Our Present and Future Hope

 

Krista, Jadyn, and I have been reading Everyday Gospel by Paul Tripp this year.

The daily devotionals have been a help in thinking about each daily reading through the Gospel.

Part of today's reading is Exodus 33:14 - 16.

And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, ‘If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight,  I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct,  I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

Moses states that he would not go to the Promised Land if the Lord was not with him.  Tripp writes, "Moses understands that there is no hope for Israel and no reason for Israel to travel further if God doesn't go with them."

"[God] will go with us wherever we go and will do for us what we have no power to do for ourselves—not because we deserve it, but because he is generous in love and mercy.  It really is true that he is everything we need."

Today's Bible reading and devotional, the Psalm passage I preached on January 12, and what keeps coming up in Trinity's Daniel series is that our hope needs to be in the Lord.

Moses needed God more than the Promised Land.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego needed God more than the king's approval.
Daniel needed God more than the safety given by this world.
Psalm 118:8 and 9 say, "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.  It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes."

This hope in the LORD should affect how I pray, spend my time, interact with others, and do everything else in my life.

This Friday (1/31), I will be posting a summary of two 9Marks Church Questions books
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Teaching and Serving Pt 2

In this week's class, most of our time was spent discussing the importance of approachability and loving honesty.  Part of this discussion was how to handle criticism. 

Preference criticism - example "You should be more like ________."

Improvement criticism - example criticism that might make your discipleship better.

False teaching criticism, examples are found in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John.

Very Basic Definition of Discipleship:  HELPING someone else FOLLOW Jesus.

Within this definition, approachability and honesty are very important.

Candor from Lead by Paul Tripp

The following is a prayer and some quotes from chapter 8 of Lead.

Lord, God, Three in One, the one who said it was not good that Adam was alone, 

Thank you for making us relational beings.  You want me to be comforted, warned, encouraged, rebuked, and instructed by others.  May my willingness to confess and share struggles not only be a help to me but also an encouragement to others. 

God, make me aware of my own heart struggles and areas of weakness. 

I pray that

pride of personal maturity,

the pursuit for the respect of others,

functional Gospel doubt,

ability to minimize sin, and 

identity in ministry

will not silence me.

Help me and those I lead with to lead and live, knowing the dark, despicable, destructive, and dishonoring nature of sin.  May we never attempt to rationalize sin and make it look o.k. 

I pray that the fear of a lost leadership position will never be great than the fear of giving sin room to do its evil work in my life.   

God, I want my life and my ministry to be about you and your glory!!! 

Amen!

Some quotes to consider

An isolated, independent, separated, and self-hiding Christian life is alien to the Christianity of the New Testament. (148) 

No one is so spiritually mature that he is free from a need for the comfort, warnings, encouragement, rebuke, instruction, and insight of others.  (148) 

A spiritually healthy leadership community is spiritually healthy when it is a safe place for struggling leaders to speak with candor and hope.  (149) 

"The ministry leaders I regularly meet with often share a personal experience, but they leave out how they themselves factor into it.  They talk about what happened and what other people did and said, but they give little sense of their own heart struggle as it was all going on.  (150) 

It is quite possible to be committed to leading robust gospel ministries and yet be denying the same gospel in your leadership community.  (152) 

A gospel-shaped leadership community will be a confessional community, where leader honesty is not only a constant protection but encourages a deeper and deeper dependency on God.  (152) 

It is in the soil of the devastation and humiliation of confession that servant leaders grow.  (153)

What silences us?

1.  Pride of personal maturity

2.  Ability to minimize sin

3.  Must have the respect of others

4.  Identity in ministry

5.  Functional Gospel doubt

Every leadership community needs to pray together for grace to see sin as dark, despicable, destructive, and dishonoring to God as it actually is.  Every leadership community needs to regularly cry out for help, admitting that sin doesn't always look sinful.  (155)

If I have [the leadership community] in the appropriate place in my heart, I will see them as God-given tools of grace and be free to be candid with them about my real issues of heart and life.  (155)

The Gospel promises us that the good things God calls us to will produce good in our lives, even if that good looks different from what we hoped for.  (157)

Do we fear the loss of leadership position more than we fear giving sin room to do its evil work in our hearts and lives?  (157)

Next week (January 2) is an often-missed part of discipleship - the role of elders, deacons, deaconesses, and the congregation in discipleship. 
Discipleship is NOT a solo project.  Discipleship is a community project.