Chapter 1
If you and I are going to serve Jesus Christ – the way God wants us to minister and the way the apostles ministered – we must (1) know the divine resources personally, (2) see the human needs compassionately, and (3) become channels of God’s mighty resources so that (4) God alone is glorified. When God is glorified, His spirit can work to bring Christ to those who need to know Him.
Chapter 2
Once you accept yourself as a distributor of God’s riches and not a manufacturer, you will experience a wonderful new freedom and joy in service.
Chapter 3
Ministry takes place when divine resources meet human needs.
Chapter 4
When the people we serve irritate us or disappoint us, the first thing we usually do is pray for them and tell the Lord to change them. What we ought to do first is pray for ourselves and ask God to increase our love.
Chapter 5
If our motive for serving is anything other than the glory of God, what we do will be only religious activity and not true Christian ministry.
Chapter 6
If God has called you to minister, no matter what that ministry may be, He hasn’t made a mistake. He knows what He’s doing, and the best thing you can do is gratefully submit to His will and trust Him to work.
Chapter 7
When you put Christ first in your ministry and do your work “as to the Lord,” you not only do more and do your best, but the burden is light.
Chapter 8
You must depend on the eternal purposes of God and the unchanging promises of God if you’re to keep going when the going is tough.
Chapter 9
Christian service means invading a battleground, not a playground; and you and I are the weapons God uses to attack and defeat the enemy.
Chapter 10
Your purpose is to build people of Christian character whom God can bless and use to build others.
Chapter 11
God’s servants don’t always have to be right. Even Paul was occasionally perplexed about the will of God (Acts 16:6-10; w Cor. 4:8).
Chapter 12
A sense of humor is important in Christian service for several reasons. For one thing, being able to laugh at yourself and your situation helps to keep you balanced when you’ve made a mistake or when things fall apart.
Chapter 13
God’s servants must never use their assignments as temporary stepping-stones for something greater.
Chapter 14
It’s a law of the Medes and Persians that we never resign when (1) we’re tired and discouraged, (2) we aren’t getting our way, or (3) we feel unappreciated and we’re looking for some strokes.
Chapter 15
How you leave a place of service is just as important as knowing that God wants you to go. When God is truly in the decision and you’ve bathed it all in prayer, though a transition is painful, it is successful to the glory of God.
Chapter 16
Perhaps the hardest lesson we learn from failure is that we aren’t as great as we thought we were. We’re human, and creatures of clay have feet of clay and occasionally fall.
Chapter 17
The older we get and the longer we serve the Lord, the more we need to work at being contemporary and not becoming dusty relics in a religious museum. We may retire from a vocation, but we must never retire from life.
Chapter 18
Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up.
Chapter 19
Your heart grows by giving out, but your mind grows by taking in; and both are necessary to a happy and balanced life of service. Christian workers who don’t read aren’t taking in fuel for the mind and food for the soul, and they end up trying to spin out their ministry like a spider’s web.
Chapter 20
This much is sure: if you are married, you’ve got to take your mate and your children into consideration if you want to serve the Lord effectively.
Chapter 21
No matter what kind of Christian service God has called you to, it’s a privilege to be in ministry and to serve Jesus Christ. In some ways, it’s the hardest work in the world; but in many ways, it’s the happiest work in the world.
Chapter 22
No matter what ministry the Lord has assigned to you, you can’t succeed apart from the Word of God.
Chapter 23
Something vanishes from our ministry when we lose our burden for lost souls. We gradually become professional Christian workers who do our job well, create no problems, but never have the blessing of seeing the gospel miracle take place in the lives of people.
Chapter 24
“Loyalty is making yourself a part of an organization – and making that organization a part of you.” I don’t know who first spoke that epigram, but it makes a lot of sense.
Chapter 25
The Next time people fail you and you feel like you’ve failed, go to the mount and ask God to show you His glory. Don’t focus on yourself or the people you serve; focus on God and His glory.
Chapter 26
As I understand it, the judgment seat of Christ has to do with the quality of our works and whether or not they will last because they have glorified the Lord (1 Cor. 3:10-17).
Chapter 27
Make up your mind that you’re going to serve God, no matter how you feel. Then you can stop wasting precious time and energy having a debate with yourself every time you don’t feel good.
Chapter 28
You can’t always helphaving an enemy, but you can helpbeing an enemy.
Chapter 29
Money is a very satisfying substitute for God. After all, money is more tangible, and less faith is required to trust it.
Chapter 30
During my lifetime, the church has been warned about the disastrous effects on society of movies, radio, automobiles, communism, alcohol, television, “the pill,” the population explosion, nuclear weapons, liberalism (theological and political), conservatism (theological and political), electing a Roman Catholic president, the cold war, pollution, ecological time bombs, abortion, sex education, ERA, the national debt, and several other threats that fell through the cracks somewhere along the line…. and yet, here we are! Somehow we have survived!