THE RESILIENT
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,
and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Barnabas always urged his converts to Christ to be resilient against the opposition, hardships, persecutions, and false teachings they would have to endure, telling them to be steadfast.
When he came and saw the grace of God,
he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful
to the Lord with steadfast purpose
Acts 11:23
Barnabas’s exhortation gives us the vital keys to becoming resilient: (i) remain faithful to the Lord by continuing to meet together as a church fellowship, and (ii) live with steadfast purpose. The Apostle Paul learned from his mentor and he too also made it his practice to urge believers to be resilient –
¶ Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable,
always abounding in the work of the Lord,
knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
First Corinthians 15:58
In this verse Paul gives us additional keys to developing the kind of resilience necessary to be a mature Christian: (i) Be immovable in your commitment to doing the right thing by Christ and your brothers and sisters; (ii) always abound in the work of the Lord by serving others; and (iii) know and remember that everything you do in and on behalf of your church family is actually for the Lord and is therefore “not in vain”.
Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified,
self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
Titus 2:2
Perhaps it’s because ‘older men’ (you know, men 60-years of age and older) all tend to be grumpy (I personally wouldn’t know about this because I am only in my fifties) that Paul tells his lieutenant, Titus, to encourage the older men in the church of Crete to be: (i) sober-minded (more positive in their outlook), (ii) dignified (be a good role model of what a happy man of God looks like), (iii) self-controlled (especially with how the talk and use their time), (iv) sound in faith (lovers of God and His Word), (v) loving (cheering on the next generation of Christian leaders despite their youth and inexperience), and (vi) steadfast (in their endurance and dogged commitment to participate in the service and communal worship of the Church).
Without resilience it is simply not possible to know, love, and enjoy God to the fullest. The younger half-brother of Jesus, the Apostle James, wrote this –
And let steadfastness have its full effect,
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing...
¶ Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial,
for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life,
which God has promised to those who love him.
James 1:4, 12
James actually said that the believer’s steadfast resilience would result in the believer receiving a glorious reward from the Lord – the crown of life.
In the past few years pastors have faced more challenges than most. Yes there were many unprecedented challenges, but pastors had deal with all kinds of hindrances from doing their job in a way that was obedient to Christ and His Holy Word. In Glenn Packiam’s book, ‘The Resilient Pastor’, he tells pastors that –
What have we observed so far? There has been a shifting of cultural tectonic plates as many contexts have become more and more post-Christian. The clearest way to explain that in terms of the earthquake-like shift is to say that we are post- Christendom, that era when Christianity and country, the kingdom of God and a sociopolitical kingdom, were symbiotically connected. This shift—though not necessarily the total rupture of the relationship—has caused a surge in the cultural oceanic waters. These waves look like the rise of new kinds of pluralism, paganism, and individualism.The aftermath is a mess. There are casualties—think of the programs churches would run that no longer exist, the TV shows in which Christianity was assumed as the backdrop for the family conflict, the changing laws about marriage, and more. And there is confusion. Christian impulses and values are being used to condemn Christian doctrines, practices, and institutions. The West is trying to sever the tree from its root while still demanding its fruit. –Glenn Peckiam, The Resilient Pastor, Barna Group, 2022, Page 40
Even though the pandemic has been over for two years now, its detrimental effects on how many believers viewed church is still taking a toll. In some respects, the pandemic brought unseen things to the surface and exposed what had long laid hidden. Sadly, one of those things was — What constitutes ‘church’ and what does being a part of church family Biblically mean? Many pastors now realise that many within their church congregation had a very poor understanding of how the Bible describes what the church is and what it means to be the church.
