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The Making of A Pastor

You will perhaps find many ready enough to say smooth and pleasing things to your face, but I hope you will know how to value an admonition from a friend. You are engaging in an important service, honourable it is beyond expression, but it is full of difficulties and snares. If the Lord gives you liberty and acceptance you are liable to be exalted above measure. Your comfort and success eminently depend upon your being humble. And if the Lord loves you and has sent you, he will find ways and means to humble you. If he has put it into my heart to give you these hints, and if he enables you to receive them in a right spirit, and to make a right use of them, it may save you some trouble in future. I am sure I have no desire to grieve you. If you take this as I mean it, I shall be glad of a line from you at your leisure to tell me so. You are now putting on the harness, but what you may meet with from within and without before you put it off, is only known to the Lord. You have reason to pray, 'Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe." And if from a sense of your weakness and insufficiency, and the difficulties of your warfare, you do thus pray to him who is able to keep you, you will find his presence and support in every time of need. He will cover your head in the day of battle and at length, make you more than conqueror through His love. 

JOHN NEWTON 
(Source: Wise Counsel, p16) 

Newton wants Ryland Jr to learn a hard but important lesson early on in his ministry.  The lesson is that God humbles those He wants to use. The task of growing in serving the Lord is growing in humility. Not necessarily because of any overt pride in us, but because we can always go lower. In ministry, serving Godward means going downward. The means and circumstances which God uses to bring about this humility are varied. It is a good exercise whenever we find ourselves in a difficult situation to always ask ourselves, ‘in what way is the Lord using this situation to humble me?’

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2026
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