Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox. Proverbs 14:4
The picture here is of a barn or a holding area for oxen, cattle, livestock, etc. And if there are no livestock being kept there, of course the feeding containers and the area will be clean. It will be easy to handle. No mess. No cleanup.
But – if you want to be productive as a farmer – you need an ox. You will increase your production and your effectiveness versus trying to just do it by hand. If you want to have success, you must be willing to deal with the problems.
The same is true for ministry. Effective ministry is messy.
Ministry – service – involves getting deeply connected in the lives of others. And no one’s life is perfect. No one’s life is completely clean and free of problems.
If you serve others, you will get dirty.
And when we start to serve other people and minister to them, we find out that the trough will not stay clean. We find out that they have marriage problems. We find out that their child is having a problem in school or at home. We find out that there’s a major financial problem impacting their family. Or there is a sickness that is difficult on the whole family. Or there is gossip about them that is causing pain and anger. We find out that people are hurting emotionally, physically.
Ministry is messy.
The alternative is that we would just close the doors, stop inviting, stop doing outreach, stop serving. We have a choice to just keep everything nice and clean and calm in our lives.
But that’s not what Jesus did.
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. Mark 10:45
Jesus came to serve – to minister – and it was messy! He got deeply involved in people’s lives. He spent hot days and long nights with His disciples, traveling from one place to another, ministering and preaching the gospel of salvation. He dealt with people who had serious problems in their life, and He had compassion on them. He wept over the city of Jerusalem! He wept when Lazarus died!
If you and I truly love people and get involved in their lives, it will affect us as well. Serving people well in the Lord requires us to have a relationship with those people. And when you have a relationship with someone, when they hurt, you hurt.
Ministry is messy. But it’s the only way to achieve the increase of changed lives.
O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded; You are stronger than I, and have prevailed. I am in derision daily; Everyone mocks me.
Jeremiah 20:7
Jeremiah has spent a great part of his life serving God as a prophet. He had been faithful to do what the Lord had asked him to do. He had worked hard. He had prayed hard. He waited for the blessing of a fruitful ministry and great results. But the results never came. Jeremiah had a ministry reality check.
What do you do when your best ideas and the vision that you had for your ministry does not become a reality?
It’s a moment called “reality check”.
It’s a difficult place to be. And it’s where Jeremiah was. And it led him to consider resignation.
Resignation
Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him, Nor speak anymore in His name.”
Jeremiah 20:9
Jeremiah decided that he had had enough. He made the decision to quit the ministry. Lord, I cannot do this anymore. I’ve done my best and no one will follow me. I put all of my time into discipling him or her and now they disappear. I’ve been faithful in my ministry but now people are gossiping about me and laughing at me. I quit.
Have you ever felt that way?
This moment of frustration is where the church loses many good leaders.
During a season of reality check many people decide to quit. I’ve been a pastor for 10 years and in that decade I have seen people give up and walk away from the calling that God placed on their life. But in those 10 years I have also watched people respond in a different way to a reality check. I have watched people respond the way Jeremiah responded.
Recommit
But His word was in my heart like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, And I could not.
Jeremiah 20:9
I love this verse. This verse gives me chills because it is so powerful – it is so pregnant with truth and commitment! Jeremiah comes to the realization that he wanted to quit – everything in his body, everything in his soul wanted to quit but HE COULD NOT QUIT.
There was something deeper than the disappointment. There was something more powerful than the frustration. There was a driving force in Jeremiah’s life that caused him to recommit to the ministry. The gospel, the good news of Jesus was bigger than any hardship he faced.
Jeremiah learned what Paul also learned…
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
2 Corinthians 5:14
The love of Christ – the gospel – compels us. It holds us together, it moves us forward, it gives us motivation in times of frustration. We are motivated by the fact that Jesus died for all because all needed a Savior – that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God – and that because He has saved us we do not live for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again.
That overwhelming truth is what was burning in the heart of Jeremiah – it was shut up in his bones – it was a part of his very being. For Jeremiah, for Paul, for me, and for all of us – quitting the ministry is not an option. We have a higher purpose than ourselves. We have a higher calling than our own comfort. The gospel of Jesus Christ compels us to recommit.
In a republic like America, laws are downstream from culture. Politics is somewhere in the middle. In other words, what the culture as a whole is valuing and promoting will make its way into politics and eventually into policy and law.
