My Blog

Introduction:

Every
church leader has responsibilities and qualifications to meet. My idea of the
responsibility of a pastor can be found in the book of Titus, a letter of
instruction sent and written by Apostle Paul to Titus.

This
book allows me to define the responsibilities of pastors and church leaders.
However, I believe that the most important responsibility of a Christian is to
imitate Christ: that is to live in this
world to die. All the more, pastors should imitate him. Not for salvation
purposes per se (because we can not
do that) but for the advancement of the gospel. Apostle Paul is a very good
example of a person who imitated Christ. Eventually Paul based his own
philosophy on being selfless, that is: “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

The
very first time Jesus called Apostle Paul, he immediately responds to the call.
He immediately gave his life to Christ amidst pride and persecution. Paul did
not think twice turning his back from his old life of being a Pharisee. He
turned against his own idea of persecuting the Christians (Followers of Christ
during his time). He welcomes persecution of his own, believing that his life
was worthy for Christ and to be able to gain the best of life: is to die in the service and name of the Lord
Jesus Christ.

Apostle
Paul influenced me with my philosophy as a Pastor: “TO LIVE TO GIVE, TO DIE TO
MEET”. 

    

To Live

 Most of the people thought they live
for a reason. We live in this word because we want to attain something. We have
a goal to set and a dream to pursue; this is not wrong. In fact, I would say
that to set goals in life and to dream are good ways to advance one’s Christian
life. But on how we deal with our goal and dream may vary extremely. A
non-Christian businessman may achieve his goal without compromising his
integrity. He will not take advantage of the bureaucracy of this country in
terms of “red tape” (“under the table” dealings). While a secular businessman
on the other hand may achieve his goals immediately using power, connection and
money.

 As
pastors, we are required to live with complete integrity and honor. We should
be blameless and above reproach all the times; moreover, being selfless because
we are called by God to shepherd his flocks. Being selfless is to live to give:
according to Luke 17:33 "Whoever seeks
to keep his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” Living
is willingness to lose our life.

 

To Give

 Living a selfless life is not easy.
We should almost always think of other people, trying to see their perspective,
in placing our self in the shoes they are wearing. Only after that can we say
to our self that we know at least how they feel and what they need: spiritual
and physical.

 Matthew 10 gave us clear
illustration of freely receiving and freely giving. Here the Lord Jesus Christ
sent out his twelve disciples to the lost sheep of

Israel

preaching, healing and casting out demons; and blessing the house of anyone who
will welcome them. He gave the disciples a very strong reminder saying in
Matthew 10:8 “Freely you received, freely you give.”

 God gave us his son to die on the
cross to redeem us with the purpose of us to live with Him. Paul and the other
apostles died and martyred because of the gospel. They gave their life to share
God’s love because Christ gave his life to save them and to those who would
accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. After we received the gift of God we need to
share it to other people as well. When we share we use our talents and special
gifts from God. What is the purpose of our talents if we will not us it for the
advancement of the

kingdom

of

God

?
We have a choice whether to use God’s gift for His glory and we may use it for
our damnation. As a pastor, I believe that our talents and special gifts should
be exercised in proper perspective – for the glory of God. Sharing is an
equivalent of giving. Therefore, we live in this world with a purpose of
sharing/ giving our life to our brothers and sisters.

Our
work is to share and God’s work is to call and save. When God calls, He calls
us till the end of line. We are not called for just a day or two. We are called
for life. God’s call will only end when we reach to the bottom of our temporary
life – death.

To Die

 Death has a negative connotation.
But Paul said, for him to die is gain. Death is something Christians must look
forward too. There is always an end in everything we do. And for us Christians,
the end is death and death is the beginning of eternal life.

That
is why in Evangelism Explosion, they always ask two diagnostic questions about
after life. The questions are: (1) Have you come to the place in your thinking
where you know for sure if you died today in an accident, that you
have eternal life? (2) If you died today in an accident and stood
before God and He said to you, “Why should I let you into my Heaven?” What
would you say? Death is one of the
important words to focus on in this question. Therefore, dying is something we
should look forward too as children of God. My aim in life is to live to die.
We can not live for a long time. Death will eventually be happening after quite
some time.

Knowing
that death is inevitable in this temporary world, we should double our effort in
performing what we have to do in this world. As a pastor, my reason for living
in this world is to give; and to die is the only way for me to meet eternity.
(Assuming of course that the second coming of Christ will not happen before I
die)    

 

To Meet

 Meeting the Lord is the highlight of
every Christian in this world. This is the reason why I accepted the Lord Jesus
Christ as my Lord and Savior in the first place. In my service to God, my goal
is to fight a good fight, to finish the race and continually keeping the faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that when I meet the Lord He may say “Well done my
good and faithful servant.”  

