If your ministry relationships will be healthy in God's sight, you
must commit to intentionally planting good seeds into the soil of those
relationships. This will take understanding, commitment, discipline, and
perseverance. Galatians 5:13ff is very helpful here. Paul delineates this relational lifestyle this way: "Serve one another in love" (Genesis 5:13).
Then he says something startling: "The entire law is summed up in a
single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" If you had written
the words, "The entire law is summed up in a single command," what would
you have written next? I would have written, "Love God above all else."
But, shockingly, that is not what Paul writes. Instead he says, "Love
your neighbor as yourself." How does love of neighbor summarize all that
God calls us to? The answer is both simple and profound. Those who love
God above all else will love their neighbor as they love themselves.
This is a diagnostic insight into ministry relationships that every
pastor needs to hear. The problem in our ministry relationships is not
first that we don't love one another enough; no, the problem is that we
don't love God enough, and because we don't love God enough, we don't
love one another as we should. Could it be that we are so busy loving
ourselves and making sure that others "love" us in the way that we want
to be loved, that we have little time and energy left to love them as we
should? Could it be that we are so busy working to co-opt the other
into the service of our wants, needs, and feelings that we are too
distracted to notice all the opportunities to love that every day gives
us, and too busy making sure that we are loved to do anything about
these opportunities even if we noticed them? Why does this happen? It
happens because we have replaced love of God and rest in his care with
love of self and the anxiety of "neediness." Continue at Paul Tripp
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