Earlier this year when it seemed that I was close to death’s door, I was physically unable to be with my church family on each Lord’s Day for nine weeks. Never in my life – and particularly never in my 27-years of pastoring Legana had I been absent from church for that long. My heart ached. When the specialist told me that my condition was terminal and that there could be no treatment or improvement in my condition, I knew that my absence must end. I needed to be physically present with my church family. There is something very physical and tangible about being the church. Christ has ensured that when His church comes together it will involve all of our physical and spiritual senses. When we partake of the holy and sacred elements of communion, we are holding the Lord’s body together as we ingest the consecrated unleavened bread. When we hold the cup we smell the fruit of the vine and imbibe His blood. When we hear each other pray and sing our praises and touch one another’s souls by our participation in exalting Christ together. As we hear the Word of God read, we hear, Our Father in heaven…forgive us as we forgive others. We are reminded of our role as a church to be the body of Christ as a visible presentation of God’s love and forgiveness to a bitter, unforgiving, unforgiven, angry, hurt, world.
Thus, it is a prime responsibility of a local church to meet together each Lord’s Day as our highest priority. We must draw from the encouragement of the first apostles as recorded in God’s Word who taught the first Christians how to be resilient. We must then re-learn these same keys:
(i) Look to Christ as the Lord in constant prayer;
(ii) Overlook offences that keep us from being immovable in our devotion to Christ and His holy Church;
(iii) Take your stand on God’s Word daily to draw spiritual strength and encouragement so that we can receive revelation from Him, because, above all – He (not the world) is our Audience of One.
May God grant us His grace to be resilient, abounding in good works, fruitful in our service of others, and ever hopeful that we have been promised a brighter and better future than our past.
Amen.
Pastor at Large,
Andrew
Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.
Have you ever considered how differently someone would live if their life utterly loved God? Every decision they made would be filtered through their passoinate love for God. The use of their time, talent and treasure would be reprioritised to maximise their love of God. They would be difficult to offend and yet easy to disappoint. They would not be able to remain indifferent or even silent when others are being hurt because of God dishonouring decisions. They would rest in the knowledge that the God they love utterly is incomprehensively powerful and in sovereign control of His universe, and in particular: them. But there is a mystery that those who love God are often left to ponder.
How much of your life do you control? What, with circumstances, people, accidents, weather, opportunitites, all being often unpredictable variables in the shaping of your brief life, how much do you actually control? It's one of the great mysteries. How much of our life direction do you actually control? Our lives are not merely shaped by our actions and decisions, but by other even more immediate factors such as, upbringing. This is why sarcasm says a person must choose their parents well! Our lives are also shaped by the decisions of others, including corporations and governments. This is why sarcasm pipes up again and adds its sage advice:choose your country of birth and upbringing carefully! With so many factors not in our control how can we possibly order our lives in the direction and shape we want them to go and become? Here is part of the answer.
Jesus told us to enter into 'life' (eternal) by striving to enter through the narrow gate. When you love you strive. Christ didn't say to His followers, "Hope that you float on over and drift through the narrow gate." Jesus clearly demonstrated what striving looked like. He strove because He loved His Father.
While we strive to navigate our ship across the ocean of life, every wave, every obstacle, every storm is yielded to God's sovereignty. When the caterpillar strives shortly after making its cocoon, I have it on good authority that when it tries to then break free from its cocoon, it is an utterlyunenjoyable experience! yet, it is this very act of striving which builds the strength it needs for the use of its wings.
It's an undeniable fact because it's so obvious. At the height of the Evangelical Awakening, the period around the 1960s to the 1980s (known as The Charismatic Renewal) the Church lessened its striving to take the Gospel into the world and simultaneously ceased striving for the truth in the Public Square. Europe seemed to fair worst. The result of this apathy (lack of striving) was not immediately apparent, but twenty to forty years later it is now painfully obvious. The rise of militant secularism capturing the political and academic landscape where policy decisions were made so that the populace were hoodwinked into accepting the assumption that atheism meant: "rational", "unbiased", "reasonable" (and conversely "Christianity" meant "biased", "irrational", "unreasonable"). Thus, in the last few years atheists have been emboldend by believing their own irrationality and have launched brazen attacks against the Church. But God had not only foreseen this, He had designed this for His glory! What these atheists did not count on, was that the Sovereign God would stir in the sould of those few who utterly love Him, to strive for His glory.