Day 25

What Rises — Power for Ministry

Today's Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:10–12 (NLT)

There is a principle in 2 Corinthians 4 that is so essential to the work of God in this world that we must take an entire day to sit with it. Paul says, "death worketh in us, but life in you." The death of self in the minister of the gospel produces life in those to whom they minister. The crucified servant becomes the conduit of resurrection power to others. The believer who has been most thoroughly killed in their inner life becomes the most useful tool in the hand of the Spirit for awakening life in those around them. This is one of the great paradoxes of the kingdom: power for ministry rises directly out of personal dying.

The world does not understand this principle. The world looks for ministers who are charismatic, gifted, eloquent, polished. And the kingdom uses those things, sometimes, when the Lord chooses. But the kingdom's deepest power has never run primarily through charisma. It has run through brokenness. It has run through dying. It has run through men and women in whom the flesh has been so crucified that the Spirit can flow through them without being interrupted by the obstacle of their own ego, their own ambition, their own need to be impressive. The minister who has died deeply becomes a clear channel. The minister who is still full of self becomes a clouded one, no matter how gifted.

Look at Paul. The apostle who shook the Roman Empire was, by his own admission, "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" when he came to Corinth (1 Corinthians 2:3). He did not come with "excellency of speech or of wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). He came as a man who had been so reduced by suffering, by hardship, by repeated dyings, that there was nothing left in him to get in the way of the Spirit. And the result was a ministry of power that turned cities upside down. "My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Corinthians 2:4). The man had died enough that the Spirit had room to move.

This principle is one of the reasons the modern church has, in some places, lost its power. We have, in many cases, recruited and elevated ministers who were gifted, presentable, eloquent — but who had not been through the long, slow, hidden work of being put to death. They had charisma but not crucifixion. They had skill but not surrender. And the result has been a Christianity that is sometimes impressive but rarely transformative, sometimes large but rarely deep. The Spirit can use the gifted, but the Spirit moves in fullness only through the broken.

If you have ever sat under the ministry of a deeply crucified believer, you know what this means. There is a quality to their words, their prayers, their presence that you cannot explain by their gifts alone. They have been through something. They have been ground down. They have been hidden, suffered, surrendered until what comes out of them is not their own voice anymore but the voice of Another who is using them as a vessel. And the words land in your soul with a weight that has nothing to do with rhetoric. You are not listening to a person; you are encountering the Christ who is speaking through them.

This is what God is forming in you. Not necessarily for a public platform. The ministry of the crucified is often hidden. But every believer is in ministry to someone — to a family, to a friend, to a workplace, to a neighborhood, to a small group, to a body. And the depth of the death in you is going to determine the depth of the life that flows out of you to others. You cannot give what you have not received. And you cannot transmit a resurrection life you have not personally experienced through the descent into death.

Notice what Paul says about the mechanism: "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." The dying is being carried. It is ongoing. It is in the body, in daily life. And the life of Jesus is made manifest — visible, evident, available — through that body in proportion to the carrying of the dying. The two are linked. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot manifest the life of Jesus to others while refusing to die in yourself.

So if you sense, even faintly, that God is preparing you for a ministry — to a neighbor, to a family member, to a stranger, to a congregation, to a community — do not flee the dying. The dying is not the obstacle to the ministry. The dying is the preparation for it. The Lord is forming in you a vessel through which His resurrection life can flow without being clouded by your own self. And the deeper the dying, the cleaner the channel, the greater the life that will flow through you to others.

Death works in you. But life works in them. The exchange is the heart of the kingdom.

Prayer

Father, I have sometimes wanted ministry power without ministry death. Forgive me. Today, I lay down the desire for spiritual influence apart from spiritual crucifixion. Make me a vessel through which Your life flows freely to others — and if that requires deep dyings in me, give me the grace to receive them. Let death work in me, and life in those You have given me to love and serve. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Identify one person to whom God has called you to minister in this season — a family member, a friend, a coworker, anyone. Ask honestly: what would need to die in me for the life of Jesus to flow more freely through me to them? Begin to surrender it today.

"The deepest dyings in private produce the most powerful risings in public; you cannot transmit a life you have not first received through descent."