Where Does Long-Term, Faithful and Joyful Ministry Come From?
A book review of Ajith Fernando’s Jesus Driven Ministry.
Pastors and churches go through seasons; times of prosperity and abundance, and times of scarcity and decline.
In many ways, even surprising ways, throughout the Covid19 lockdown and financial upheaval, our church did far more than limp along; we continued our work with enthusiasm. But for me personally—as the lead pastor of our church—the spring of 2020 was more of a long spiritual winter. The cooler spiritual temperature began a year ago when a key staff member moved away. When he left, I strapped my boots on tighter and went to work harder than before. I read Fernando’s book in the midst of the spiritual dryness—the frenetic activity at church had worn my soul thin. Jesus Driven Ministry came at just the right moment.
Jesus Driven Ministry focuses on aspects of ministry that featured prominently in the ministry of Jesus during his earthly life. The chapters cover topics you would expect such as prayer, the Word of God, and discipling young leaders. But Fernando also covers overlooked though important aspects of ministry, such as having a sense of God’s joyful affirmation, visiting homes, resting from ministry, and ministering to the sick and demon-possessed.
The Blessing of Perspective
Western readers will find Fernando’s work a helpful exploration of biblically principled ministry in an international setting. His work often references ministry challenges that westerners have rarely faced. For example, Fernando is familiar with war and hardship in a way I am not. In many places in the book he alludes to a civil war in Sri Lanka that existed in the background and sometimes the foreground of his ministry. “As part of their strategy,” he writes, “militants often come to the south where I live and plant bombs in strategic places” (25). He explains how these challenges created unique ministry challenges and opportunities. The war was so bad in 1989, he notes, that “there was never a time when a body was not floating in the river at the edge of our city” (96). Fernando ministered to people who saw human carnage almost daily.
In another place, Fernando notes that because his organization does not pay bribes, some initiatives they wanted to accomplish never materialized (26). I’m currently overseeing a renovation project at our church, but I’ve never had to wrestle with the temptation of paying a building inspector to make a certain problem go away.
Perspectives from church leaders in international settings can challenge, correct, and encourage our own ministries. Of course, simply reading books by fellow pastors outside the US isn’t the same as pastoring in a foreign city but books like Jesus Driven Ministry can help us sift true Christianity from cultural attachments and help us discern between what is wheat and what is chaff.
The Blessing of Transparency
Fernando’s transparency on the difficulties of Christian ministry are also encouraging. In ways that didn’t come across as self-serving, the book was a show and tell of ministry scars. As the Apostle Paul could write of bearing on his body the marks of Jesus (Gal. 6:17), so Fernando showed how he bears the marks of Christian ministry on his soul. These struggles often led him to consider quitting. “This is why in my twenty-six years as director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka, there have been many times when I have wished to resign from my job. A few times I even wrote a draft of a letter of resignation” (67).
Further, Fernando deftly analyzes how anger can build up over the course of a ministry: “When I turned fifty, I made a list of the biggest battles I face in my life and ministry. High up on that list was the battle with anger over the way people have treated me. One of the saddest sights in the church today is that of Christian workers who are angry—angry over the way they have been hurt by others, by circumstances, and sometimes, they feel, even by God” (111). Anger, like rust on the chassis of a car, can build up over the course of a ministry. It weakens our effectiveness and threatens our fidelity to the gospel. Fernando’s record of his struggles in ministry reminded me I’m not alone. His remedies for discouragement and anger are soul-stirring and worth considering if you’re a discouraged pastor.
The Building Blocks for Ministry for the Long-Haul
Ultimately, Jesus Driven Ministry considers what propelled Jesus into ministry and what sustained him in it—and how those same things should sustain us. This emphasis on longevity comes through in Fernando’s prayer for his book, namely, that men and women “commit themselves afresh to those vital basics of ministry that make for long-term ministry that is both fruitful and joyful” (16).
* This originally appeared at 9Marks.org
** Photo by Shavin Peiries on Unsplash
Real People in Real Places to Hold Real Hands and Wipe Real Tears
A book review of Jay Kim’s Analog Church.
Stephen has come to church six times in six years. Surprisingly, he showed up again last week, even though COVID has forced our church into outdoor meetings under a 90-degree sun. Even with online options, Stephen showed up to stand six feet apart from others and to introduce me to his girlfriend. With a sober but deeply thankful smile he said, “This is Pastor Benjamin; he came to our house the day after Mom died.”
