vote. And people say, "But won't that harm the message of the Gospel? I'm such a poor example." Listen, your sin preaches the Gospel. Your weakness proclaims the Gospel. Go in your brokenness. Go in your brokenness. Because if you wait to be unbroken, you'll never minister to anyone because you're too busy wanting to be something to celebrate the fact that Christ was something for you. That fear just destroys ministry. Second is amnesia, it's a corollary. You must remember your identity in Christ. You get your identity vertically. You get your deepest sense of wellbeing vertically. Listen, if you don't have that, you will shop for it horizontally. And what you end up doing is you end up asking people to be your own personal Messiah. Tell me I'm good. Tell me that I was helpful to you. Give me identity. Give me a sense of wellbeing. That just destroys ministry because it makes it too scary, because I'm too attentive to your responses. I wish I didn't have that struggle. But I do. Last several years, I'm not doing this now. I was the evening preacher at Tenth Presbyterian Church. Historical pulpit, church faithful to the Gospel for over 200 years. And there was a particular leader at Tenth that just didn't understand the glory of my preaching. And he would get together with me and put me through first year seminary students' tutorials in preaching. I appreciated that so much. That's a lie. And I would like to think that that didn't affect me, but I would stand up to preach and everybody in the congregation had a normal size head, but this guy. And he had the eyes of the Mona Lisa. You know that wherever you stand, they're looking at you. And it was like he had a big clipboard. No, not yet. I even, this is sad to admit, I even was preparing one week and I came to a certain point and I thought, "This will get him." He'll come to me after this sermon, he'll say, "Paul, I was wrong. Your preaching is amazing." That is idolatry. That's a preacher who's an identity amnesiac. So we've got to preach to one another the security of identity in Christ because it's only when you embrace your identity in Christ, when you embrace the utter completeness of who you are in him, that you don't look, you stop looking for life horizontally. Stop looking for life horizontally. Your people in your life, your husband, your children, your friends will never be your personal Messiah. Situations won't make you feel good. Locations won't do that for you. Earth will never be your Messiah. There is a Messiah and his work is complete. You got to have that peace in your heart. You're going to move forward into ministry. And then he says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." Why doesn't he just say word? Why does he say word of Christ? Because he means Gospel. The Bible is literally, from first verse to last verse, the story of Jesus. That's what the Bible is about. Now, you forget that this whole book is the biography of Jesus. The grand redemptive story, maybe it's better to say it this way, the Bible is a theologically annotated story. It's a story with God's essential notes, but it's the story of Jesus. If you forget that, then you will turn this book into a set of wisdom principles. And a set of rules. And what you will do, this happens all the time in ministry, you will bring rules to people and you will bring principles to people. Now, heat what I'm about to say, because this is radical. If all people needed was rules and principles, Jesus wouldn't have had to come. We don't believe in a system of redemption, enough of systems of redemption. We believe in a redeemer. And the principles and laws of the word of God have no power whatsoever to change you if there's not a redeemer behind them. There's too much. Here's what I think you ought to do, ministry. That's the only where it goes. Here's what you should do. That completely forgets the person and work of the redeemer. Now, what we're talking about is the nowism of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear what I'm about to say, Jesus didn't just die for your past. He didn't just die for your future. He died for your here and now. He died for every struggle of the here and now.
Transcript: Session 6
WOMEN HELPING WOMEN
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