I find there is a persistent temptation in my life and ministry—the temptation to just finish my own race faithfully.
“What’s wrong with that?” you ask. It sounds fairly biblical, almost Pauline. “I just want to finish the race. I don’t want to be disqualified but be found faithful to the end.” Which is well and good, unless the understanding of faithfulness to the gospel is limited to my allotted three score years and ten, or if by reason of strength, four score.
I don’t know about you, but the challenges and weight of pastoral ministry can sometimes reduce my ambitions to, “Lord, just help me to be faithful to the end.”
On the flipside of that temptation is the fact that maintaining a passion for the future can be difficult, especially a future beyond our sight. It’s easy to be passionate about my children’s well-being or even their children’s well-being. But it’s hard to maintain that passion much beyond three generations without falling into abstraction.
I share all this to say, it’s easy to regard something as good as gospel faithfulness too much in terms of our own tenure. What we need, therefore, is to view faithfulness in gospel
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