That event was five years ago, but he remembers that I came; I suspect he always will.
At significant moments—either those of great joy or great sorrow—we need real people in real places to hold real hands and wipe real tears and give real hugs. As churches across the country wrestle with the best ways to foster fellowship when our gatherings are inhibited, Jay Kim’s book Analog Church shows us the importance of gathering to the Christian life.
Technology and the Church
Analog Church has three parts: worship, community, and Scripture. In each section, Kim explores both the advantages and limitations of technology. Throughout, Kim argues that God requires embodied realities as part of the essence of the church—or as the subtitle says, real people, places, and things. To use an example, a person might find someone to date using an online app, and the app might even be used to arrange the date. But you can’t date online; you have to go somewhere and buy a meal or hike a trail or play golf. As Kim notes, technology can help us communicate but not commune. Communion requires more than fast Wi-Fi; it requires flesh and blood.
Advancements in technology claim to improve three main areas of humanity: speed, choices, and individualism. In other words, technology offers us whatever we might want and gives it to us quickly. But, Kim argues, we need to recognize that following Christ requires a wholly different set of values: “discipleship requires patience, depth, and community—the very things that stand in contradiction to the values of the digital age” (26).
In the chapters on worship, Kim talks about how stage and sanctuary lighting technology can lead to a culture of performance, not participation. “Rather than accentuating the lyrics we’re being invited to sing together, these image backgrounds often become mesmerizing shows accentuating a musical performance, and we end up watching rather than participating” (44).
In the chapters on community, Kim notes that the Greek word we often translate as church, ekklēsia, means gathering. He also notes that all of Scripture’s one-another commands require physical proximity; they require ekklēsia or “gathering.” He writes, “All these [one anothers] are difficult at best, and impossible at worst, to do online. These practices of the church, the gathered community of God’s people, require physical presence” (100).
Finally, in the chapters on Scripture, Kim doesn’t so much critique reading the Bible from a screen per se, but the social media trend to pull warm, comforting verses from their context and overlay them on appealing backgrounds. Practices like these, over time, tend to convey that Scripture exists to comfort God’s people but never confront them. To counter this trend of decontextualizing Scripture, he encourages pastors to preach sermons based on longer passages of Scripture, even grounding a topical sermon series on something like marriage or evangelism in a series through one book of the Bible.
With regard to preaching, Kim continues to stress the importance of the physical presence of the preacher with his congregation, as opposed to live-streaming a preacher from a different campus. “Preaching,” he writes, “is a participatory act involving both the communicator and the community, in the moment, not simply after the fact. . . . [It is] an act that must be witnessed rather than simply watched. Participation in the transformation process begins at the moment of the sermon delivery” (67–68, emphasis original).
A Needed Admonition for Our Technologically-Obsessed Age
The shockwaves of the technological innovation explosion that has occurred in the last century ultimately reaches every church and pastor. When we were remodeling our church building three years ago, the contractor simply couldn’t understand my hesitations about including too much technology as part of the remodeling effort.
“If you pick that small of a screen for your sanctuary,” the contractor told me, “the size will be all wrong when you show videos.”
“We generally don’t show videos on Sunday,” I said.
Then we talked about how our new slide system works. The contractor told me to make sure I keep our church logo on the screen when we transition between slides. “Why would we do that?” I asked. “Can’t we leave the screens black between slides? And for that matter, can’t we keep the screens clear as often as possible?”
He responded, “In my context, you never miss an opportunity to market.”
“But,” I said, “people are already in our church building. Why do I need to remind them of our logo?”
So the conversation went for several minutes, each of us remaining equally mystifying to the other.
Screens, of course, aren’t sinful. But the larger point is that many churches pursue relevance to the neglect of faithfulness, and technology has become a significant domain where that flaw flashes in bright lights. I appreciate that Kim, writing as a pastor in Silicon Valley, perhaps the technology capital of the world, chose to write in a tone that attempts to win over churches and pastors to a better, more biblical way. For example, he writes,
[I]n addition to the harm it’s done to our churches, the unchecked effects of the digital age on the worshiping life of the church are doing damage to the very men and women charged with serving and leading the church into the future. They are doing damage to you—tapping into the insecurities, uncertainties, and performance-driven tendencies in the worst possible ways (51).
