Favorite Preacher? This Answer Will Surprise You

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Over at SBCVoices Jared Moore put a post up Who is Your Favorite Preacher in the SBC? The best part of this post is the reader comments. That’s no disrspect at all to Jared, I believe he meant it that way. In the comments the readers share their favorites, past and present.

But here’s the best answer yet. A commenter, Max, posted this reply. I’ve posted his comment word-for-word, though I have broken it up into smaller chunks to make it blog-format-friendly. Let all of us who aspire to ministry, or are already in it, learn from the man he speaks of. Enjoy and be challenged.

My favorite SBC preacher is my son-in-law. His name is not important – Jesus knows who he is. He doesn’t have a website or audio links to his great sermons;[*] he’s not published or promoted by men. He has a BS degree from an SBC college and his Masters from an SBC seminary.

A passionate preacher, he commutes a long drive to work full days in a secular job so he can serve in a bi-vocational role in a small rural church, while raising his family. He’s a young pastor who has not been caught up in the pursuit of cool-church or mega-church, although much larger churches would be blessed to have him on staff. He’s not distracted from the field he has been given to follow current trends or teachings of men. He loves the folks in his small church and ministers to them daily – phone calls, hospital visits – he rejoices and he weeps.

His days are long, but he always finds time to get a fresh message from the Lord for the flock he shepherds. He stays up late in the Word and up early to pray. He preaches a Gospel that saves and keeps the baptismal water stirred – his church is growing as the Lord adds to their number.

He is faithful to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry and they love doing church together. He’s not satisfied that the mission entrusted to him be confined to a small radius, but yearns for a regional presence so that more souls will come to Jesus through the lighthouse under his care. He’s currently preparing the hearts of his people for a Fall revival and they might just have one.

Yep, my son-in-law would be my favorite preacher these days … but don’t tell him – I’m trying not to spoil him.

———–
(*) Yes, I acknowledge the irony of posting this on my site, and one where I have my sermons. However, in all fairness, I want to exalt Christ, not me. In fact, Max’s son-in-law is a hero and role model to me, and I don’t even know him. My few sermons are on here so readers can get to know me and so family far away can listen and I hope my non-Christian friends & family might one day be curious. In fact, pray they would! -AFR

Category: Ministry

What Three Words Sum Up Your Life?

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This morning I read the story of Joseph again. I thought about how, at about 17 years old, he had the personal fortitude to flee the lustful temptations of his master’s wife. His reasoning? After professing his loyalty to his master (her husband), which really was a loyalty to him greater than she had, he declares, “How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?” (Gen 39:9). It would be disloyal and wrong to dishonor his master, but it would be “great evil and sin” to dishonor God.

Off to prison he goes. Left to ponder his already unimaginable life–left for dead by his brothers, instead sold by them into slavery, taken against his will to a foreign land–things began to look up as he was number two in Potiphar’s house. Yet, once more, the floor of life collapses under him and drops him right into a dungeon. Little did he know he’d be there for 13 long years.

Miraculously delivered out of that situation, Joseph literally becomes a rags-to-riches story a second time when he is elevated to be the right-hand man of Pharaoh himself. After famine sends his brothers to him in search of grain and everything that happens after, they fail to see who it really is they are talking to. He gives them instructions as they head back to their father once more. And in those instructions he makes his declaration, “Do this and you will live, for I fear God…” (Gen 42:18).

There is much more to Joseph’s life; he lives many more years. But for our purposes today, let us be careful to observe one thing: the strength of the convictions. Joseph is a man’s man, and he is so because he is first God’s man.

Conviction–no matter how strong it is–is utterly meaningless in the end if it is not conviction in God. Plenty of people have survived prison camps, like Joseph, and come out with great courage, resolve, and conviction. Remarkable men and women, no doubt. But apart from Christ, everything is folly, in one form or another. Eternally speaking, the most noble act, birthed of the deepest conviction, means nothing if it is done apart from a foremost desire to glorify God. The critical difference is what, or rather Who our convictions are established upon. The biblical record shows that for over a quarter of a century leading up to Genesis 42, in a land full of pagan idolatry, Joseph unflinchingly declaring his allegiance to the God of his fathers, the Lord. And he would do so until his dying breath.

Everything we do as Christians must have the weight of the Joseph’s convictions and the anchor his convictions were secured to. You and I, if we are to be men and women as God designed us, must be like Joseph. Our spiritual backs must be straight, shoulders back, and chests out. We must stand tall against every temptation that is intended to dull us, or worse, destroy us. As is often the case, what is true spiritually is not true physically. Physically, our posture is the opposite: The world must see us bent forward in meekness, in humility serving everyone as we beg them to be reconciled to their Creator.

What does this mean practically? Have your coworkers seen it in your actions that your life screams, “I fear God”? Men, in her most private estimations of you, does your wife see it? (Or would she, if you’re not married?) How about your parents? In-laws? The people around you in bumper-to-bumper traffic? How about your Sunday calendar? Bank accounts? If you died suddenly and your loved ones turned over every stone of your estate in this life, what would they find? If they analyzed every file on every digital device you used, who would you be to them?

You want to leave a legacy? You want to leave your kids a legacy? Here’s the only legacy that matters:

“I fear God.”

Category: Challenge, Devotions, Scripture | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Horatius Bonar: The Enterprising Efforts of God and Man

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Horatius Bonar. Courtesy cyberhymnal.org

Presbyterian pastor and hymn writer Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) wrote a work, True Revivals & the Men God Uses. You can find it on the internet or get it in booklet form from Chapel Library. I was struck by this paragraph:

When man proceeds to the accomplishment of some mighty enterprise, he puts forth prodigious efforts, as if by the sound of his axes and hammers he would proclaim his own fancied might, and bear down opposing obstacles. He cannot work without sweat, and dust, and noise. When God would do a marvellous work, such as may amaze all heaven and earth, He commands silence all around, sends forth the still small voice, and then sets some feeble instrument to work, and straightway it is done! Man toils and pants, and after all effects but little: the Creator, in the silent majesty of power, noiseless yet resistless, achieves by a word the infinite wonders of omnipotence!

Have you noticed these in your own life? Can you think of times that, for all your “axes and hammers” you made only some progress? Who comes to mind as “feeble instruments” whom God has used over the centuries to accomplish His will? In the overall course of life, is it better to be strong and self-reliant or feeble and reliant upon God?

Category: Quotations | Tags: , , , , ,
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