Guardrails by Alan Briggs

Author:Alan Briggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Church / Growth
ISBN: 9781631464362
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2016-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Heart: our passion and will. What are you creating or striving after?

Soul: our connection with the eternal; our spiritual imagination. What are the God-inspired dreams you are thinking about and praying for?

Mind: our pursuit of knowledge and depth. What are you hungry to learn about and investigate?

Strength: our rhythms of expending time, energy, and talent. What do you spend time and energy on in your life?

These four aspects of our identity were how Jesus characterized the Shema when asked. But then he went on. “The second [command] is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:31). Jesus connects loving others with loving God, yet he still communicates that loving God is where it all starts.

The order of these verses has changed how I seek to love others. I often catch myself trying to love others from my own strength, even starting to get cynical as I do. When we try to generate love for others on our own, we get to the end of ourselves pretty quickly. If we aren’t connected to God as we minister, we will only grow to the size and capacity of ourselves. We’ve all had seasons where we tried to love others from our own desire. There is simply not enough desire in us as we seek to love those at work, our spouse, our physical neighbors, our children, and our friends. If we aren’t guided by God’s love, we’re sunk.

If we follow the proper order of loving God first and then loving others, we will have to relearn how we minister. Ministry is the overflow of our hearts. Sometimes we are trying to hold back a flood from the Father, and sometimes we are trying to tap a dry well. I believe that the number-one reason for burnout in pastors stems from trying to give something that they don’t have themselves. The danger comes when we keep leading out of that place of emptiness because we believe our reputation, relationships, or finances depend on it. This is a scary place to get stuck.

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