Kim’s illustrations indicate his familiarity with the struggles technology brings church leaders. He was once told to make sure he regularly looked into the camera as he preached so the other campuses would feel connected to him. “The thought of looking into a camera,” he writes, “to ‘connect’ with people who would be gathering on another day in another room on the other side of the city struck me as an exercise in missing the point” (47). I assume many in his book’s target audience have pondered the same thing, if not out loud in a staff meeting, at least in their inner dialogue.
A few aspects of the book were a bit theologically concerning. For example, Kim hints toward a more egalitarian perspective on ministry. Also, for those who already agree with Kim’s central thesis, the book might not give as much application as you may like. Even so, I was helped as I read the book. Each time I pick up my iPhone to refresh my email, I think about the nefarious connection Kim describes between the technology that drives casino slot machines and the apps on our phones (133–37).
Analog Church is a marvelously timed book in light of the fact that in a COVID world many people are suddenly wondering, “is virtual church enough?” Kim compellingly argues it is not. I’m hopeful many will take to heart its fundamental arguments as our churches begin to regather in the coming weeks and months.
* This originally appeared at 9Marks.org.
** Photo by Andreas Kruck on Unsplash
EVERYDAY FAITHFULNESS by Glenna Marshall (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
A book to remind you of the beauty of faithfulness.
Glenna Marshal, Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World. Wheaton: Crossway, 2020. 176 pages.
Last summer I killed one of the fruit trees in our backyard orchard—not on purpose, of course. I sprayed the Japanese Beetles who munched our harvest and suspect I mixed the concentration of chemicals too high. One particular nectarine tree couldn’t handle it. I had hoped for a resurrection this year, but after the tree lost its leaves in the fall, they never grew back. Now, it’s just a naked trunk and twigs. Like everything in 2020, the damage to the orchard hit harder; a late frost killed the buds on five of the seven remaining trees. Moral of the story: growing food ain’t easy.
Glenna Marshall’s new book, Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World, opens with a different but similar story, the story of a struggling gardener tending a struggling garden. Marshall confesses, “I hated the heat, the bugs, and the incessant need for weeding . . . the weeks of waiting for plants to break through the earth, grow, blossom, and then turn out vegetables.” Then she asks, “I mean, I could just drive to the grocery store and buy some tomatoes, right?” (p. 11–12).
Maybe you can relate to floundering orchards and gardens. I know I’m sympathetic to her question; it would be so much easier to buy fruit and veggies from a store.
Worth noting, however, is the way the writers of the New Testament consistently use the difficult work of farming as a metaphor for Christian spiritual growth, not in spite of the difficulties but because of them. Yes, in today’s world, we have the option to buy tomatoes and nectarines from a store, but we still can’t buy prepackaged Christian maturity. Growth in Christlikeness can’t be outsourced. But the New Testament also reminds us faithful farming reaps a reward (Galatians 6:9).
Everyday Faithfulness is Marshall’s second book. She’s a writer and pastor’s wife in Missouri, and blogs regularly. The book has an introduction and nine chapters exploring what faithfulness and perseverance look like, for example, when life is busy, we doubt God’s promises, and our hearts are cold (chapters 3, 5, and 7). Although Marshall wrote the book primarily for women, I found the book relatable, challenging, and encouraging, especially the chapter on waiting. I appreciated her repeated, simple threefold challenge to pursue God through his word, prayer, and the local church (cf. David Mathis’s book Habits of Grace). Each chapter ends with a short biographical sketch of one of Marshall’s friends who exemplifies the theme of the chapter. I thought these were a nice touch, although a few seemed too short to show the faithfulness lived out, as though we had to take Marshall’s word for it.
Throughout the book, Marshall does not hide her own struggles to follow God in daily faithfulness, whether the struggle to get up early to spend time in God’s word or to occasionally turn off Netflix at night. In one place, as she critiques the desires we all have for low-effort-but-high-yield Christianity, she writes, “I didn’t want to put down slow-growing roots; I wanted to be a chia pet” (p. 41). During one difficult season in life, she tells readers, “I didn’t pick up my Bible for months” (p. 51).
While being honest about the difficulties of daily faithfulness, the book still issues a strong call to follow the Lord, even when life is hard—perhaps especially when life is hard. In this way Everyday Faithfulness shares a similar emphasis with Kevin DeYoung’s book The Hole in our Holiness, showing that the grace of God is not just for past sins; God’s grace also produces daily perseverance. “His yoke is lighter and easier than legalistic rules and false religion,” Marshall writes, “but it doesn’t allow us to roam free from all connection to him. His yoke tethers us to him and pulls us in the direction he leads us” (p. 54). And holding fast to God teaches us the wonderful truth that God “is holding fast to us” (p. 98).
The encouragement to everyday faithfulness reminds me of the line from author Annie Dillard that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Marshall asks, “If we’re not holding on to him now, how can we be sure we’ll be holding on to him later?” (p. 52). In other words, if we want a life of faithfulness, then we must spend our days in faithfulness. Near the end of the book she writes, “Regular habits of drawing near to Christ today keep us aligned with him tomorrow. And tomorrow’s habits of drawing near to him will keep us near to him the next day” (p. 149). Amen and amen.
If God feels distant or trials abound or you can’t seem to slow down enough to hear his voice—if your Christian life feels like a leafless trunk and twigs—reading Everyday Faithfulness might provide the water, sun, and fertilizer you need to begin bearing fruit again.
* Photo by Timotheus Fröbel on Unsplash
ENOUGH ABOUT ME by Jen Oshman (Fan and Flame Book Reviews)
A great book to help us embrace the lasting joy found in Jesus.
Jen Oshman, Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self. Wheaton: Crossway, 2020. 176 pages.
Although strange at first, I grew to love it—the whole summer I rarely looked in a mirror.
During college I worked at a Christian sports camp in southern Missouri, and mirrors were not hung around campus except for the one I stood before as I brushed my teeth at the beginning and end of the day. I wouldn’t have realized mirrors are everywhere about our homes and schools and businesses, but you notice the contrast right away when mirrors go missing. You notice how mirrors invite occasional glances to check and recheck your appearance. And I admit all this as a dude, even one who’s wardrobe for a hundred days that summer consisted of an unbroken recycling of five gym shorts and t-shirts. The absence of mirrors, in a small but significant way, gave camp counselors the gift of self-forgetfulness.
Jen Oshman recently published Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self with Crossway. The book doesn’t talk about mirrors and sports camps in southern Missouri, but the book does aim to set us free from our obsession with us, an obsession that steals our deepest joy rather than cultivating it. Jen and her husband Mark served as missionaries in Japan and the Czech Republic and now serve as church planters in Colorado. Oshman is the mother of four daughters, a podcaster, and a regular blogger on her own website, a guest contributor to places like The Gospel Coalition, and a staff-writer for Gospel-Centered Discipleship.
The audience for Enough about Me is primarily women, likely those in their 20s–40s who would show up to a women’s Bible study at a church. But the book intentionally aims at accessibility for those new to the faith. For example, Oshman writes near the middle of the book, “If you’ve ever been to church, you’ve likely heard the word gospel” (p. 69), which she then goes on to explain. New and non-Christians will feel at ease with statements like this and the stories of women grappling with what it might mean to follow Jesus and find lasting joy. Throughout the book, she introduces readers to many of evangelicalism’s favorite authors from the past and present, people such as Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Timothy Keller, Jared C. Wilson, Gloria Furman, and Jen Wilkin.
Oshman opens the book with the story of her tears as a young college student. Reaching goals hadn’t provided the comfort and joy she had expected they would. On the floor of her college dorm, she grabbed the Bible she brought to college but had never opened. “Although I believed in God,” she writes, “I didn’t know his word. That night, however, I grabbed it like a lifeline, reaching out for something more, something to help me catch my breath, find peace, and heal me” (pp. 20–21).
I found the final chapter particularly compelling, where she argues that a sub-Christian life is a life with a “safe, small god,” and “weak, meager faith” leading us to a “doable, manageable calling.” In short, a small god who beckons small faith who demands small obedience. The chapter made me think of a pointed question I recently heard posed by author and pastor Ray Ortlund. Ortlund asked something like whether Jesus was the glorious miracle worker that he says he is or if he is more of a “chaplain to our status quo”? Ouch. His question popped me in the nose before I had time to put up my guard.
But when we ordain Jesus as the Chaplain of Our Status Quo—or to use the words Oshman uses of a small god calling us to small obedience—our lives shrink and shrivel; they enfold inward until they collapse. The biblical story of redemption, however, tells a different narrative, one that expands our life rather than snuffing it out (p. 164).
Oshman closes the book by returning to where she opened, the story of her on a dormitory floor finding joy in God’s Word and the big God of the Bible calling her to big faith and big obedience. Oshman writes, “God, in his mercy and power, lifted my eyes from myself to him. It was in beholding him, that joy came” (p. 164).
