Our Sanctification is a Community Project

The following is an excerpt from Paul David Tripp's excellent book, "Dangerous Calling." Though the book is written primarily for pastors, the following is equally applicable to the rest of the flock.

I thought this too good and valuable to not pass along to others:

I was raised in the "Jesus and me" privatized, individualized Christianity of the fundamentalism of the '60s and '70s. The closest our church got to an actual, functioning, ministry-oriented body of Christ was a rare pastoral visit and the Wednesday night prayer meeting. No one knew my father and mother - I mean, really knew them. No one had a clue what was going on in our home. No one helped my father to see through the blindness that allowed him to live a double life of skilled deception and duplicity. No one knew how troubled my mother was beneath her encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture. No one knew. We were a Christian family in active participation in a vibrant church, but what we were involved in lacked one of the primary and essential ingredients of healthy New Testament Christianity: a trained, mobilized, and functioning body of Christ. It was Christianity devoid of Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, and Hebrews 3:12-13.

For much of my Christian life and a portion of my ministry, I had no idea that my walk with God was a community project. I had no idea that the Christianity of the New Testament is distinctly relational, from beginning to end. I understood none of the dangers inherent in attempting to live the Christian life on my own. I had no awareness of the blinding power of sin. I had no idea that I was living outside of God's normal means of sightedness, encouragement, conviction, strength, and growth. I had no idea how much consumerism and how little participation marked the body of Christ. I had no idea of the importance of the private ministry of the Word to the health of the believer. I had no idea.

I have now come to understand that I need others in my life. I know that I need to commit myself to living in intentionally intrusive, Christ-centered, grace-driven, redemptive community. I now know it's my job to seek this community out, to invite people to interrupt my private conversation, and to say things to me that I couldn't or wouldn't say to myself. I have realized how much I need warning, encouragement, rebuke, correction, protection, grace, and love. I now see myself as connected to others, not because I have made the choice, but because of the wise design of the One who is the Head of the body, the Lord Jesus Christ. I cannot allow myself to think that I am smarter than Him. I cannot allow myself to thing that I am stronger than I am. I cannot assign to myself a level of maturity that I do not have. I cannot begin to believe that I am able to live outside of God's normal means of spiritual growth and be okay. I cannot allow the level of my spiritual health to be defined by my ministry experience and success, or by my theological knowledge. I cannot let myself think that my marriage can be healthy if I live in functional isolation from the body of Christ.

Since, as one who has remaining sin still inside of him, it is right to say that the greatest danger in my life exists inside of me and not outside of me, then wouldn't it also be the height of naivety or arrogance to think that I would be okay left to myself?

Having said all of this, it is my grief to say that individualized, privatized Christianity still lives in people who have forged a life that is live above or outside the body of Christ.

Simply put, sanctification is a community project. We hurt ourselves, our families, and others when we disobey (yes, you heard that right) Christ's command to regularly meet together for the purpose of stirring one another up by way of gospel-centered encouragement.

The body, with every part functioning properly as a unit (see Ephesians 4:16), is Christ's idea. So let us be humble enough to recognize and admit that He knows better, go against our feelings and propensities to isolate ourselves when the going gets tough, and actively seek out (yes, you must do it) a community of uncomfortable grace. This is how it works, whether we like it or not.

Dear reader, are you involved and integrated into such a community? It is not enough to show up on Sunday, download some facts, and then leave to go live out your own little life for the other 99% of the week.

May God grant us these kind of communities, where we are transformed together into the image of Christ, for His honor and glory in this world.

Rbac

Pray for Us - A Preacher's Plea

I love posting articles written by other preachers and pastors, because often I find them saying things I wish I could say to the flock, but out of false humility, fear they will think I am being selfish. But what George Whitefield, arguably one of the most powerful evangelists to ever trod this earth, writes here totally resounds with the heart of any faithful pastor and preacher.

If George Whitefield needed prayer as a minister of the gospel, how much more do the rest of us, who often feel insufficient for these things, need the constant and fervent prayers, supplications, and intercessions from their congregations, much the way Joshua needed the intercession of Moses, Aaron, and Hur when he was doing battle against the Amalekites? (Exodus 17)

The following is an excerpt by George Whitefield, taken from a devotional I purchased a couple years ago entitled, "Daily Readings", edited by Randall Pederson, to be read on January 2.

"Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you..." (2 Thessalonians 3:1)

You ought to pray for those whom the Holy Spirit has made overseers over you. This is what Saint Paul begs again and again of the churches to whom he writes...surely, if the great Saint Paul, that chosen vessel, that favorite of heaven, needed the most importunate prayers of his Christian converts, much more do the ordinary ministers of the gospel stand in need of the intercession of their respective flocks.

Much good is frequently withheld from many by reason of their neglecting to pray for their ministers, and which they would have received, had they prayed for them as they ought.

Not to mention, that people often complain of the want of diligent and faithful pastors. But how do they deserve good pastors, who will not earnestly pray to God for such? If we will not pray to the Lord of the harvest, can it be expected He will send forth laborers into His harvest? Besides, what ingratitude it is, not to pray for your ministers! For shall they watch and labor in the word and doctrine for you and your salvation, and shall you not pray for them in return?

Add to this, that praying for your ministers will be a manifest proof of your believing, that though Paul plant, and Apollos water, yet it is God alone who gives the increase. And you will also find it the best means you can use, to promote your own welfare; for God, in answer to your prayers, may impart a double portion of His Holy Spirit to them, whereby they will be qualified to deal out to you larger measures of knowledge in the spiritual things, and be enabled more skillfully to divide the word of truth.

Dear reader, please pray for your pastor regularly. Pray that he be near to Christ in sweet fellowship. Pray that he feed richly and often on the Word of God. Pray that he be a man of prayer, a man of holiness, a man of conviction, a man who fears God, a man filled with the Spirit, a man mighty in the Scriptures, a man faithful to the flock, a man who hates sin, a man who is humble, a man who loves his triune God, a man who loves the flock entrusted to him, a man who loves perishing sinners, a man who loves the glory of God, a man who loves his wife and family, a man who is filled with the Spirit, a man who has the Word of Christ abiding in him richly, a man who is used as a mighty vessel of God to draw Christ's wandering sheep to Himself.

I couldn't agree more heartily to Whitefield's plea for Christians to pray for their pastors.

Dear reader, would you please consider praying daily for your pastor(s)?

In Christ, and for His glory through the church, to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan