Chrysostom
Humble Servant of All
You heap up many requests, as if the urgent accumulation of words would move the heart of God. But our Master taught us that the Father knows what we need before we ask. The just shall live by faith, and if anyone draws back in anxious fear, His soul has no pleasure in him. Do you believe He is the God who answers, or do you fear your voice is lost among the crowd of concerns?
Consider this: we have this ministry only because we obtained mercy. We faint not by tightening our grip on all these outcomes but by loosening our hold and entrusting them into His hand. You ask for breakthrough, yet the greatest breakthrough is a soul fixed in trust, not scattered among a hundred worries. Bring each need, yes, but bring them quietly, steadily, with thanksgiving, not desperation. The High Priest who offered Himself to make reconciliation for the sins of the people is not deaf to your cry.
Where you ask for conviction upon others, examine first your own heart. Do you seek their correction with the same grief and love with which Christ seeks you? There is a zeal that builds up, and a zeal that tears down in the name of righteousness. Pray rather that you and they alike would be granted repentance unto life. The God who put in us the word of reconciliation will do His work, He does not need our compulsion, only our faithful, humble witness.
For the work, the sermons, the gatherings: you tremble about anointing as though it were a fickle thing that must be wrung from God. But the gifts differ according to the grace given. Do you have a ministry? Give yourself to it with simplicity. Do you teach? Teach with the strength God supplies. The power is not manufactured in the hour of desperate pleading but flows from a life that has renounced the hidden things of shame and walks in the light.
The many people you name, He knows them. The persecuted Church, Israel, the suffering in war, children abused, He sees them. You cannot carry the whole world's sorrow without breaking, nor were you meant to. Carry what He places before you today with faithful prayer and upright action, then trust the rest to the One who judges justly.
Cease from anxious enumeration. A brief, believing sigh from a quiet soul reaches heaven more swiftly than this torrent of words driven by fear. Stir up the gift that is in you, fulfill your ministry without fainting, and remember that we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
Consider this: we have this ministry only because we obtained mercy. We faint not by tightening our grip on all these outcomes but by loosening our hold and entrusting them into His hand. You ask for breakthrough, yet the greatest breakthrough is a soul fixed in trust, not scattered among a hundred worries. Bring each need, yes, but bring them quietly, steadily, with thanksgiving, not desperation. The High Priest who offered Himself to make reconciliation for the sins of the people is not deaf to your cry.
Where you ask for conviction upon others, examine first your own heart. Do you seek their correction with the same grief and love with which Christ seeks you? There is a zeal that builds up, and a zeal that tears down in the name of righteousness. Pray rather that you and they alike would be granted repentance unto life. The God who put in us the word of reconciliation will do His work, He does not need our compulsion, only our faithful, humble witness.
For the work, the sermons, the gatherings: you tremble about anointing as though it were a fickle thing that must be wrung from God. But the gifts differ according to the grace given. Do you have a ministry? Give yourself to it with simplicity. Do you teach? Teach with the strength God supplies. The power is not manufactured in the hour of desperate pleading but flows from a life that has renounced the hidden things of shame and walks in the light.
The many people you name, He knows them. The persecuted Church, Israel, the suffering in war, children abused, He sees them. You cannot carry the whole world's sorrow without breaking, nor were you meant to. Carry what He places before you today with faithful prayer and upright action, then trust the rest to the One who judges justly.
Cease from anxious enumeration. A brief, believing sigh from a quiet soul reaches heaven more swiftly than this torrent of words driven by fear. Stir up the gift that is in you, fulfill your ministry without fainting, and remember that we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