I loved the book so much because, as Oshman tells her story of awakening, she also tells mine. And although the details may be different, if Christ has captured your heart, she’s telling your story too. Jen Wilkin writes in the foreword: “What is more fulfilling than a life spent chasing self-actualization? A life spent giving glory to the God who transcends” (p. 12). Enough about Me helps us embrace this paradoxical truth, the truth that we find life when we lay down our own to follow Jesus.
* Photo by Laura Lefurgey-Smith on Unsplash
EPIC by Tim Challies (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
A great book to remind you of God’s faithfulness across the difficulties of history.
Tim Challies, Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020), pp. 176.
The potency of words tends to decrease over time. Take the word “love” for instance. Broad application has cheapened the word. Do we really love our spouse and Netflix? I hope we don’t love each in the same way.
The same degrading has happened to the word “epic.” Can both nachos and Niagara Falls be epic?
As I followed Tim Challies on social media over the last couple of years, I would say that we could legitimately use the word epic to describe his travels. He toured South Korea one week, blogged from his home in Canada the next, interviewed pastors in Africa the following week, and then was back in Canada for church on Sunday. At least that’s what it seemed like, and this adventure went on for months and months. I only casually followed his travel schedule via his Instagram posts, so I didn’t know why he was traveling so much. Now I do. And I’m thankful for all his hard work.
Tim Challies is the author of several books, co-founder of the publishing company Cruciform Press, and an influential Christian blogger. For months he traveled back and forth to every continent except Antarctica for his latest book project Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History. The book releases today, along with the documentary about his travels.
33 Faith-Building Reminders from Around-the-World
Epic tells the story of the spread of Christianity from the early church to the present day. But the method Challies uses to tell the story is novel. He doesn’t give readers the typical recounting of history through people and places. Instead, by visiting, photographing, and in many cases holding thirty-three different objects from Christian history, Challies narrates the expansion of the gospel. The story begins with a statue of Augustus Caesar and ends with the YouVersion Bible app, that is, the story moves from the world of the Roman Empire to the world wide web.
In seminary I took several graduate-level classes in church history, so I was already familiar with many of the stories told in the book, such as the broad outline of John Calvin’s life or the thousands who flocked to hear George Whitefield’s open-air preaching. But using specific objects to tell these same stories added freshness. Looking at Calvin’s chair—the chair he sat in for hours and hours as he prepared his many sermons, books, and commentaries—or seeing the rock upon which Whitefield stood to preach, somehow made these men more life-sized in a good way, a relatable way.
Challies does not only roll the highlight reel of Christian history; he covers lowlights too. For example, he writes about a Reformation-era indulgence box displayed in a museum in Wittenberg, Germany. The indulgence box resembles what John Tetzel would have used while raising money for the Pope with the jingle often attributed to him: “When a penny in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs” (p. 51). Challies writes, “The coins that slid through the slot and into the coffer represented a gospel of salvation by works, a gospel foreign to the Bible, a false gospel.” But it was from this lowlight that God birthed the Reformation, the recovery of the biblical gospel, the good news of salvation by faith alone through Christ alone.
Sample of the book’s layout (from Amazon website).
Zondervan did an excellent job designing the book. I appreciate the colorful but simple layout, which complements the accessible writing. My middle school daughter spent time reading the book when it first arrived. Later, I read my eleven-year-old son the story of ancient graffiti that mocked an early Christian named Alexamenos (chapter 3), a great story by the way. If Challies ever writes a sequel, perhaps he’d consider making it more of a prequel: the roots of Christianity in the history of the Old Testament.
Two Helpful Takeaways from EPIC
As I read Epic, two takeaways hit me, one takeaway Challies highlights in the book and another that came from reading the book in our present crisis.
First, a beautiful disconnect exists between the simplicity of many of the objects and their significance. A simple chair for Calvin to write, a simple organ for Wesley to compose hymns, a simple reading stand for Edwards to study, and a simple rock for Whitefield to preach. “Whitefield Rock, though it is but a slab of stone in an open field,” Challies writes, “reminded me that God does not need great buildings, the beautiful churches and cathedrals of Christendom. All God needs to carry out his work is a faithful believer who will faithfully preach his gospel” (p. 97).
