Is Your Ministry Approved by God?

BY JAMES BEDDOWS

I Thessalonians 2:3,4

The Thessalonian church was born in the midst of persecution. They were severely tested right from the start. Among other difficulties, they were confused by unbelievers who told them that Paul was a fraud.

In I Thessalonians 2, the apostle Paul defends his ministry against those accusations. He writes in verses 3 and 4:

For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.
The word "approved" there means to have been tested and to have passed the test. So, the apostle is effectively saying: "God has set His seal of approval on my ministry." As we look closely at this passage, we'll find characteristics of Paul's ministry that need to be part of our ministry if we are to please God as we minister.

Exercising one's giftedness

A ministry that is approved of God, first of all, involves the call of God.

The apostle Paul didn't just wake up one morning and say: "I think I'm going to be an apostle." No, as he describes himself elsewhere in the New Testament, he was an apostle "by the will of God". He was called by God into this specific ministry.

What does this say to you and me as God's people?

Remember Ephesians 4:11,12? It says that Christ has given to the church the offices of apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors, teachers. What for? For the equipping of the saints so that they will get on with ministering. Every Christian is supposed to be ministering.

In the Bible, God speaks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in quite a few passages. Having devoted much space to this, God must have something important to say to us. And it's simply this: God has a giftedness for you and a giftedness for me that will cause us to serve Him in the right place.

Square pegs in square holes, round pegs in round holes. Only when we serve Him that way is His approval on our ministry.

There are Christians who don't know what their gifts are; they get paralyzed. But as God's people, we need to find our gifts. We read what God says in the Bible. We pray over the passages we come to. And we experiment in some area of ministry. As we do so, God willin a process and over a period of timeconfirm to our hearts: "This is your gift; now serve Me with it."

Doing it God's way

Paul says in verse 3, "For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you." God-approved ministry is always done God's way.

Many people today talk about the end justifying the means. That's hardly a Christian ethic. In serving our God, the end never justifies the means. There mustn't be anything worldly, anything gimmicky about what we are doing. No, we serve God God's way.

A good example of service gone wrong because it wasn't done God's way is found in I Samuel 6. King David sensed that it was time to bring the ark of the covenant back into the city of Jerusalem. That symbol of the presence of God hadn't been there for 70 years.

While David's intention was good, he nevertheless did it the wrong way. God had spelled out in His Word that only the Levites were to carry the ark. But David says, "Let's just build a nice cart and get this thing wheeled in by an oxen pulling a cart." His efforts ended in tragedy, death and loss of God's blessing.

In today's church life, we often do it the wrong way. Many of the methods being used are unworthy of the gospel. They are cheap, whereas the gospel is a costly message that required the death of God's only Son. They are worldly and man-centered, whereas the gospel is a divine message centered in God's glory.

We, as God's people, have no right to use any other than God-approved means for spreading the gospel. We forfeit God's blessing when we adopt gimmicky ways in our efforts to appease men.

Pursuing godliness

Even when we are serving God in the right role, using our spiritual gifts the right way, our ministry will not be approved of God if our lives are not characterized by the pursuit of godliness.

I'm not saying that you've got to be perfect to serve God. But irrespective of where we are now in our Christian lives, we should have a hunger to grow in the grace of God; we should be growing in godliness.

A pastor may work hard to prepare a well-organized message, a Sunday school teacher may do his homework diligently, a choir may carefully select the right songs to sing and sing them well, but if there's an absence of spirituality in the individuals involved, forget it. There's no God's approval on their ministry.

You could go through the list. Doesn't matter what we're doing for God. If there is not an increasing desire in our own lives to be more like Jesus, then our ministry is not approved of God.

Acknowledging stewardship

The ministry that pleases God involves faithful stewardship. In verse 4, Paul says: "We have been entrusted with the gospel." In other words, we are stewards of the gospel.

If our ministry is to bring pleasure to God, then our hearts, our minds, our souls, our whole beings need to be gripped by the fact that we are stewards entrusted with the gospel. And stewardship involves privilege and responsibility.

Responsibility. Let me deal first with the responsibility involved.

There are some Christians, tragically, who do not like to be told that they have to serve the Lord. But in John 14:15, Jesus says, "If you love me, obey my commandments." That's a pretty straightforward command. I don't know how anyone can miss the point. But some Christians want to miss it because they want a Christian life that fits their own comfort level.

As God's people, we often tend to be ruled by our feelings. We say: "Well, I don't feel like serving God just now." And for some, it seems to go on for years. When we don't feel like serving, we need to ask ourselves honestly if we are truly a child of God. Every follower of Christ, the Word of God says, is a steward of the gospel. And part of that stewardship is responsibility, the responsibility to serve as a functioning member of the body of Christ.

Privilege. Stewardship also involves privilege. And if we just spend some time meditating on that important truth, we might not have too much problem serving our God.

We were once lost, hopeless, hell-deserving sinners. By the grace of God we've been saved. Now, Christ says to us, "I have saved you, but I'm not going to just put you aside until I take you home. Instead, I'm entrusting you with proclaiming the gospel and advancing the kingdom of God."

In its narrow sense, the gospel means the message of salvation. In its broader sense, it encompasses the whole process of God making people whole, making people like Jesus. Oh, the amazing grace of God. He has not only saved us, but has entrusted us with the gospel. What a privilege!

Paul says in II Corinthians 5:20, "We are all ambassadors for Christ." Without exception, we are ambassadors for Christ. And the privilege of being an ambassador of Christ should motivate us to ministry.

Pleasing God, not men

Paul says: "We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts."

The application of these words to you and to me is obvious. The singular goal of our lives is to have our ministry aimed at pleasing God and God alone.

Sometimes, we begin well in our Christian service. We serve as faithful stewards of the gospel, using our gifts God's way while pursuing holiness in our own lives. Then come some criticisms about what we do or say, and gradually we modify our ministry. We may start just subtly, but nevertheless we make changes in an effort to please people here and please people there. And you know the result: we still don't please everybody.

We all like to be popular. That's a curse of the fallen nature. So, in our ministry we start doing things to please people, believers and unbelievers alike. And soon, we lose sight of our goal, which is to please God and God alone.

It's not that we deliberately want to upset people. But we serve for the single purpose of bringing honor and glory to the name of God. And if man doesn't like it, then man doesn't like it.

God's power. For our ministry to please God, we must rely upon the enabling of the indwelling Christ through the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it with our own strength.

As I look at the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, I see One who had the singular goal of pleasing the Father. And so I pray, "Oh, God, help me to rest upon the indwelling Christ, to yield to Him, to submit to Him and to continually commit myself to His authority, that I might minister to please You."

Once you've learned to humble yourself before God and seek His help, He will enable you to minister far more effectively than you can ever imagine.

In closing, let me say again that as Christians, we are all ministers. And, we must all seek to minister in such a way that God's approval rests upon us. We must be stewards with a singular goal of pleasing God.

And let me ask you, as those who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, do you have any repenting to do because you have not been ministering at all? And to those of you who are engaging in ministry, do you have any repenting to do because you have fallen to the curse of using worldly gimmicks or of seeking the approval of men?

I think our understanding of Christianity has changed. We want it both ways: pleasing God and pleasing me. And it cannot be. Let's serve God the way Paul did; let's serve as men and women approved by God. o

Rev. James Beddows is pastor of Candlewood Baptist Church, 52 Stadley Rough Road, Danbury, CT 06811.

Back To Top

Back To Previous Page