Certainly, one of my favorite classes has been one called, "Spiritual Ministry and Formation." The class began with teaching us about spiritual gifting and helping us understand the particular passions, skills, and temperaments that God has uniquely given to each of us so that we can develop ministry goals and help discern God's purposes for our lives. This is our "Secondary Identity." Now we have moved on in the class to discuss our "Primary Identities" - who we are in our relationship with God.
"Our thinking about who we are as Christians should not begin with what we can discover about ourselves by self-analysis. Rather, it begins with what God says about those who trust in Christ."
--- Sinclair Ferguson "Children of the Living God"
--- Sinclair Ferguson "Children of the Living God"
"What's really cool is that what the Bible says about those who trust in Christ is that we are beloved sons and daughters of God - Brothers with Christ! Explaining this more the author wrote,
"We tend to have a very superficial appreciation of what God has done for us. When it dawns on us that we have entered into brotherhood with the risen Lord Jesus Christ, that we now participate in the power of his resurrection, that the glory of God’s image is being restored in our lives – then everyone who has been born again will rejoice in the grandeur of the change that God has accomplished in us through his Spirit!"
Becoming a child of God brings with it a whole host of privileges:
Jesus Christ is not ashamed to have us as his brothers!
We have the privilege of calling God, ‘Abba, Father.’
We are recipients of the Father's tender care, and the compassion of our Elder Brother.
For two hours a week we get to sit and listen to our professor elaborate on these truths. He strongly desires us to be rooted richly in the knowledge of God's love for us. We can't calculate God's blessings for us on the basis of our sin or our obedience, but on the basis of God's character. Our professor has seen people try to go into vocational ministry without living daily by these truths and he's seen them fail. What also is really remarkable is that this professor has had groups of us over to his house for lunch - grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup! He also meets with every student (and their spouses) to go over the results of all of our assessment tests so we can better understand our second identities. His life of scholarship has been dedicated to understanding temperaments and gifting in the equipping of pastors. As a guy who has personally met with and understood every to-be pastor who has graduated from this seminary for the last 27 years. When we had finished speaking for an hour he wrote,
"Jason Knox is a Teacher- Pastor-Evangelist called of God to explain the truths of the Word of God clearly and to apply them effectively so that those taught understand and learn and thereby assume a long-term personal responsibility for leadership and the spiritual care, protection, guidance, and feeding (teaching) of a group of believers as well as to proclaim the Gospel of salvation effectively so that people respond to the promises of Christ through conversion to Christianity"
I, of course, told him that he was probably wrong. He responded by telling me that I am young, which seems both patently obvious and worldview shattering. He was confident, not in me, but that God was going to continue to grow and develop me. I haven't been sentenced to spend the rest of my life immature, but as much as I can look back over the last year and see growth - we can expect that to continue exponentially over the decades of my life to come!
"We tend to have a very superficial appreciation of what God has done for us. When it dawns on us that we have entered into brotherhood with the risen Lord Jesus Christ, that we now participate in the power of his resurrection, that the glory of God’s image is being restored in our lives – then everyone who has been born again will rejoice in the grandeur of the change that God has accomplished in us through his Spirit!"
Becoming a child of God brings with it a whole host of privileges:
Jesus Christ is not ashamed to have us as his brothers!
We have the privilege of calling God, ‘Abba, Father.’
We are recipients of the Father's tender care, and the compassion of our Elder Brother.
For two hours a week we get to sit and listen to our professor elaborate on these truths. He strongly desires us to be rooted richly in the knowledge of God's love for us. We can't calculate God's blessings for us on the basis of our sin or our obedience, but on the basis of God's character. Our professor has seen people try to go into vocational ministry without living daily by these truths and he's seen them fail. What also is really remarkable is that this professor has had groups of us over to his house for lunch - grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup! He also meets with every student (and their spouses) to go over the results of all of our assessment tests so we can better understand our second identities. His life of scholarship has been dedicated to understanding temperaments and gifting in the equipping of pastors. As a guy who has personally met with and understood every to-be pastor who has graduated from this seminary for the last 27 years. When we had finished speaking for an hour he wrote,
"Jason Knox is a Teacher- Pastor-Evangelist called of God to explain the truths of the Word of God clearly and to apply them effectively so that those taught understand and learn and thereby assume a long-term personal responsibility for leadership and the spiritual care, protection, guidance, and feeding (teaching) of a group of believers as well as to proclaim the Gospel of salvation effectively so that people respond to the promises of Christ through conversion to Christianity"
I, of course, told him that he was probably wrong. He responded by telling me that I am young, which seems both patently obvious and worldview shattering. He was confident, not in me, but that God was going to continue to grow and develop me. I haven't been sentenced to spend the rest of my life immature, but as much as I can look back over the last year and see growth - we can expect that to continue exponentially over the decades of my life to come!
He told me that I could pastor a church! I don't want to diminish the encouragement and affirmation that so many have given me prior to this, but until my professor spoke those words with confidence I hadn't truly grasped the value of affirmation before. I like to believe that I'm a strong and independent person - but after the laborious months of seminary that I've been through those words meant so much to me.