in them in spite of their downfalls. After a while, the good in that person will begin to outweigh the bad. When we love a person through their sin until they change, we have revealed the mind of God in their lives. That is true ministry.

I love you all and you are constantly in my prayers.

God Bless You,

Apostle Mike