Dear Friends,
Please forgive me for not posting on the blog in over a month. It seems that life in the Wellinghoff household just STAYS busy, no letting up! I hear this question often from people I talk with: How do you work 60+ hours a week and have time for your family, and also plant a new church? My response is usually the same every time: I stay on my knees. Not always in the physical sense but certainly in the spiritual sense, praying without ceasing for God to move in my workplace, my family, and my church planting field of Princeton, IN.
Whether from the outside or from the inside of the
church, the Adversary will stop at nothing to try to disrupt and dismantle the
body of Christ. But these struggles are not the demise of God’s people. On the
contrary, they are our opportunities to apply biblical principles and
priorities—the only solutions to the challenges we face.
We must keep our fingers on the pages of Scripture like a
boat moored to the pier in a raging storm. While we do not worship the print on
the page, the paper and ink lead us to the knowledge of the One whom we do
worship—Jesus, our Master and Savior.
WE NEED TO STAY ON OUR KNEES. Prayer is a radical interference with the status quo. It is the means by which
God grants power to those who rely on Him. This dependence never changes. Even
as a sixty-something-year-old man who had been preaching faithfully for years,
the apostle Paul continued to walk in a state of dependence on God. You have to
love Paul’s humility.
“Devote yourselves
to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the
same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so
that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been
imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.”
(Colossians 4:2–4)
There was no pretense with Paul. No degree of success or
number of years in the ministry gave him a false sense of ultimate
accomplishment. He knew he had not yet arrived. He remained dependent on the
Spirit of God. And so with a genuinely thankful heart, he entreated his fellow
believers for their prayers. Can you see the power of that kind of attitude?
Very refreshing in the first century. And very rare in the twenty-first. No
wonder the man made such a lasting impact for Christ! The Lord honored and
blessed Paul’s ministry because he upheld prayer and promoted God’s Word.
Rather than trying to copy the world’s system, God points
us in another direction. It’s a way of life that stays out of step with the
world and yet is not aloof from those in the world.
The early church did not ask God to bless their gimmicks. So,
the church today does not need gimmicks to attract people—it needs pastors who
lead prayerfully (from their knees), preach and teach biblical truth passionately, and live out Christianity authentically.
Love in Christ,
Pastor Paul
