Words of a Good Shepherd

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.
—1 John 4:18 NIV

If God is for us, who can be against us?
—Rom. 8:31 NIV

We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us!
—Rom 8:37 NIV

Several weeks ago, a young man stood on the ledge of a bridge, threatening to jump off. Some years back, a twenty-five-year-old man stood on the eighteenth-floor ledge of a hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York for eleven hours. He was spotted by the noonday crowds on their way to lunch. He was standing between two windows that opened onto the ledge spaced in such a manner that he could not be reached. If anyone attempted to go out of the window after him, he threatened to jump. It was an agonizing day of suspense. Through the afternoon, he smoked cigarettes and waited. Thousands waited on the street below to witness the death of a fellow creature. Relatives and friends, including his sister and former classmates, psychologists, priests, and ministers, went to the window and pleaded with the young man. He quietly smiled, and said, “I want to be left alone.”
After dark, the floodlights were turned on. A friendly patrolman went to the window and begged him to come off. He replied, “I wish someone could convince me that life is worth living.” Shortly thereafter, he leaped to his death.
Thirty thousand people in our country will take their lives this year because they will conclude that life is not worth living.
They will include students who after great effort will fail examinations; lovers who are betrayed by their lovers; persons convicted of embarrassing crimes; brokenhearted mothers and fathers; wealthy people who have lost their riches; healthy people who have lost their health. There will also be those who find life leading to a dead-end street.
Even good people find it difficult to have courage when life’s choicest hopes crumble, when cherished friendships are broken and loved ones are hushed in death. It’s not easy to stand up to life when life’s clouds engulf us and when it seems that all around our soul gives way. It’s not easy to have courage when earthly joy and beauty fade.
The question is asked: is life worth living?
The best of us have moments of discouragement, disgust, frustration, and despair when we need to be reminded that God loves us. Even when earth borne clouds of darkness surround us, we are surrounded by a love that will not let us go. Because God loves us, life is worth living. All else can appear against us, but God is always for us.
We need to be firmly grounded in faith to stand up to life. God is for us, and we can have faith in His trustworthiness. When all around our soul gives way, He then is all our hope and stay. When we have faith in God’s love, life is meaningful and worth living.
In 1 John 4:18 RSV, we are told that “perfect love cast out fear.” Nothing can pluck us out of the Father’s hand. Nothing can separate us from His love. He can dispel the clouds of darkness and reveal His light.
He is not only the creator of the boundless universe, but He is a friend beside us on life’s perplexing highways and seas. Because He is beside us, we can face bitter moments of life.

A PROFILE OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER
(Given on the anniversary of a pastor)
Never has there been a period in history when the need for ministers to set an example of true Christian living has been greater. We have preachers springing up from everywhere today. This past Friday, a thirty-year-old man approached me about offering him instruction for preaching. He wanted to be a preacher and get him a church. A minister had told him that the only thing he needed was to learn how to preach, and it would require only about two months if he found the right teacher. His concern was to be able to stand before a congregation and give an acceptable sermon.
My response to him was that the ministry is different from any other profession. The doctor chooses medicine; the lawyer chooses law; the teacher chooses teaching, but the minister is chosen. He enters the ministry because there is, in one sense, no other choice. God moves on the minds and hearts of those who are called ministers in such a way that they have no other choice. I also said to him that the Christian minister not only preaches the gospel of Christ, but he or she puts the gospel in action in his or her daily life. He or she tries not only to tell people how to live the Christian life, but through the grace of God, he or she shows them.
We pay tribute today to a minister who not only preaches about the Christ like way but who strives to live it. The Christian minister is one who seeks to do in his life what he can never effectively do through his preaching or teaching. The Christian minister has something sacred on the inside that shows on the outside. It is seen in his walk. It is seen in his talk. It is seen in the manner in which he looks at people. He has had a firsthand experience with Christ the Lord and has that saving power within which comes from that experience.
The new birth in Christ is the beginning and end of preaching. The story of salvation must be told by one who knows it, not by one who has merely heard about it. The great preachers are the Christian ministers who know Christ the Lord firsthand. Their preaching is to get people to get a taste of the redeeming love of God in Christ.
In the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, the apostle paints a picture of Jesus as he lifts love as the supreme gift. Jesus can be substituted where love is used in that great chapter. It is a description of Jesus. In concluding the chapter, Paul lists the three greatest gifts that a Christian can possess: “so faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13 RSV).
The Christian minister possesses these three qualities, which he or she attempts to pass on to those in his or her congregation. He has not only lifted these great qualities of the Christian life to you in his preaching and in his teaching, but through his life.
He has shown you a faith strong enough for the darkness. There have been difficult moments, trying times during his years. No minister serves a church many years without facing dark days. Dark days test our faith in God. God does not send dark days in the life of a church. Members bring them on through their failure to let Christ be Lord. We push His way of love aside and seek to have our way. We become selfish and mean and get the church in an uproar. The Christian minister, faced with the raging storms, maintains his faith in God. He is convinced the Lord is going to work it out. When the ship confronts the troubling waters, the Christian minster has the faith of the apostle Paul who declared when a ship was shipwrecked and in danger of sinking and the crew fearful, “So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God” (Acts 27:25 NIV). He has shown you faith when the ship was in danger.
He has not only shown in his ministry a faith that is unshakable, but the second great quality—that of hope. When the way has seemed unclear at times, he has managed to keep hope alive. When at the bedside of patients, when things did not look good, and the odds were not favorable, he has said to anxious family members, “Let’s have hope. God is able.”
The Christian minister is one who makes love his greatest aim. Love is the one gift that denotes discipleship. The greatest attribute of God is not power but love. The Christian patterns his or her life after God by loving. No minister can be Christ like without the capacity to love people. He cannot teach love and preach love without living it. He has sought to love with the God-type love expressed in terms of caring and sharing.