by Brian Knowles
If there’s one thing Christian churches and ministers have no lack of its words. We are burying the world in words, or so it seems. Yet how effective are those words in transforming lives? Do our words return to us empty, or do they accomplish something on God’s behalf? Of what practical use is teaching, or counseling? Do they produce any fruit? Do they have a concrete result or impact in people’s lives? Are people being healed and delivered on a daily basis as a result of what we are saying?
All too often over the years I and others have had a sense of futility about the worth of preaching, teaching or writing Christian words. Words in our time have become all too common. That which is common is often devalued, and that which is Christian is devalued even more.
Besides, our culture is action, not thought, oriented. We want to do something – to act. Our philosophy, as two researchers have noted, is "Ready, fire, aim!" We have little patience with the tedious process of learning.
Yet the Biblical pattern, as exemplified by Ezra the Scribe, is to first learn, then to do, and finally to teach (Ezra 7:10). If we don’t first learn, we won’t know what to do. If we haven’t learned, and we haven’t done, and yet we have the temerity to teach, then we can teach only emptiness and futility. You can’t get water out of a dry well.
Recently, my wife Lorraine and I were philosophizing with each other about the seeming futility of teaching, preaching and writing. "It doesn’t appear to have any real impact on anyone," I said hopelessly. "Why do it?" We prayed together about it. I believe God gave us the answer.
The Way of Love
The answer seems to lie in one phrase of one sentence in Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians: "Follow the way of love…" (I Corinthians 14:1).
Love here is agape. It means simply, "love." Love is the number one product of the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22). It is the firstfruit of the Holy Spirit. In that sense, you could say it is the pump priming for all that follows.
When Jesus did His mighty works, he was motivated by love, compassion, empathy and a desire to see people healed, delivered, and made whole. This was the driving force in His life. Jesus’ heart is revealed in Matthew 9:36: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
The sorry state of God’s "sheep" motivated Jesus to tell his disciples to pray that the Lord would send more workers into the harvest (v. 38). Clearly compassion should drive the Lord’s workers as much as it did Jesus himself.
On another occasion, "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick" (Matthew 14:14). It was the Lord’s love -- his empathetic compassion -- that produced healing for many. From this, we may learn that love has power.
Conversely, we cannot expect God to bless or empower that which is done out of an ignoble motive. If, for example, we teach or preach out of a desire to "have the preeminence" then we cannot expect God to bless our teaching (cf. III John 9).
If we teach or write in order to extract money from the people of God, then we have merely commercialized piety. God will not bless it (cf. I Timothy 6:3-5).
If we seek the pulpit out of a motive of lording it over God’s heritage, God will not empower it (Matthew 20:24-28).
If we teach, preach and counsel merely to actualize our gifts, we could end up casting our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). It will be all sending, no receiving. No fruit will be born.
If we preach in order to hammer the children of God because we are critical of them, the Lord will not empower it. God does not take kindly to those who abuse His children! (Ezekiel 34:1-3).
What kind of preaching, teaching and counseling will the Lord bless? That which is done for a right reason, out of a pure motive: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God" (Matthew 5:8).
If we want God to inhabit our words, and to bless them, we must first acquire a pure heart. We must teach, preach and write out of a motive of love and genuine concern for the world and for the people of God -- not criticism, or a need for dominance, nor out of covetousness. If we are moved with compassion, as was Jesus, then God will also bless our prayers for healing, deliverance and wholeness. The power of God is manifested through the love of God.
We are only Jesus’ true disciples if we have love one for another (John 13:35). Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, "…serve one another in love. The entire Torah is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit…" (Galatians 5:13b – 16a).
If those of us who teach, counsel or preach wish to see God bless our words, then we must distribute them under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and out of a motive of loving compassion for the children of God. If we say to one, "Be healed!" and our motive is to aggrandize our own person through the healing, we cannot expect to see healings. If we declare to another, "Be delivered!" we will only see that deliverance if we are moved with compassion and faith, not a desire to wield spiritual power to inflate our own image. Jesus taught his talmidim (disciples): "…do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20).
God looks on the heart, not upon outward trappings of self-importance and human status in hierarchical pecking orders (I Samuel 16:7). God blessed David because his heart was like God’s heart (I Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). David’s concerns were God’s concerns, and vice versa. That which God loved, David loved. That which God hated, David hated.
When David made his son Solomon king in his stead, David told him, "And you my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts" (I Chronicles 28:9).
David knew that to serve God’s people, one had to have a right heart and right motives. He sought to impress this lesson on his son. David had loved God’s people. He had fought for them, defended them, protected them, prayed for them, and sacrificed his own well-being for them. He, like the Messiah of whom he is a type, was motivated by love. Consequently, God blessed and empowered that godly heart to make David Israel’s greatest king.
God has not changed. He will again empower his people, along with their words and their deeds, to the degree that we get our motives in order and our hearts right before him.