HERE is the nature of the Gospel.

            If a man is going to do a work, he is going to preach himself.  But if a man is alert that only God can do a work, then he is going to preach God, he is going to preach Christ. We have to understand that there is within us the natural tension to preach ourselves, to preach our agenda,  our concerns or our interests.  However, as ministers of Christ we cannot preach ourselves and have fruit. We must preach Christ. And who are we? We are ministers of Christ. What we find in this verse is the means by which we can remain empty of ourselves.  If I am motivated by servanthood then my whole objective of service is that I might connect you to Jesus.  You need Jesus. I am just the individual pointing the way. I have a lowly place of insignificance in terms of importance. I am not the important one, it is the Lord. He is the One;  we preach Christ, and we ourselves  servants for His sake. We need to understand our motives.  If I am motivated as a servant, then I have one need only: whatever it takes to connect someone to Jesus, that is my service. I do not need anything else to have a sense of satisfaction or purpose for my life.

Receiving and Reflecting Light

            “For God who commands the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6).   Paul starts with the first fundamental that it is “God who commandeth light to shine out of darkness.” What is he referring to? The six day creation when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, which He separated from the darkness.  God is the God of separating light from darkness.  God is a God of light.  This light gives us understanding and purpose. This light He has commanded to shine out of darkness, and has shined in our own hearts.   There is that reality then of being opened to and having received the light of God.  The first step of being a servant is that I have received the light. 

            Now notice the continuance of verse 6, “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”   The light comes in to be given out and the complete cycle is the light of God shining into our hearts and the process of that light reflecting through us to others.                                      God is light and He commands light to shine.  Does light shine by the work of man?  No, light shines by the work of God. It is God who commands the light to shine and the light shines. So this God who commands light to shine, what has He done? By the grace of God He has commanded light to shine unto me.  Light has come to me and I am enlightened.  I have not been enlightened to hold and benefit by it exclusively for myself.  The nature of light is that it is a continuous shining that never ceases. Its shining gives life. As soon as you block the light, as soon as you cover the light the shining stops. So the very nature of light is that it has to be received and reflected. So light enters in order that it might go out.

            Here is an illustration: God is not a flashlight. You cannot store up some of the light of God and stuff it inside a flashlight and turn it off and then when you desire, turn it on and shine a little light.  However, this control mechanism represents the way human beings tend to possess anything that they get from God. They collect it, they store it, reserve it and they dole it out very carefully, “ I do not want to waste my batteries. I do not want to use it up,” as if it is a deposit, a once forever deposit. But the light of God is totally different. What the light of God is like is a flashlight made up only of mirrors. It has a receiving mirror and a reflecting mirror and nothing else. For it to work, it has to first be receiving, the light has to be shining.  It can only reflect while it is receiving light and as soon as it stops receiving light, it stops reflecting light but it cannot store one bit of light at all.

            This difference is the difference between a spiritual work of God and a carnal work of man. Men store up light and dole it out in their own good time. But the light and the work of God is that which is ever shining and ever flowing. We have been called to one purpose, that we might receive the light and broadcast it simultaneously.

Broken Vessels Shine

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.”

            I have heard it preached on more than one occasion, that earthen vessels were cracked pots that can no longer hold water, they served as lanterns to shine light because or their large cracks.  Earthen vessels are a great place to put a candle because they let the light out; they are useful broken. The important thing to understand is that the vessel is not important, it is the vessel’s capacity to conduct light that is important.

            Ministry as servants of God happens not by our own strength or capacity, nor by the good that we can bring; ministry happens as we are conduits for God. God is going to be seen as God when that which is man is able to be seen as weak and insufficient.  God is deliberately looking for the most useful vessels on the earth.  Who are the most useful vessels on the earth? Ones that have achieved the greatest stature of success among men? No. God has chosen the weak, the cracked pots, the broken vessels, He has chosen the things that are nothing in order to confound the things that are something. That is the nature of the Gospel. God needs vessels who are weak in order for the light of the Gospel to shine clearly through.

Parenting As Ministers of God’s Light

            This relates to parenting which is no different than any other assignment by which our call is to bring the light of the Gospel and influence a life. A difference with parenting, however, is that it is a long term assignment in which we have a greater capacity to influence our children for the Gospel. Parenting is a more substantial ministry and parental ministry is the most significant ministry

of every believer who has children.

            What we find in Scripture is the understanding that spiritual leaders should be those who have substantive evidence of spiritual maturity in leading their own family. Why?  The role of leading a church is no different than the role of leading a family and the rule is simple:  ministry is learning how to be a conduit of the light of Christ in every circumstance and it starts at home and it is a great place and it is a significant place. If one cannot take care of his own house, how can he take care of the church of Jesus Christ? It is just not possible.

            We are servants of Jesus Christ and thus as parents, we are conduits of His Light to our children. Our objective is to shine the light of Christ into our children’s lives. Every day in the life of our homes we have a continuous opportunity by which this light may shed light through us on all kinds of circumstances and situations.  As ministers of Christ we have an opportunity to bring every situation into the light of Christ by our ministry of counsel to our children.