So, the pulpits trying to impact the law or change the mind of politicians is, in my opinion, too little too late. They key is to influence idea formation. Our culture is the beachhead of ideas. And the pulpit, at it’s most effective, speaks to culture as well as individuals.
Historically, in America and other countries, the pulpit has shaped the cultural conversation by lifting up truth for consideration. Truth produces shifts in thinking. Shifts in thinking result in cultural transformation. And a transformed culture demands certain realities, among them policy and law.
Leaders take dreams and make them reality. Leaders initiate something when there is nothing. Leaders create what is.
And doing that for the Kingdom of God is the greatest work in the world.
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?
Romans 10:14
A preacher! A leader! Someone to plant a church! Someone to visit in the streets! Someone to get up and share the gospel!
God’s plan is, and always has been, a leader.
I was saved at 11 years old because an evangelist named Junior Hill came to my church and preached the gospel. A leader. And I heard the gospel in a church service – a church started by a church planter named Bill Monroe – my pastor. A leader.
Leaders make things happen for the glory of God. Leaders initiate.
John F. Kennedy said, “Things don’t just happen. Things are made to happen.”
The question to ask ourselves is, “what will I make happen today?”
For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
The Bible defines spiritual mature people as those who have been putting into practice the Word of God and therefore have developed the ability to discern good from evil.
Spiritual maturity is not a reflection of knowledge depth.
Spiritual maturity is the ability to look at people, circumstances, and cultural constructs and decide whether those things are rooted in the goodness of God or the wickedness of Satan.
The spiritually mature people that I know are able to dissect and discern what is happening in our world today. They have the ability to categorize and compartmentalize the news of the day. They see the way things really are. In other words, their worldview is reality.
The danger comes when we have people leading our churches, schools, institutions, and government who lack this ability of discernment. In their confusion and lack of insight, they drive us further into darkness.
The way of the wicked is like darkness; They do not know what makes them stumble.
Proverbs 4:19
Can you see this factor at play around you? Where do you see those who discern good from evil, and those who cannot?
I distinctly remember the season when I first encountered the term hate speech. It was while I was in high school in the late 1990s. The tragic death of college student Matthew Shepard was dominating the news in late 1998. And I recall hearing on the news broadcasts and in conversations with friends the novel idea that “hate speech” should and could be regulated and punishable by law. I felt a visceral violation as an American in reaction to this concept. I had been taught growing up, and indeed worked out myself, the importance of freedom of speech as given in the first amendment to the constitution.
“Congress shall make no law…..abridging the freedom of speech”. In other words as an American we have the freedom to say anything that we want to say. Full stop. No further discussion needed. I am free to speak whatever words I choose to speak in whatever way I choose to speak them. We also understand that historically there are caveats to this freedom whether wrong or right. You cannot threaten the life of the President, you can’t say bomb on an airplane, and you cannot libel someone without threat of a lawsuit. And while those things are perhaps unconstitutional, they are very limited in scope and, quite frankly, anomalies for the average American.
But “hate speech” was different.
For the government to be able to make a law abridging the freedom of speech by labeling it as a crime seemed to me to be a sinister violation of my liberty. The Matthew Shepard case eventually had an impact on U.S. law, allowing for prosecution of certain types of speech deemed as potentially inciting violence (notwithstanding the fact that many questions remain about the actual motive of the killing).
The idea that some speech can be regulated by law is now an accepted fact across the board in America. The frog has been in the boiling water for a few decades now….
Fast forward to 2023. There’s now a new attack on the first amendment that is predicated on the logic of hate speech: “disinformation”. I don’t have any problem with the label of disinformation. Pretty sure it’s just another way to categorize lies (or “untruths” as the kids like to say). I have a problem when the government tries to define what speech qualifies as disinformation, and subsequently polices and shuts down those it deems are spreading such lies.
Let the 1990s be a warning to the 2020s.
If the idea of disinformation is ever enshrined in law similar to hate speech – if our government ever has the ability to identify and punish speech that it deems untruthful – then a new era of persecution for American churches will begin.
With this in mind, it only makes sense for believers to stand up for the right of everyone to say what they choose. That freedom allows that the lines of gospel communication – to a culture that desperately needs it – will remain open.
