If You Still Think You've Arrived

From Gospel Translations

Editors’ note: Last week Paul Tripp offered four warning signs that pastors think they’ve arrived:

• Think you don’t need what you preach.
• Not be open to the ministry of the body of Christ.
• Expect of others the perfection that you think you’ve achieved.
• Feel qualified for more control.

He concludes this week with five additional signs of trouble and news of one great Deliverer.

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Won't feel the need for daily meditative communion with Christ.

Personal worship is not first about how many times you have read through your Bible. It is not about once again working through your favorite devotional or commentary. It is not about going back over your sermon notes. All of these things must be seen and used as aids for a more foundational thing: the humble, daily, personal, meditative, joyful worship of God. It is beginning or ending your day with communion with Christ. It is the regular habit of "gazing up the beauty of the Lord."

Communion with Christ is fueled by humility. Communion with Christ is fueled by sadness and celebration. Communion with Christ is propelled by an accurate sense of who you are, what you need, and a celebration of the One who gives it. Awareness of sin and the promise of salvation daily drives you to Christ, not to rush through a passage in his Word and say a quick prayer, but to sit at his feet and grieve your sin and give praise for the grace that meets you in it. Assessments of arrival crush personal worship.

Take credit for successes that only grace can produce.

We give pastors too much credit for what only powerful, divine, sovereign grace has the power to accomplish. Then having given the instrument too much credit, we run to the conference or buy the book so we can do what our ministry hero has done.

Can we learn from others? Of course. Can ingredients of a healthy ministry be identified? Yes. Should we be thankful for dedicated servants of the Lord and communicate our thanks? It would be wrong not to. But we must reserve our adoration (whether of self or of another) for the Lord. We cannot remind ourselves enough that without his presence, power, and grace our ministries are nothing.

Feel entitled to what you could never earn or achieve.

Entitlement always seems to follow pride. If you think you've earned ______, then you will think you deserve ______. Now carrying around not only pride but also entitlement, you will tend to turn blessings into demands and gifts of grace into the expected. We must never forget that we have earned neither our standing with the Lord nor our place in ministry. Each moment he accepts us and each situation when he uses us result from one thing and one thing alone: grace.

We have no right before God or others to self-assuredly stand with our hands out. We are independently entitled to nothing but his anger; only grace entitles us to his accepting love. The smug expectation of blessing will cause you to not only question the appreciation of the people around you but also the goodness of God.

Be less than watchful and protective when it comes to temptation and sin.

Arrival causes you to be too self-assured; being self-assured causes you to make unwise choices; unwise choices expose you to temptation and sin; pride causes you to think you can handle the exposure; and before long you have fallen. Arrival causes you to forget the daily war in your heart and to live with a peacetime mentality. Because you think of yourself more highly than you ought, you don't build necessary precautions into your spiritual lifestyle.

You live in the middle of the "already" and the "not yet." There is temptation all around. In the middle you are still susceptible to its draw. In the middle there is still an enemy lurking around looking for his next meal. In the middle we are capable of self-deceit and personal delusion. In the middle we still need to be rescued from ourselves. In the middle we must always live humble, concerned, and protective lives. In the middle we constantly need grace's rescue.

Load more on your ministry than you can responsibly handle.

Pride causes you to accept more responsibility than you can bear. Arrival allows you to assign more ministry work to yourself than you can realistically accomplish. Self-glory causes you to think you're essential, more necessary than you will ever be. It's pride, not humility, that makes it hard for you to say "no." It's pride that makes it hard for you to live within the limits of your true character and strength.

I am persuaded that much of the tension between family and ministry is caused by arrival. We know that God won't call us to keep one command in a way that would cause us to break another. So if, over the long haul, our family suffers neglect because of our ministry, it is because we are doing things in ministry that we should not be doing because we wrongly assessed that we can handle more than we are able to handle.

What about you? Is there evidence of the fruit of arrival in your ministry? Let this two-part article generate humble self-assessment. You and I are still a bit of a mess. Yes, by grace we often get it right, but we also often get it completely wrong. Sometimes we exuberantly celebrate the Lord, and sometimes we are just full of ourselves. Sometimes we are deeply grateful, but sometimes we are entitled and demanding. Sometimes we lead with a pastoral heart, and sometimes we are fearful, self-interested, and political. Sometimes, as broken people, we meet people in their brokenness with the gospel, but sometimes in pride we just want people to buck up like we have. Sometimes we live and work with God's kingdom in view, but sometimes we love ourselves and have a wonderful plan for our lives.

The great spiritual war doesn't only rage outside of us. There is ample evidence every day that it still rages inside of us. Gospel-driven, Christ-centered ministry, one that gives grace to those who hear, doesn't start with theological knowledge; it starts with a humble heart. It starts with recognition of your own need and the acknowledgment that you and I are more like than unlike the people to whom God has called us to minister. And for this we have the grace of Jesus.