Thursday, May 16, 2013

A Good and Faithful Servant

Finals week is a type of heaven. The person who thinks their works have nothing to do with their eternal reward have no concept for a "well done, good and faithful servant...enter into the joy of your master" (Matt 25:23). Heaven is going to be so much sweeter when we enjoy it after the strain, the heartache, and the endless toil. Yes, God's grace is the sole basis for our salvation and our righteous deeds. And yes, we do work; we work very hard.

What is that sweet rest at the end of a long day (or semester) if it is not a picture of our eternal rest? What is that pay check for a job well done if it's not a type of our heavenly reward? Woe to the man who disregards the mindset of working hard for a heavenly blessing in fear of legalism. He may well find himself becoming a lazy and unfaithful servant. May we rather thank God for his faithfulness in giving us the desire and the ability to serve him in the righteousness he provides.

"For it was granted [the Church] to clothe herself with fine linen...and the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints" (Rev 19:8).

Monday, May 13, 2013

A Parent's Ministry


Child raising should never be seen as a less-important calling for men or women. Raising up a godly family should be seen as one of the highest callings of your life. Coleman’s book The Master Plan of Evangelism helps to demonstrate that a heavy investment in a few can go a long way in multiplying the kingdom of God. Why not make ‘the few’ your own children? Why not make the people you spend so much time teaching, preparing, and equipping for further kingdom ministry the people who are already living under your own roof? Psalm 127:4 supports this thinking: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” We are fighting a war and children are the arrows in the hands of parents. When a woman decides to become a mother and to put most of her time and energy in that vocation, she is not choosing the easy life or the life of peace. Rather she’s choosing to be engaged in war. She’s choosing to shape and fashion effective arrows that will pierce into the darkness of this world with the blazing heat of the gospel. But notice that the Psalmist refers to them as “the children of one’s youth.” This hits another issue. We live in a culture and an age which asks a young men and women aspiring to be parents questions like: ‘Why don’t you just wait a few years before having children? You’ll be ready when you’re older. Why don’t you enjoy life while you’re still young? You can have children later.’ While it may sometimes be wise to wait to have kids, this verse rules out the mindset that it is always wiser to wait to have children until you’re older. In fact, I there can be much wisdom in starting such an important venture such as child-raising early on. Just as the youth of a warrior helps him to fight with more vigor, so the youth of a parent is potential for more energy to be poured out into the struggle of raising children. 

Perhaps one thing that keeps us from seeing the value of parenting is that the fruit is not immediately evident. Isn’t it wiser to spend most of your time evangelizing the lost and doing ‘more important’ works of ministry? But this is the reasoning that Coleman pushes against in his book. He describes Jesus-like discipleship investment as “slow, tedious, painful, and probably unnoticed by people at first, but the end result will be glorious, even if we don’t live to see it...really it is a question of which generation we are living for” (32). Parents may not live to see it, but that doesn’t mean that their investment wasn’t worth it. The argument may be made that many people raised in Christian homes end up abandoning the faith, but even Jesus in his own ministry had a Judas. Our discipleship count will never be %100 . . . so maybe you should have more than one kid. :)