Quotes about Ministry

God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn't just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and perfect the church. Now He calls us to choose suffering. That is, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him on the Calvary road and deny ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of ministering to the church and presenting His sufferings to the world.

Tell people the good news from a heart of love and a life of service.

The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy.

There is an infinite difference between the pastor whose heart is set on being a professional and the pastor whose heart is set on being the aroma of Christ, the fragrance of death to some and eternal life to others (2 Cor. 2:15—16).

Prayer is the form of faith that connects us today with the grace that will make us adequate for tomorrow's ministry.

Once, while visiting the continent, Spurgeon was asked about the secret of his ministry. After a moment s pause Mr. Spurgeon said, "My people pray for me.

A thousand sorrows prepares a man to preach.

The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.

I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry.

After escaping from Paris and finally leaving France entirely, Calvin spent his exile in Basel, Switzerland, between 1534 and 1536. To redeem the time, "he devoted himself to the study of Hebrew." (Imagine such a thing! Would any pastor today, exiled from his church and country, and living in mortal danger, study Hebrew? What has become of the vision of ministry that such a thing seems unthinkable today?)

Not to pursue our joy in ministry is not to pursue the profit of our people...Begrudging service does not qualify as genuine love.

Jesus was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18—20) and "increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52) and was perfectly obedient and sinless in all his life and ministry, all the way to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5—8; Heb. 4:15)—in order to destroy the works of the Devil—to take away sin.