Those who can see that they’ve been burned know what the fire can do, and they reach out to others in the flames. That takes courage. You can’t do ministry without being burned. There is no pain-free ministry.

There is an old story about an African village. One night there was a fire in a wooden building, and the whole family who was sleeping there died, except for a tiny baby boy. As the fire flared up, a stranger rushed in and carried the child to safety, and then vanished into the night.

In the morning, the village elders had to decide what should be done with him. No one knew how the child had escaped, but all felt it would be a privilege to adopt this child whom the gods had smiled on. So, the elders argued with one another about who should adopt the child until a young man stepped forward and insisted that it should be him. When they demanded to know why, he showed them his hands—they were burned.

After Jesus died and rose from the dead, He came to some discouraged believers and showed them His hands and His side. Jesus went into the fire for you. He endured the pains of hell for you. All so that you could be snatched like a burning stick from the fire!

This Jesus, with scars in His hands, comes to those He has rescued and says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Take up your share of the pain and cost of ministry in this fallen world.

Are you trying to do ministry without being burned? What is keeping you from taking up your cross and following the One who went to the cross and laid down His life for you?

If you’re going to be useful in ministry, you need to have a proper understanding of yourself and what God has done for you. Sin has damaged us all, but the Bible makes it clear that sin has done deeper damage to you and to me than staining our lives. It’s changed our nature. Like wood that’s been in a fire, sin burns. It consumes.

The Bible makes it clear that we’re sinners because we sin. It also teaches that we sin because we’re sinners. Behind our wrong actions, there is a damaged nature. Your greatest problem is not your behaviour. It is your nature that gives rise to your behaviour. Sin goes deeper than clothing stains or graffiti; it’s like wood burning.

Here is an appropriate way to describe a born-again, spirit-filled, I-read-my-Bible-every-day kind of Christian: “I am a burned stick” (see Zech. 3:2). That’s not the only thing the Bible says about you, and it certainly is not the most flattering thing, but the Bible makes it clear that you’re a burned stick. You’re a charred piece of wood, and you’ve been snatched from the fire.

One day you will be completely free from all the effects of sin in your life, but that will only happen when Christ comes again. Until then there will always be a charred side to you. When you understand that, it will help you to grow in humility, and it will also help you to grow in compassion and patience with others.

Can you see how you have been charred by your own sin? Thank God for snatching you (or ask Him to snatch you) from the fire. Can you name one person in your life who is being burned by his or her own sin? Bring this person before God right now.

“Those who doubt” would include those whose faith has been undermined and those whose faith has not yet been fully formed. There are many people like this today.

How are we to minister to folks who are confused about their faith? Jude says, “Do this with great compassion.” There’s a big difference between the child who struggles to do what’s right and the child who refuses to do what’s right. And there’s a big difference between the person who struggles to believe and the person who refuses to believe. Wonderfully, God can tell the difference.

Your ministry will be more effective if you can learn to be merciful to those who doubt. Imagine a lady who is widowed and six months later she is still struggling with questions. Her friend is losing patience with her, and so she says, “You should be over this by now. Are you going to trust God or not?”

Now imagine a middle-aged person who knows very little of the Bible but feels that he believes and that he wants to grow. So, he finds his way into a Bible study group, and someone in the group says about his church background, “Oh, dear! You wouldn’t learn very much there.” Don’t forget—God has placed many people around you—some whose faith may be unformed, and some whose faith may have been undermined.

Be compassionate toward those who don’t have the insight that you have. Remember, another person may struggle with a particular frailty that you know nothing about. Don’t expect other people to grasp in a week what you took twenty years to learn!

What “doubting” person is in your life right now?How can you show them mercy?

If you want to live a healthy Christian life, you need to learn to wait. The obvious question is, What does God want us to do while we are waiting?

The answer is that we are to give ourselves to ministry. God calls us to ministry. There are people in need all around us. So, from now until the day when Jesus comes or calls for us, we are to give ourselves to the work of ministry.

Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). You will find that God sustains you in your walk with Him as you give yourself to serving others. Maybe you are already doing this. Serving is part of who you are. If not, the best form of spiritual exercise for you would be to get out and do something that ministers to somebody else.

If your spiritual life is to be healthy, you need to build up your faith, you need to pray, and you need to keep yourself in God’s love. These are the private spiritual disciplines. But a healthy Christian life is more than just Jesus and me.

If all you have is a relationship with Jesus in which you know sweet times of prayer and study, then your Christian life is out of balance. It is not healthy. Spiritual health involves this dimension of ministry in which your life touches the lives of others.

A wise pastor once talked about “irrigating your soul in the joys and sorrows of your people.” Your own soul will be watered as you enter into the joys and sorrows of another person.

