THE key to health ministry is the same, actually, as to all other aspects of the ministry. Paul describes it in Ephesians 3:8:
"Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."
Paul was humbled under a deep and constant sense of his own unworthiness and of the wonder and glory of his calling. It never left him. "Unto me, who am less than the least," he wrote, "is this grace given." It was a gift and a grace from God in Christ. He in no way had earned the right or privilege.
What was the theme of Paul's preaching? The unsearchable riches of Christ. This must also be our theme and our passion. Preachers who are not proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ are not truly preaching. A preacher cannot truly or effectively preach Christ unless he himself can say with Paul, "I know whom I have believed." "For me to live is Christ." This is experimental knowledge. It will add a divine plus to our ministry that a merely theoretical knowledge of the truth cannot give.
Our urgent and constant need in the proclamation of our entire message, including, of course, the health message, is the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts. "Without this," we are told, "we are no more fitted to go forth to the world than were the disciples after the crucifixion of their Lord." --Selected Messages, book 1, p. 411. A searching and stirring challenge is given to us by God's servant in Christ's Object Lessons, p. 328:
It is the absence of the Spirit that makes the gospel ministry so powerless. Learning, talents, eloquence, every natural or acquired endowment, may be possessed; but without the presence of the Spirit of God, no heart will be touched, no sinner be won to Christ.
How earnestly we should long for this element in our preaching, this mysterious something that defies analysis but in which the moving power of our messages and our sermons unquestionably rests. Under such preaching the preacher seems to fade out and the hearers are brought face to face with God.
It is quite evident that there is a traceable connection between this "plus of the spirit," or unction, and man's inner life of communion with God. It is just not found in those preachers, how ever great their natural gifts and powers, whose devotional life is shallow and fitful. The people soon know when they have a man of God in the pulpit, whether he comes to his task from the higher levels of communion with God or from the lower levels of common everyday tasks. I know from my own experience that when my devotional life is neglected, authority goes out of the word I am given to deliver. But when in penitence I pray myself close to God again, He adds His divine plus once more.
Brethren, who of us is sufficient for these things? An increase of saints, in and out of the pulpit, will increase the power of the church in the world. The world does not despise the church because it is holy, but because it is not holy enough. The great Methodist preacher, W. E. Sangster, wrote in his book, The Pure in Heart: "God never gets nearer to an unsurrendered man than when he calls to him in a saint." --Page 142.
This God calls us all to be. Our words may falter. Our presentations may lack in many respects, but if the love of God flows through us the people will say, "There is a man of God. He loves us. He loves us dearly." And they will turn toward the road that leads home.
Paul knew the glory of his calling. He was also deeply conscious of its perils. "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway" (1 Cor. 9:27).
Perhaps one of the greatest perils facing every minister is the peril of the lost vision. It is closely allied to what we have been saying.
Isaiah was given a vision of the holiness and glory of God. In the day of crisis and darkness for the children of Israel he saw the Lord, high and lifted up. He beheld the glory of God. He heard the angels singing, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." In this hour of darkness and spiritual crisis, how greatly our God needs a ministry whose eyes are upon His glory, His truth, and His power. When we have been alone with God and His Word, there have been times when we have been lifted into His presence and felt His glory and power. This is the vision we dare not lose. If we do, our work will become commonplace. We have no real power, no magic weapon by which sin will be crippled and destroyed.
The love of God in Christ is still the most drawing and transforming power in the world today. Someone has said, "Our visions determine the quality of our tasks." We must not be content to remain on the lower levels of mediocre service. I have seen a young man enter the ministry with great hopes and bright visions of the preacher and the worker he wanted to be, but somehow through the years the vision has faded. Somewhere along the road he became disillusioned. Difficult experiences affected him and he lost faith in his fellow workers. His service became mediocre and unsatisfying because the heavenly vision had faded. This is the road many have followed to a deadly impotency in their ministry.
