SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/05/2025 9:20 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Scope of His
Commission”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy
4:2b
Message
of the verse: “be ready in season and out of season; reprove,
rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.”
I want to begin this SD with a quotation from John
MacArthur who is quoting Charles Spurgeon who wrote “What in a Christian
minister is the most essential quality for securing success in winning souls
for Christ?...earnestness. And if I were
asked a second or third time, I should not vary the answer…. Success is
proportionate to the preacher’s earnestness” ([Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1955], 305).
So
the question is how do we get and sustain “earnestness”? I would say that one has to continue to study
the Word of God, and to fellowship with Him in prayer, and then also submission
to His Holy Spirit can keep alive a sense of exhilarating eagerness to preach,
and I suppose in my ministry, which is not actually preaching, but to continue
writing my Spiritual Diaries each and every day of the week. Now apart from the Word and from prayer the
most gifted and orthodox preaching will grow spiritually stale, for the
preacher for the hearers. I can see this
can happen in the ministry that the Lord has given me and there are times when
it seems that there are ups and downs in my doing this ministry for the Lord,
as without the reading and studying of the Word of God and the power of the
Holy Spirit in my life things can go downhill for a while. I suppose that when this happens that the
Lord has a way of getting my attention, and at times it is through physical problems
with me or a member of my family, but then I must remember what Paul wrote to
the Romans in Romans 8:28 “And we know that
God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those
who are called according to His purpose.” John MacArthur then writes “In the book just
cited, Spurgeon said ‘He, who at the end of twenty years ministry among the
same people is more alive than ever, is
a great debtor to the quickening Spirit’
(Lectures, 309).”
Now I realize that in this section
of 2 Timothy that Paul is writing to Timothy about his active role as a
minister of the gospel, and as I study MacArthur’s commentary on this, that is
what he is writing about, about preachers, and I have stated that I am not a
preacher in the sense that Paul or Timothy is, but I can take things from this
section to compare with what I am doing for the cause of Christ by writing
Spiritual Diaries, which is my prayer that the Lord will use them to first of
all bring Glory to the Lord Jesus Christ by having the Holy Spirit of God give
effectual calls to some who read them in order to bring them to Jesus Christ as
their Savior and Lord. It is also my
prayer each day that the Spirit of God will use these Spiritual Diaries to
cause believers to grow in the Lord and to bring revival to me and to those who
read them. It is also in my prayer each day that the Spirit of God will send
them around the world to accomplish these things I pray about and then one more
prayer request and that is if it is in the Lord’s will that the Spirit of God
will give the last effectual call in the church age to someone who is reading
one of these Spiritual Diaries, and that prayer request is always prayed if it
is in the will of the Lord.
John MacArthur then writes “The faithful
preacher t be ready in season and out of season, when it is convenient and when
it is not, when it is immediately satisfying and when it is not, when from a
human perspective it seems suitable and when it does not. His proclaiming God’s Word must not be
dictated by popular culture and propriety, by tradition, by esteem in the
community (or even in the church), but solely by the mandate of the Lord.”
Now as we look at the next three
commands which are reprove, rebuke, and exhort, we can see that the first two
are negative, and the third is positive.
Now to expound on these three
commands will take some time and so I think that I will begin to work on them
in the next SD so I can keep them in order and even though it will take a
couple of days to finish looking at them I will begin them in the next SD.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I
remember reading in Dr. Warren Wiersbe’s commentaries a number of times that
when a believer is presented with a crisis that as long as he excepts that challenge
as coming from the Lord and turns to Him to learn what it is He is trying to
teach him, and not just turn away from the Lord, that the Lord will use that
challenge to cause that person to grow in the Lord. I have a number of challenges that are
happening in my life at this time, and the greatest is that my wife had surgery
for cancer on the last day of April. It
seems that all was removed, but our lifestyle has been changed a lot because of
this as her diet has had to be changed in order to help to make sure that if
there is any remaining cancer that this will help her to fight it. I am also facing a challenge with my own
health, which is something that I have dealt with most of my life, but it seems
more difficult at this time. IBS has
always been a challenge for me and it is giving me a good fight at this
time.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
I desire to trust the Lord with these issues and pray for relief in both
problems, and pray that we will handle them in a way that will bring glory to
the Lord.
7/5/2025 10:03
AM
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