John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement of the 1700’s, made a statement that has cut me to the quick and continues to provide wisdom for my life. He said, “Do not seek a ministry, anticipate the fruit of a disciplined life.”
Personal disciplines are part of the restraints that every person should have in their walk with God. They are part of what keeps us on the path of God. Daily prayer and Bible study, along with Scripture memorization and meditation are the basics. Tithing and fasting can also be added to those things, which are a regular part of one’s Christian experience. Even the time one gets up in the morning and the time one goes to bed at night can be part of the disciplines that are opening the door, even now, to ministry opportunities.
Ordering one’s life using the Biblical guidelines spelled out in Scripture guarantees favor, blessings, provisions and benefits from God. Those who don’t have a vision for godly living will cast off restraints, even justify It with a noble-sounding theology. What they are really doing is living willfully, and as a result, they will eat the fruit of their own will. But he who puts his life under the restraints of Biblically based disciplines will eat the fruit of God’s will.
Cornelius, in Acts 10, was unsaved but feared God with his household, prayed always and gave alms. These Biblical restraints he defined for his life caused an angel to show up at his doorstep and give him information that would eventually lead to his salvation and that of his entire household and to their being filled with God’s Spirit.
A widened ministry will have no solidarity without depth of character. This comes through ordering our lives under God’s direction and following Biblical guidelines, if we take into our own hands a commitment to widen ministry without also deepening our character through Godly restraints we will fall flat. John Wesley’s life proved that this is so. For fifty-four of his eighty-eight years, he preached fifteen sermons a week beginning at five o’clock in the morning. He traveled over 250,000 miles in all kinds of weather to get it all done. This is a widened ministry. But consider the disciplines to which a man such as this would have to give himself, consider the restraints as he set his eyes on the vision God had given him. What disciplines would it take to read 1,200 volumes on many subjects, or write grammars of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and English, or write, revise, and edit a library of fifty volumes, or write and publish a four-volume commentary on the whole Bible, or compile a dictionary of the English language, a comprehensive history of England and Rome, a book on electricity, a guide on medicine for the common people, and six volumes of church music?
Don’t seek a ministry, anticipate the fruit of a disciplined life.
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