How to Minister in God’s Strength

^{Message by John Piper}
I have three aims for this message.
First, I want to impress upon you the fact that the pastoral ministry is supernatural. All of the distinctly Christian goals in your pastoral life are humanly impossible, and God alone is the decisive cause if those goals are attained.
Second, I want to try to show how you go about life and ministry so that you become an instrument of God’s decisive work. How do you work so that he is the decisive worker?
Third, I want to exult with you that God has designed the ministry this way so that he gets the glory through Jesus Christ in your ministry forever and ever.
So, you could sum up these three aims like this: The Christian ministry is by God’s grace, through faith, for God’s glory.
My text is 1 Peter 4:10–11. As I read it, look for those three realities.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, [let him speak] as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, [let him serve] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1Pt 4:10-11

This text is very precious to me. I suppose no other text in the Bible was prayed more often over me in the half hour before I stepped into the pulpit during those 33 years of pastoral ministry. They would pray, “Father, help Pastor John to preach in the strength that you supply so that in everything you, Father, will be glorified through Jesus Christ. In his name. Amen.” So, let’s focus on this text for a few minutes and let Peter make my three aims plain and (I pray) effective in your life.

Servants and Stewards of Grace

Verse 10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
He speaks about the “gift” (charisma, at the beginning of verse 10) and “grace” (charitos, at the end of the verse). It’s the same root, the same reality: God’s supernatural grace. God’s grace is not just God’s disposition to pardon guilty people. It is also God’s active, powerful working in and through his undeserving servants. So, it’s a gift to each in the first half of the verse and varied grace in the second half of the verse. That’s where ministry starts: God’s active, powerful, undeserved grace.
Then stay in verse 10 and notice the two ways he describes our handling God’s supernatural grace. First, he says, “Use it to serve one another” — more literally, “serving it to one another.” Then he changes the image in the middle of the verse and says, “as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” The first picture of the ministry in the first half of verse 10 is of a servant, a table waiter — a diakonos. And God’s gift (charisma) is what he is serving to the guests at the table. So, the table waiter gets his gift of grace in the kitchen, and he puts it on the tray, and he carries it and serves it to the guests at their table. That’s the picture of diakoneō.
Then Peter changes the picture in the second half of verse 10 and says, “as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” A steward is not the same as a table waiter. A steward of a household manages what the head of the house owns and sees to it that it’s all put to use for the good of the household. Both the table waiter and the steward are go-betweens. They are receiving grace from the chef or from the head of the household. And they are using their servanthood or their stewardship to bring that grace to others. And the miracle of life that happens when the guests or the household receive that grace is a decisive work of that grace — the decisive work of God.

Helpless Go-Betweens

Then in verse 11, Peter doubles down on making sure that the waiter and the steward — whether they are handling God’s grace by speaking or handling God’s grace by some other service — are really serving up God’s grace not their own resources. Verse 11 says, “Whoever speaks, [let him speak] as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, [let him serve] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies.”
So, on Sunday, the supernatural grace that you are called upon to handle might be delivered through speaking (preaching), and on Monday the supernatural grace you are called upon to handle might be delivered with your car at 10 o’clock at night on the way to the hospital.
In the first case, Peter says, “If you are going to do good to your people — lasting good — by speaking, then your speaking will need to be the oracles of God.” “Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God.” You are a table waiter picking up the grace of God’s oracles in the kitchen and serving them to your guests at the table. You don’t pull out your own oracles — the leftover ham sandwich in your pocket — and put it on the table. And you are a steward getting the oracles of God from the head of the household and distributing them in helpful ways to the household to make the household healthy and strong and unified.
Or on Monday, driving to the hospital, Peter says, “Whoever serves [whoever drives to the hospital in my service], [let him serve] as one who serves [drives the car, rides the elevator, enters the room, opens the word] by the strength that God supplies.” If you are going to do good — lasting good — by serving them, you must serve in the strength that God supplies. You not only carry God’s oracles rather than your own; you also carry them in God’s strength rather than your own.
In other words, as God’s table waiter and God’s steward, you are not just a go-between; you are a helpless go-between. You depend on God for his oracles, and you depend on God for his strength to get and deliver the oracles. Ministry is supernatural. All its distinctly Christian goals are humanly impossible.
...

You can listen & read the full, original sermon here