Be intentional about building this into your life. Look for ways to bring the blessing of God to others, to lighten somebody else’s load. Let there be someone who, at the end of today, has reason to thank God for you.

How could you be more intentional about ministry to others?

The people who bring menus to your table at a restaurant are called waiters or waitresses. They have no other agenda but to wait on you. They take your order, bring your food, and then make sure everything is all right.

Some people think God exists to wait on us, but the Bible tells us that our calling is to wait on Him. The purpose of our lives is to make ourselves wholly available to Jesus Christ, the guest of honour, who has come into this world.

Maybe you’ve had this experience. You go to a restaurant, and every time the waitress comes to your table, she wants to tell you another episode from her life. That’s inappropriate. The waitress is there to serve the guests. No one would be surprised if her manager soon let her go.

Jesus is the perfect model of waiting on God: He delights in the will of the Father, and He’s ready to do it even when it involves a cross. He says, “Don’t expect a trouble-free life. Expect joy and disappointment, pleasure and pain, unfathomable mysteries, unanswered questions, unresolved problems, and unfinished business. Will you take up your cross in all that and follow me?”

Think of the great disappointments of your life—the heartfelt prayers not yet answered, the great longings of your soul not yet satisfied. You can think of every one of these as invitations to come into God’s gym. He is saying to you, “You want this to be over. I want to make this useful.”

Evaluate your love for God. Are you moving toward or away from Jesus’ perfect model of waiting on God?

When Jude talks about waiting, the obvious question is, Don’t we already have God’s mercy? Yes. Don’t we already have Jesus Christ? Yes. Don’t we already have eternal life? Yes!

If we’ve already received these things, why does Jude tell us to wait? This is teaching us something important: All that you can experience in the Christian life is only a taste of what Christ has in store for you.

The Holy Spirit is a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come (2 Cor. 1:22). If you buy a home, the down payment is only a tiny fraction of your mortgage. Everything you experience of God in this life, every good gift from His hand, every blessing, and every pleasure is only a tiny advance on what God has in store for you.

Use the disappointments of life (the waiting) not only to detach yourself from the pursuit of paradise in this world, but to cultivate a healthy anticipation of what God has promised: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

What will life be like when the mercy of Christ brings you to everlasting life? Your body will be redeemed from the curse. Your relationships will be redeemed from the taint of sin. Your soul will be free to serve God as you always wished you could. All creation will be redeemed from the curse. You will be completely at home in the presence of God.

What is one disappointment that has you waiting right now? Pray about how it could help you detach yourself from the pursuit of paradise in this world.

Patience is what you need when things have not worked out as you hoped. Somewhere deep within every heart there is a dream of life as we want it to be. That dream is placed in your heart by God. The word “wait” reminds us that the dream will never be fulfilled in this life.

Our first parents were driven out of the garden of Eden. Paradise was lost, and the dream can no longer be fulfilled here because this world is under a curse. This is very hard for many of us to grasp. We easily become confused into thinking that we’re in paradise now.

Imagine buying a sign that says: “This is not paradise.” You might hang it over your front door. It would remind you that you’ll never have “the perfect family.” That would take a lot of pressure off everyone. Some couples ought to put that over the door to their bedroom. Perhaps you need to put it in your car. It would be a great sign to place over the entrance to your church.

The problem for many of us is that we expect more than God has ever promised in this life, and we’re constantly disappointed and frustrated. So, we run up massive debts, only to find out that paradise is beyond our grasp. You cannot create paradise in this world. The sooner you discover this, the sooner you will be able to break free from the pursuit of the advertiser’s dream.

When God calls you to wait, it is a wake-up call to reality. There are discoveries of God’s grace that you can make while you are waiting that you could never make if the longing of your heart was fulfilled. You cannot grow in patience when what you long for is given. The moment it becomes yours, the opportunity to wait for it and to grow has been lost.

Where could the reminder ,“This is not paradise”, most help you right now?

Once you see how important the theme of waiting is in the Bible, you’ll have new motivation to exercise this neglected area of the Christian life. Here are five passages on waiting:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. (Ps. 37:7)

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. (Ps. 130:5-6)

They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. (Is. 40:31)

You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven. (1 Thes. 1:9-10)

Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Heb. 9:28)

Waiting seems to be a complete waste of time, so we often look for something to do while we’re waiting. That’s why there are magazines in the doctor’s waiting room. We try to fill up the time with something useful.

We think of waiting as something to endure in order to get what we want. But God speaks about waiting as the way we grow when we don’t have what we want. Waiting is not wasted time.

Waiting can be the greatest growth opportunity of your life.

What are you waiting for right now? Do you see this waiting as the greatest growth opportunity of your life, a waste of time, or something else?