Dear Rose Park,
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Some of it has been mindless summer reading (two Jack Reacher novels), others have been a refresher in our creeds and confessions (e.g. the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belhar Confession), but a bulk of my reading has been related to my doctorate program. One book in particular stands out in my mind.
During the 1600’s an English pastor by the name of Richard Baxter wrote a book entitled The Reformed Pastor. Baxter was a Nonconformist and was eventually expelled from the Church of England (this is another story for another letter). Baxter and I wouldn’t agree on every theological point, but as it relates to personal faith development and maturation we are on the same page. In his book, Baxter speaks directly to pastors and writes, “When your minds are in a holy, heavenly frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers, and praises, and doctrine will be sweet and heavenly to them. They will likely feel when you have been much with God: that which is most on your hearts, is like to be most in their ears.”
I hope and pray this is true. If I could give my younger self advice, I think it would be to spend more time with God in prayer because the church will be blessed by your devotion with God. But this truth goes beyond the pastor because it applies to all of us. Rose Park will be blessed when you spend more time with God. The local and regional church will be blessed when we consecrate time for God. The global Church will be blessed when your heart is postured around God.
Unfortunately, the opposite is just as true. Baxter continues, “When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused; and so I can oft observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching, they have grown cold too……we are the nurses of Christ’s little ones. If we forbear taking food ourselves, we shall famish them; it will soon be visible in their leanness, and dull discharge of their several duties.”
When we grow closer to God through prayer, worship, and study it is not merely for our own benefit. It also benefits those around us. We will love our families more faithfully and graciously when we first consider and marinate in God’s love for us. We will listen and forgive our friends more easily when we first consider God’s forgiveness of our sins. We will serve our communities more willingly and lovingly when we first consider how God the Son put on flesh to be among us.
This is all to say, as we inch our way closer to a new year of ministry, might you consider spending more time with God so that you might grow closer to Him and by extension others might catch a glimpse of the Kingdom.
Grace & Peace,