Another peril challenges us the perilous gravitation of the world. We meet this danger every where, but it is nowhere more dangerous than in the Christian ministry. Worldly compromise takes the mediocre line between white and black. It is an ambiguous gray. Such a minister is not one thing or the other. He is at home with the sinner as well as with the saint. There is nothing distinctive about his character. The wine is "mixed with water" (Isa. 1:22). He is led into a spirit of worldly compromise and tends to go after the showy, the spectacular, and the dramatic. He loses the beautiful grace of simplicity. My brethren, let simplicity and earnestness characterize our presentation of the gospel whether it is the gospel of health or our great doctrinal truths.
The spirit of worldly compromise will be manifested in many ways in our dress, our habits, our conversation, and our enterprises. I knew of one minister who could not accept a call to the mission field because he was too involved in real estate!
When the television, the daily newspaper, and secular interests take the place of communion with God and the devotional reading of His Word, our ministry will be come unspiritual and secular. What a pathetic sight to find a man who thus has been separated from the God he vowed to serve. His speech will lack a strange impressiveness. He may be eloquent, but he will not persuade. He preaches much, but accomplishes little. He may be busy, but his work is futile.
One of our elderly sisters wrote the following to her pastor who had evidently disappointed her in some way: "We as sheep want humble, spiritual shepherds. We do not care for eloquence, and we are disappointed and pained when we see self exhibited in our ministers. No man amounts to anything unless Christ is in his heart. Please keep close to Jesus for your own sake, as well as for ours." May God make us the kind of shepherds that our people long for us to be.
I have mentioned two great perils facing the gospel ministry, but our resources are infinitely greater than our perils, and the one is more than sufficient for the other. Any calling without difficulties would not be worth our choice. May we be made sensitive to the cry of the sick and suffering world.
J. H. Jowett, that devout preacher, once said, "We can never heal the wounds we do not feel. Tearless hearts can never be the heralds of the passions. We must pity if we would redeem. We must bleed if we would be the ministers of the saving blood." --The Passion for Souls, p. 34.
As we seek to help others in our health ministry, we are completely dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit. The energy of the flesh can organize programs, raise funds, and promote activities. We may be able to present interesting health lectures and features, and many may be convinced that our health principles are sound and stimulating. But this is not sufficient. We must have the convicting, converting power of the Holy Spirit in our health presentations. It is in this sense that our health ministry must differ from health education as practiced by the secular world.
How can we experience the wonder and glory that comes from communicating the unsearchable riches of Christ in the setting of our marvelous health message? By steadfastly, scrupulously keeping our appointment with the Master in the upper room. We must take time to be holy, to be alone with God.
Prayer is a spiritual work, and flesh and blood oftentimes resist it. But here is the secret. Here we catch the heavenly vision. Here God speaks to our hearts and our souls. Here His Word purifies us and fits us and prepares us to effectively communicate what we have seen and known.
Wilbur Chapman, the great American preacher, went to London. He had heard about William Booth, the powerful leader of the Salvation Army, and wanted to learn from him the secret of his success as a preacher. When he met him, he found that Booth was an old man of 85. He talked with him for a while, then asked a question: "Mr. Booth, I have read about your preaching. I have heard about your power. Tell me the secret of it." Mr. Booth looked into the face of Wilbur Chapman and said, "Mr. Chapman, there have been men with greater brains than I have; there have been men with greater talents than I have. But when I got the poor of London on my heart, I determined that God would have all of William Booth there was. If there has been anything of success, if there has been anything of power, if there has been any thing of blessing in my ministry, it is only because God has had all the strength of my intellect, all the power of my will, all the adoration of my heart." Then he said to Mr. Chapman, "Let us pray." The old man fell on his knees with tears running down his cheeks and poured out his heart to God for a lost world. Chapman later re ported, "I knew again that the greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender."
This is the key to a Spirit-filled health ministry. Our own hearts and lives must be so overflowing with the unsearchable riches of Christ and so dedicated to His work that all to whom we minister will know that we are workers sent from God.
