Launch Your Ministry Chapter 6 of 27
<-Chapter 5 Chapter 7-> Return to FulltextThe Purpose for Ministry
Condensed Version (Completed)
We looked at the fact that you need not only the Lord Jesus, but also the work of the Holy Spirit, and then ultimately the work of the Father.
Now I want to look at everything that you need to do ministry. And to make it clear I would like to illustrate it with an example.
Remember that ministry means serving others. God wants to do things in the life of every human being. He wants to pour out His blessing on every single person.
There are folks who do not know the Lord. And there are young believers who do not know Him well enough to go to Him directly to get what they need.
So God needs to use somebody else to pour His blessing into that person. Who is that someone else? That's right, it is you. You are the one that God will use to bless this person.
Definition of Ministry
God will pour into you, and you in turn will pour into that person. That is all that is ministry involves. Ministry is receiving from God, taking what you have received, and pouring it out to other people.
I want to look at exactly what you need in order to be used by God to bless other people.
The Spirit and the Word
There are two main tools that you must make use of, to be used by God to do the work of the ministry.
The first one is the Bible, also called the Scriptures or simply The Word. God has also given us something else. He has given us His Holy Spirit. We usually refer to the Holy Spirit simply as the Spirit.
You need nothing more than these two in order to do the work of the ministry and to do it well. That might sound somewhat simplistic, but there is more to the Spirit and the Word than we realize.
Before you can use the Word you need to know it. And how do you learn to know the Word of God? You could start by reading it.
The Bible as a Jungle
I like to picture the Bible as being a wild jungle, like say the Amazon jungle, where there is tropical growth everywhere. As you walk through it you see every kind of plant and tree scattered everywhere.
If you were to walk through a jungle you might see a plant in one place, and then as you walk further you could see the same plant again somewhere else.
You could spend a lifetime trying to study all the plants in the jungle until you understand them all. But what if someone who knows a bit about botany or biology has gone ahead of you and studied the plants?
He could tell you what a plant is called, all of its characteristics, and where you can find it in the jungle. Now you can take a guidebook with you into the jungle, and when you see something, you can look it up in the book and identify it.
The Bible is just like that; it is a garden of truth. If you try to learn what is in it by just reading it, you could spend the rest of your life and still not understand it fully.
By making use of those whom God raises up to be teachers, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort. But it takes more than knowledge to make full use of the Bible. You also need experience.
Theory and Experience
You need to live what is taught in the Bible before you can understand it. You may remember reading something in the Bible but you did not fully understand what it meant.
Once you face problems, do something you regret, or accidentally do the right thing, you suddenly understand what that Scripture meant.
You must have both theoretical knowledge and experimental knowledge (both theory and practice). Together these become experiential knowledge.
The Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit
We looked earlier at the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. But there is another aspect of the Holy Spirit as well, which the Bible calls the Fruit of the Spirit.
There are nine gifts and nine fruits, and both are aspects of the Holy Spirit that we need to learn and use.
As we combine our knowledge of the Scriptures, in both theory and practice, with the work of the Spirit, God can use us to minister to other people.
Let's look at how to develop each of these, starting with the Holy Spirit first.
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