Pastoral ministry is a sacrificial call with unique challenges. We are called to take the Gospel to those with hard hearts and blind eyes.

To grow in your passion for what Jesus has done, increase your understanding of what He has done.

Never be content with your grasp of the gospel. The gospel is life-permeating, world-altering, universe-changing truth. It has more facets than any diamond. Its depths man will never exhaust.

Endurance in ministry is rooted in the eternal perspective. The absence of an eternal perspective makes you vulnerable to losing heart.

Pastoral ministry is about an ongoing confrontation with the god of this world, with blindness, hardness of heart, remaining sin.

I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the subtleties of sin and the persistence of evil, we would soon be living in moral anarchy and political chaos if there were no provision for justice.

God might choose his own time, but Reagan had a taste for coming to the rescue.