The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Pastor

I whole-heartedly agree that the best thing you can do for your pastor(s) / elders is pray for them. This is a response to http://www.theblazingcenter.com/2012/02/the-best-thing-you-can-do-for-your-pastor.html
Let me state why I am especially passionate about being upheld in prayer today.

God is a God of means. He honors us by using us and making us the channel by which he will accomplish lasting goals. “The” Paul says to Timothy: 1Ti 4:16 “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

Which along with John 21:17 "Feed my sheep.” Are life verses for me.

The means by which sheep are kept alive is by being led to green pasture by a shepherd. The means by which Timothy would be saved (sanctified which MUST proceed being glorified) was to watch his life and his doctrine and persevere in them. The means by which his hearers would be saved… (sanctified which MUST proceed being glorified) was again Timothy’s perseverance in a pure life and doctrine.

Praying for a Pastor’s perseverance in these, puts a tool in God’s hand by which He ensures the progress of many towards our heavenly home. Notice Paul says, ”you will save” When I preach and teach and counsel and lead an individual to Christ, biblically speaking, I am saving them, sanctifying them. Just like grass and water may save a sheep. I am being used to save, to sanctify them. What a terrifying responsibility, that keeps me from sloth and pursuing ease. What a high, noble, joyous privilege that I would not trade for ANYTHING!!!

Thank-you for your prayers. They are the means by which I can continue to be a means to lasting joy for you.

The Risks of Not Loving

C. S. Lewis on the Danger of Love
By Jonathan Parnell | Feb 14, 2012 12:00 pm


If you were having a cup of tea with C. S. Lewis on Valentine's Day, and you asked him sincerely, "Mr. Lewis, am I better not to love because it's so risky?" — he might say something like this:

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that his teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.


The Four Loves, (New York, Harcourt, 1960), Kindle Location 1541.