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Archive for September, 2012

So you speak Hot Water?

20 Sep

This is the first time I’ve seen Hot Water as a language.

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The Pain of Ministry: Friends Who Fail You “No one stood by me, but all deserted me.”

18 Sep

Ministry is painful, in a number of ways.  John Piper recently preached about one aspect of pain in ministry from the closing words of 2 Timothy: Friends Who Fail you.

Christian ministry is relationally hard… Friends in the ministry can let you down and never care for you again.

“Paul seems to want Timothy to feel that because of how many [examples of friends who have failed or abandoned him] he dumps on him” in the text.

“Every moment of unexpected silence from a friend,

and every verbal blow from an enemy

wounds the spirit of the Christian.

And it happens a lot.”

Have you ever lived what Paul did, when Paul wrote that NO ONE stood by him?

Have you ever been abandoned or even turned against by who you thought were your friends in ministry?

How does one respond?

Piper’s thoughts:

While some friends in the ministry will let you down and never care for you again, others will care for you again. Don’t be simplistic. Don’t be unforgiving. “It is possible to love someone deeply and let them down.”