I shared this quotation at the conclusion of
this week's sermon. I hope it encourages you as you consider what it means for you work for Christ.
"FOR MEN WHO claim the name of Christ, there are two distinct courses of life available. One is to cultivate a small heart. This by far seems the safest way to go because it minimizes the sorrows of life. If our ambition is to dodge the troubles of human existence, the formula is simple: avoid entangling relationships, do not give yourself to others, and be sure not to seriously embrace elevated and noble ideals. If we do this, we will escape a host of afflictions...
The other path is to cultivate a ministering heart. Open yourself to others, and you will become susceptible to an index of sorrows scarcely imaginable to a shrivelled heart. Enlarge and ennoble your ideals, and your vulnerability will increase proportionately… No one has ever cultivated a ministering heart and lived to tell of a life of ease.
Of course the effects of these two kinds of hearts are drastically different. Little hearts, though safe and protected, never contribute anything. No one benefits from their restricted sympathies and vision. On the other hand, hearts that have embraced the discipline of ministry – though they are vulnerable – are also the hearts which possess the most joy and leave their heart-print on the world.
Cultivate deafness and we will never hear discord, but neither will we hear the glorious strains of a great symphony. Cultivate blindness and we will never see ugliness, but we also will never see the beauty of God’s creation. Or, to put this in terms of our common experience, never play baseball and you will never strike out, but you will also never hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded to the win the game!
”Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man. (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991) pages 193-194.