Second, it was an odd but beautiful blessing to read a church history book as the coronavirus stalks the globe and kills thousands of people and infects a million more. Church history reminds me that God’s people have been through long and hard times, and that God’s glory often shines brightest across a dark background. Challies brought out this truth well when discussing the persecution of the church. The most moving story in the book for me was about Marie Durand, who was imprisoned in France as a young woman and released decades later. She carved into a stone the word French word for “resist” as an encouragement to her and the other imprisoned women to resist recanting their Christian faith. I tend to forget these stories. But I need the reminders, not merely to know facts about dead people from faraway places but for the vibrant awareness of God’s faithfulness that I need to live for God in our day. The “great cloud of witnesses” that the author of Hebrews mentions has only grown over time (Hebrews 12:1).
I mentioned above that words and phrases have a tendency to become diluted over time, like the words “love” and “epic.” In a similar way, book reviewers tend to overuse and cheapen the phrase “highly recommend.” But I do highly recommend the book Epic. Here I stand and can do no other.
* Picture of Rylands Manuscript P52, which Challies talks about in Chapter 2 (Photo from Wikipedia).
Trailer for the accompanying Epic documentary:
Excising the Plank of Narcissism from Our Eyes: Book Giveaway
I’m giving away one copy of Chuck DeGroat’s new book When Narcissism Comes to Church.
That the ancient character Narcissus features prominently in Greek mythology tells us the issues the church faces today have long plagued humanity. We can even hear the seeds of narcissism in the whisper of the more crafty serpent: “You will not surely die. . . you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4–5).
And so we fell.
But from a biblical framework, what is narcissism, and how does it manifest itself in the church? And when a narcissistic pastor stands at the door of a church knocking and demanding to come in and be served dinner, what shall we do?
I had the privilege of interviewing professor and counselor Chuck DeGroat about these painful topics and his recent book When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. The article was published in the March print edition of Christianity Today and on the CT website here. I found the book helpful but also unsettling. I’d encourage you to read it, especially if you are in church leadership. When you do, don’t read it for someone else, for a friend, or for that pastor and church down the road. Bring the issues close. We’ll all be better when we do.
I wound up with an extra early release copy of the book, which launches next week. I’d love to share it with one of you. To enter the book giveaway, just share this post on social media and tag me in the post so I can mark you down. And if social media is not your thing, you can email this blog post to your friends. If you do, just forward me the email, and I’ll enter you in the giveaway. Next week I’ll update this post to announce the winner. [Update: The winner of the giveaway is Jenny from Twitter. I’m reaching out now.]
When Narcissism Comes to Church opens with an extended quote from Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk who lived during the middle of the twentieth century. Merton says that a Christian consumed with himself “is capable of destroying religion and making the name of God odious to men.” Indeed, Merton, indeed.
Excising the plank of narcissism from the eyes of Christ’s church won’t be easy, but it’s a surgery the church—with the help of God’s Spirit—must perform lest God’s name be blasphemed among the nations.
* * *
The opening epigraph from Chuck DeGroat’s
When Narcissism Comes to Church
taken from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation
The pleasure that is in his heart when he does difficult things and succeeds in doing them well, tells him secretly: “I am a saint.” At the same time, others seem to recognize him as different from themselves. They admire him, or perhaps avoid him—a sweet homage of sinners! The pleasure burns into a devouring fire. The warmth of that fire feels very much like the love of God. It is fed by the same virtues that nourished the flame of charity. He burns with self-admiration and thinks: “It is the fire of the love of God.” He thinks his own pride is the Holy Ghost. The sweet warmth of pleasure becomes the criterion of all his works. The relish he savors in acts that make him admirable in his own eyes, drives him to fast, or to pray, or to hide in solitude, or to write many books, or to build churches and hospitals, or to start a thousand organizations. And when he gets what he wants he thinks his sense of satisfaction is the unction of the Holy Spirit. And the secret voice of pleasure sings in his heart: “Now sum sicut caeteri homines” (I am not like other men). Once he has started on this path there is no limit to the evil his self-satisfaction may drive him to do in the name of God and of His love, and for His glory. He is so pleased with himself that he can no longer tolerate the advice of another—or the commands of a superior. When someone opposes his desires he folds his hands humbly and seems to accept it for the time being, but in his heart he is saying: “I am persecuted by worldly men. They are incapable of understanding one who is led by the Spirit of God. With the saints it has always been so.” Having become a martyr he is ten times as stubborn as before. It is a terrible thing when such a one gets the idea he is a prophet or a messenger of God or a man with a mission to reform the world. . . . He is capable of destroying religion and making the name of God odious to men.
* Photo by Anton Khmelnitsky on Unsplash