Ministering to the Lord by Paul Washer

https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/visit.php?lid=27812

This sermon is phenomenal and well worth the listen. I absolutely loved it. One reason why it impacted me so much is because the Lord has been dealing with me on this very issue for several weeks. This was another resource that God placed in my life unexpectedly (for me, not for Him) to bolster what He has been teaching me.

Some big take aways, that I loved:

--This sermon present a very clear definition and application for what it means to do everything for the glory of the Lord.

--This sermon helps clarify what true worship can look like. We live in a wold that revels in the emotional aspects of worship, but neglects truth, thereby making worship a man-centered activity. Definitely loved this clarification.

--This helped me define some of the "roads" I can take as a believer. Someone roads that I take may seem like they are good, but the end stops short of glorying in the Lord. For example, I could do what the Lord says, motivated by a heart that simply likes to follow the rules. The end of that road is legalism and works-righteousness. It appears good at first, but the destination at which it arrives is definitely not Christ-centered. I especially loved his motivation for missions comment. Spectacular!

When I was a very young Christian my pastor taught us the importance of ministering to the Lord, he also taught us that this 'alone' time with God is normative for a Christian, that from it will come a true knowledge of God experientially.
That Church was full on Charismatic ( long before the Charismatics got silly) our normative prayer meetings before Church, at all leadership meetings, before bible classes, home groups all stressed the importance of knowing God intimately.
One of the many blessings derived from ministering to the Lord was insight into what true worship consists of on an individual level. This translated into a corporate worship where those attending knew what it was to seek God and know his powerful presence. It was there, giftings flowed, prophecy given and received that was accurate, and powerful. It was from this divine presence that an understanding of God's holiness was received.
You will find that its important to preach on holiness, and its another when that preaching and ministering to the Lord are combined. This resulted in holiness that was known as experience as well as doctrine.
From this one learned to discern the presence of God over against false, contrived worship meetings where soulish work-ups attempted to substitute for the genuine presence of God.
WARNING...but this is where things can go wrong.

Instead of spending that quality time with God, various ideas were planted, theologies taught...so that in the end that time of ministering to the Lord was replaced with shorter and shorter prayer meetings, less and less emphasis on ministering to the Lord, dependence upon the doctrines of grace that instead of motivating true worship and ministering to the Lord, it motivated a drive for away from it. Even the doctrines of grace can be used against ministering to the Lord...when the idea is planted in the heart that "all of that old pentacostal stuff is just emotionalism".
Truth was, there was a great deal of emotions that came about from ministering to the Lord and real worship. Crying, joy, excitement, exuberance, praise, laughter(not the silly stuff)a lightness of spirit and a bonding with those who engaged in worship with you.
To a degree the false and contrived charismania served to quench the real by way of two main things.
1. Shift from worship by the Spirit to worship for the sake of joy and pleasure.
2. Evil speaking against the Charismatic's worship so that some backed away from time spent in worship and ministering to the Lord and a reemphasis on doctrine to replace it.

Paul Washer doesn't know what it was like to be a part of Charismatic circles where what he preached on was a living and powerful part of being a Charismatic Christian. What he has seen has been the last work-ups of various Charismatics who have not learned to minister to the Lord and worship God in Spirit.

Marvin,

You have some interesting comments. I would like to propose a few things:

1) All TRUE doctrine is NEVER in opposition to the Spirit-filled life. False doctrine is ALWAYS in opposition. A mixtures of both leads to the destruction of both orthodoxy (right thinking) and orthopraxy (right living). It is a misnomer to believe that doctrine can cause spirit-led activities to be stifled. If that is occuring, then the doctrine is bad.

2) "Paul Washer doesn't know what it was like to be a part of Charismatic circles where what he preached on was a living and powerful part of being a Charismatic Christian." I have listed to a plethora of Paul Washer sermons, and I actually have come to the exact opposite conclusion as you. Paul Washer has spoken rightly concerning the modern day charismatic circuses which we see in some places, calling them out just as much as he calls out dead-hearted, legalistic, spirit-resistant baptists. But he speaks well of charismatic believers who love Jesus, are spirit-led, and have good doctrine. Leonard Ravenhill along with Martin-Lloyd Jones and other--some who are more and some who are less Charismatic--are huge influences to Brother Paul even to this day, by his own admission in his testimonies he gives. Is he perfect? No, but I don't think he in any way spoken against true, spirit-filled worship. Only that I took away from his teaching, a more defined line between petty emotionalism and that which is truly spirit-led.

Thanks!

I believe a few months ago this was the featured sermon here on the SI forum. I listened to it then and recommended it to the forum.. I called it a blockbuster of a message and I still do. It is excellent.

Hi Havok:

Thanks for the kind response.

Paul was not in Charismatic circles when I was in them beholding truly God honoring and God glorifying preaching and worship. I do believe something about Paul, he would be much more favorable to them if they would have grown into Christ instead of growing into an imitation of charismatic personalities, taking the bait of the W.O.f teachers.

Good doctrine mis-applied has a detrimental affect.
Ask a reformed Christian what its like to preach grace and justification by faith and yet their churches died out, become liberal and their evangelism was nil.
Ask those Baptists what it's like to preach only 1/2 a gospel and find out their holiness decreases and their shallowness increases.
Ask the Pentacostals what it's like to believe and receive the filling of the Holy Ghost only to turn inward, where their meetings are focused on 'experiencing a good time with Jesus', completely missing the purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Please don't anyone read this as a "pick-on the Church post" by Marvin, let it be understood, with right doctrine much come right handling of that doctrine. So, when the Charismatics got silly, they forgot the fear of God. When the Baptists preached reconciliation and left out the empowered Christ-like life...because it to closely resembled a Pentecostal or Charismatic they ultimately defended themselves from Jesus life.
The reformed ceased living in the life of Jesus and switched to a dry and dead intellectualism that made them of little consequence during the Jesus movement, the Charismatic movement or any resurgence of Pentecostalism.
There was nothing in them that recommended other Christians to them as a genuine work of God.
Thankfully God has raised up living anointed preachers in the reformed and Baptist camp. There are many good Calvary chapel pastors speaking these days, however their emphasis on the supernatural is mostly doctrinal while they practice mainly cessationism.

It is my opinion that the Charismatics are being absorbed...and rightly they should so that they may take with them their God given gifts and learn to shed the errant ways that personality-driven ministries misrepresent the genuine. But those who absorb them can learn from them that their boring, tedious sunday-go-to-meetin and hear a sermon can and should be replaced with a congregation learning to listen to the word of God preached because...they are empowered and free to minister to one another every meeting they attend.

We are in a hurry to get out of that service to beat the Baptists to the buffet...because there is no one and no thing compelling them to expect more on a sunday morning.

My own Church suffers from this. Yes, I mean they suffer and don't even recognize it.

I understand what you are saying. I usually balk at the idea that doctrine misapplied is legitimate doctrine. My assumption is that whenever someone has good doctrine, they also have good practices, because we know that DOERS of the Word are blessed, not hearers only. If someone claims to have good doctrine, but is not a doer, then I will shoot back that they actually have poor doctrine because their doctrine is incomplete or misapplied.

We are saying the same thing in this regard.

I think the main thing though is that the glory of the Lord, the goodness of the Lord--essentially He Himself is enough of a motivation for everything we do that we need nothing else. Everything is an outflow from Him. Rather than rejoicing in the gifts, we ought to rejoice in the giver.