            What is important to understand is this: if I have my own ideas about what I am looking for, what am I going to be preaching to my children? I am going to be preaching myself. “I want you to..., It is important for me that you...,” when this occurs, I am interfering in the very ministry that I am called to have to my children.   I am putting my desires, my wants and my interests above God’s interests and I am serving myself, not my family.  This is a very serious risk parents struggle with in raising children.  Parents often attempt to live out their own lives through their children.  We must not have our own agenda, we are to be a conduit of the light of God in every circumstance. So we are on duty as servants to help bring hidden things to light. How do we do this?  We do this by being the first object of trouble in our home. We are first an example. In order to raise a godly heritage, we absolutely must first be the example. “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” 2 Corinthians 4:11

             Now let us look at verse 7,  “... that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.”  If I am a vessel of earth and the light of God is shining through me, when the light of God is shining through me somebody is going to say, “There is God!” They are not going to call your name. They are not going to say, “What a great parent you are!” They are going to see you and say, “I see God in them.” 

            Great biographies bring me tears because there I see the incredible weakness of man and the supernatural power of God coming through; the servant was nothing. It was God, He moves and we just stop and are awed by God. That is our glory. We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that God may get all the glory, the excellency of the power must be of God and not of ourselves.

            Verse 8 shows the occasion of ministry, “We are troubled on every side yet not distressed, we are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed.”  Verse 10 gives the key, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”

            Suddenly, we have moved from a theoretical study of light and now we have the practical application. How does light shine in me and through me?  We are given circumstances by which we must face our own demise happily and readily because we have the hope of resurrection life. We have such confidence in the good purpose and the good intention of God that when we face death itself we receive in it the hope of eternal life and so we die the death. All of these occasions of ministry (troubles and distresses, persecutions and forsakings), all of these things jeopardize what men value on earth.

            When my riches on the earth are in jeopardy and they are my hope, what do I do? I take action to save them, to preserve them and to protect them, to draw them to me and take some kind of preserving action. But, if I am God’s child, I look at the jeopardy and I say, “that is just a temporary thing and I have eternal life and if I die, I die, blessed be the name of the Lord.” All of a sudden right in the context of personal jeopardy, the light of the life, Christ, shines in me and my eye is set on resurrection. It shines through me and my behavior reflects resurrection.

How Do We Measure Up?

Parents fall into two categories. The first category is the natural parent and the natural parent wants to extend a big blanket of protection over his children to keep them from any and every hardship. Of course there are variations of this in practice, but the motivation of a parent to protect his children from harm is essentially based upon a very narrow view of life, “Life is only here and now on the earth, life can only be fulfilled here, happiness can only be found here, therefore, I have to do everything I can to preserve it because if I lose it I have no chance for hope or happiness.”                               Have you heard the story of the mother who in a short period of years gave birth to two handicapped children?  Somewhere in the course of time she lost both of them, leaving her with another child that was living. The first child was born with a severe type of retardation and there was like an 18 month period while the child lived with this severe retardation. As the child’s life was ending, this mother had become pregnant again and she was expecting another child who was discovered to also have an extremely rare genetic malady so that the child would not live when it was born. Now, in the course of time, the death of the two babies converged nearly at the same point so that the one baby died and the other baby was born and died. In a short period of time, the mother had the trauma of losing both children. She was in turmoil and struggle.

            Now here was a question on her mind. “What was the value and the purpose of these lives? One didn’t even have a chance to take a breath of life;  its created purpose was to die before it could even enjoy one breath. And my other child, “Why did God let it languish?  These are two cases God where You have created meaningless life and I don’t understand it.”  I believe somebody counseled her and said, “Just ask God to speak to you, to show you.” So she began to pray, asking God to somehow communicate to her that it was well with her children.  One night the mother sensed her remaining daughter in her bedroom and the next morning she asked, “Were you in my bedroom  in the middle of the night?” She said, “Yes, I was but I thought you were not awake.”  “So what did you come into my bedroom for?” The daughter answered, “God woke me and spoke to me,” and He told me to tell you that your two babies are with Me, they are guarding My throne and they are building your home.” It was just a little word from the Lord, “they are guarding My throne and building your home.” And the mother thought, “How amazing, those two little insignificant persons are guarding God’s throne?”

            The throne is the place where things have reality.  It is only here in this life that we get to experience the process of saying, “Yes” to the eternal and letting go of the temporal. You can only let go of the temporal now. You cannot let go of it later. When it is gone, you cannot let it go, it is too late. This is the place of the service.  We cannot minister Jesus Christ to a soul unless we are living; while we are living we constantly find our life being threatened so we must keep surrendering it back to God over and over.

Minister By A Surrendered Life

            Life is a constant surrender, that is the cross of Jesus Christ.  Through our daily trouble, we are “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.”   This is the ministry of believers: to bear about the dying of the Lord Jesus. Why do we spend so much incredible time trying to escape death?  And why, when it happens, we are appalled and go around from believer to believer complaining, “Can you believe what happened to me? I was doing such and such and so and so and they did this to me, can you believe it? Just the thought of it!  I just can’t believe it!”  We get ourselves all churned up and we have our stomachs in knots.  We go around telling our sad stories trying to win sympathy. But God has called us to manifest eternal life by accepting it above this life. We manifest death and we get life. That is the nature of the cross, that is the nature of ministry.   So here is a verse for you parents, put your name here, “For you,” for we, put your own name, “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”