 There is nothing on earth that I
would desire to have except to be with the Lord forever. And that leads me to
this philosophy: “TO LIVE IS TO GIVE, TO DIE IS TO MEET” 

 

 

Why G.I.V.E ?

 People might ask why – to give? Well
I used the mnemonic of the Word ‘GIVE’.

To
live is to Generously Give love, care and concern to people

To
live is to Influence
people in Biblical truth

To
live is to Value eternal
life 

To
live is to Equip
believers

 

 

 

 

Generously Give Love, Care and Concern

I believe that as a pastor I should generously give unconditional
love to my flocks. In truth, it is so idealistic in nature when we think about
it, but is it not what the Lord would require us to do – to love
unconditionally? Because I believe that we need to be like Christ in anyway. We
are being called to lead and to serve His people and by doing so, we need to
treat them with an unconditional love. But we should not forget it should be
done with wisdom. We need to always deal everything with wisdom. When we
unconditionally love a believer we should always put wisdom on it. Or else we
might be deceived by the evil one with temptations and accusations.

Satan will always track us with a handcuff-eye in everything
we do. We should therefore be alert, careful and observant in the love we give
for we might be misinterpreted with our actions. Prevention is better than
cure.

But what is love? According to 1Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy,
it does not boast, it is not proud. It
is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no
record of wrongs. Love does not
delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.” Where
wisdom should be needed is if we over protect, if we give more time to members
than to our own family (extremely speaking), if we tend to be so close with one
member over another especially with opposite sex and so on.

Epitomizing the love of God is essential to all Christians
therefore as shepherd we should be the first to set an example. As we imitate the
love of Christ, we should also imitate the way he cares for his people – the
way He cared for his disciples.

King David is a good model whenever we talk about caring for
the flock. He testifies in the book of Psalms how good God is as a caring
shepherd. We then can take all our lesson of caring through the book of Psalm.
As shepherds of God’s people, we should watch over his sheep. We should feed
them with spiritual food, reach out to their family and know them better as a
person; to care for them is to pray for them by name and to visit them in their
homes. With this we can show our concern to them.

Showing concern means to cry with our brothers and sisters
when they are in pain, laugh with them when they are rejoicing, and enjoy life
with them as we serve the Lord together.

 Influence
People

A good leader should be a good influencer. If a person can
not influence other people he can not lead them. Of course we are talking about
positive influencing. As pastors, our lifestyle should be contagious to our
members, meaning we need to set as a good example to our flocks; not only that,
we also need to be an encourager.  All of
this should be based on a biblical truth. Pastors learn from the Bible, live
what they have learned and use it to encourage the flock. Then influencing will
follow. The most important of all in influencing is for us practice what we
teach/preach and do what we say. I believe that the only down fall of a pastor
in the ministry is when the flock does not have any respect in their shepherd.

 Value
Life

According to Dr. Arnold Schweitzer, every living being
deserves to be treated with value. Indeed, life should be valued. We should
give importance to life. As pastors, we are to value life. At least to value
our own life in the way God wanted it to be. Christ died on the Cross to give
us life. John

10:10

says, “I come
that you may have life and have it to the full.” Who should have it to the
full? Pastors only? No, it is for all the believers. What hurt me the most is
when I hear a reverend say that we do not need to share the gospel per se because if one person is elected
and predestined by God to be a Christian he/she will surely be saved. This kind
of shepherd should not be in his position. I am not saying that what he says
was wrong but we need to remember that Jesus says go and make disciples of all
nations. We need to value the life of those people. They should hear the good
news so that they may be able change. We are God’s ambassador. And valuing the
life of every people is our advocacy.

Some believers do not value their life. They thought being a
Christian is a Sunday outfit. We need to realize that to value life means
loosing it. We should leave our sinful life and start living a life that
glorifies God. Paul considered his credentials as dung, for him the only trophy
of life is the righteousness of God that was made possible through Christ. For
Paul, life is not valuable when you only think of the temporary life. The life
we value the most is the life eternal, eternal life in Heaven.

 Equip
Believers

Timothy and Titus are just some of the people Paul discipled
and equipped. Paul trained them to be leaders of the church. We too, as pastors
should equip our sheep to be well verse in the Bible, to disciple them to do
missions and evangelism, to disciple them to be able to disciple others, and to
educate them very well in a Christian living.

Conclusion:

 “With Holy calling comes great
responsibility.” Therefore we need to take heed of God’s calling and never
wander. To live is to generously give, influence people, value life and equip
believers. To God be the glory. Amen!