by Roger Alcaraz

Every Christian needs a few key verses in their life to remind them to have the right perspective towards ministry. Whether we’re in full time ministry or not, if we’re not reminding ourselves of God’s truth, then we will often minister according to our own wisdom and strength and it will inevitably be worthless before God. That’s why I personally made a list of 10 verses (three are included in the article) to meditate on occasionally to remind me of the type of ministry I want and the type of minister I want to be. Hopefully you can make a list of your own to help you in your ministry to never stray away from God’s word.

Psalm 119:9,11

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word…I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

I remember memorizing this verse early in my Christian walk because it reminded me of means by which we pursue purity; it’s through God’s word. God’s word is the instrument by which the agent, the Holy Spirit, sanctifies his people. I’m not the one who can produce repentance or purity in others’ lives. But that’s not what I’m called to do. What I am called to do is present the word as faithfully as possible so that the Holy Spirit can bring about holiness in a person’s life.

It really is the reason I’m in seminary. It’s so I can get a better handle of the meaning of God’s word so I can deliver it as undamaged as possible. If the gospel is the precious medicine that can save people and deliver them from the bondage of sin, then I’m just the delivery boy. This verse reminds me of the simplicity of pastoral ministry. And while “simple” doesn’t mean “easy”, it does relieve a lot of pressure and causes me to trust God who is the only one able to cause a real change in someone.

Matthew 22:37-40

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This has shaped every aspect of my ministry because this verse is really the fuel for it all. Everything the church does needs to be done with the love for God and people as the motivation. This is important because Jesus says that the whole law can be paraphrased by those two commands, meaning that every command of God was meant as a means of loving God and people. A simple example would be the 10 commandments in which the first four deal with loving God and the remaining six deal with loving people. There are, of course, hundreds of more laws than those 10, but if hundreds of laws could be summarized in a few short words, then those words must be important.

From a ministerial point of view, it means that I can’t lose sight of why I do the things I do. I imagine the workload of a pastor and how busy it can make someone. It can be easy for the pastorate to become the list of tasks to complete each week and for it to become routine. I imagine there are many people who enter the ministry with the right motivation and with a vision to see the name of Christ exalted. Then as the pressure bears upon them, the love for God and people become less on their minds until one day the pastor and even the church itself becomes lifeless. Sure, maybe there are activities and even sound teaching, but the members are simply going through the motions, participating or serving because that’s what they’ve always done or because no one else is doing it.

One of the sharpest examples of this is Christ’s address to the Ephesian church in Revelation 2 where he commends them for certain things but holds something weighty against them, that they forgot the love they had at first. It’s a danger all churches face and it reminds us to always be cultivating that deep love for God first and foremost, and then out of that, a love for one another. Apart from doing these, we cannot please God in anything we do.

2 Timothy 2:2

what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

I may be only 27, but I am a grandfather. Not biologically of course, but spiritually. I have discipled and led people to Christ who have turned around and discipled and led others to Christ. So far, there’s only two generations after me but I’m always telling the people I disciple this verse and that I want great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. For me, Wayne Hu is my grandpa. He invested in a friend of his named Kevin Au who later invested in me. And when I say invest, I don’t just mean he shared the gospel so that I’m saved and he could leave. I mean he taught the gospel to me and then for the next three years trained me in how to study the Bible, how to share the gospel with others, what God’s word says, and how to be a godly man. And to this day I still remember one of his final lessons for me. He told me that I need to take the things I’ve learned and pass them along to someone else to keep the cycle going. And that’s what I have been doing for different people. What’s amazing is that I follow the same pattern that I saw before me. After seeing a person saved, I entrust to them the things that I have heard and tell them they need to do the same for others.

This pattern will follow me in ministry because I will always be investing in people and if it doesn’t yield fruit beyond the person, it wasn’t a very good investment. I remember I was given a group of mature believers for small group last year, so what we did was go through a series on sharing the gospel and biblical counseling and I gave them the homework of finding a younger guy and invest in him. The amazing thing is that they all were able to do this within 2 weeks and I’ve seen the fruits of their labor in these people’s lives, either by maturing in their faith or by being saved. If I become a pastor, I know not all of the work of ministry will be on me, but I want everyone to be investing in people for the sake of building up the church and reaching the lost.