Ron Dunn Podcast - The Truth About Service

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Ron Dunn preaches a message on service

I'm going to read verses 11 through 14. Verses 11 through 14 of 1 Timothy, chapter 1. This morning we spoke on the truth about salvation, and tonight the truth about service. And these two passages and these two subjects are inseparably related, not only in the Bible but also in life, in experience. There is no salvation that does not issue forth in service. It was Paul's contemplation of the service which God had placed him in that led him to rejoice over the salvation that he had. A person who does not serve has an inadequate view and an ungrateful view toward his salvation. It is only as we take into our hands the responsibility that God has placed within us, that we begin to

appreciate and enjoy the salvation that we have. So these two passages, these two themes, are inseparably related, not only in the Bible, but in our experience. So beginning with the eleventh verse and reading through verse 14, Paul says, According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust, and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." I thank God, I thank Christ, because he has put me into the ministry." The habitual gratitude that Paul held and had because God, having counted him faithful, enabled him and put him into the ministry." Now unfortunately today when we hear the word ministry we think of a pastor, or an evangelist, or a missionary, or a youth director, or a music director, and on and on. But when Paul wrote these words, the word ministry did not refer to an ecclesiastical office. And it would be very easy for you tonight to read this verse of Scripture. Paul says, I am thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ has put me into the ministry. And you say, well, I'm thankful he put you there too. And I'm thankful he put me here

as a spectator. I heard a man say last week that the great American spectator sport was not football, it was going to church. I think there is some truth in that, some validity in that statement. And so it would be very easy for us tonight to say, I thank God that he put Paul in the ministry. And if he had put me in the ministry, I would be thankful too. But this word that is translated ministry, as I have already indicated, does not refer to any office or any ecclesiastical title or function. It became a title later on in the second or third century. But when Paul wrote, actually it's the same word that is translated in other places, deacon. You say, I didn't know Paul was a deacon, I thought he was a preacher. Well, he was a deacon, not in the ordained sense of Acts

chapter 6, but the word ministry, deacon, means varied service. It is a general term that embraces any kind of serving. And it does not refer to God placing a man in the position of a minister, such as a pastor or an evangelist or a church staff member. It doesn't refer to him being an ordained deacon and serving on a board of deacons. Paul is simply saying that the Lord Jesus Christ has put me into all kinds of service. And it refers to doing anything for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is, as I said earlier, the outgrowth and the issue of salvation.

And over and over again, as you read the epistles of Paul in particular, he has this emphasis that that which we have received, we are to pass on to faithful men who will in turn take it and pass it on to others. And the gospel has come to us on its way to somebody else. But it will never get to that somebody else unless we recognize that as a result of our being saved, God has placed us in the ministry. That God has given us a divine appointment to serve, to simply serve. And every person in this place tonight is included in that category. It's like salvation. Jesus included me too, and he included you.

And so Paul is giving to us in these verses some real insight into what it means to be a minister, what it means to serve the Lord Jesus. And so we're going to talk about the truth about service. First of all, our service for Christ is not the result of the pastor standing up on Sunday morning or Sunday night and hitting you over the head with the judgment seat of Christ and saying, if you don't get out here this week and do something for the Lord, you're going to catch it at the judgment. Our service for Christ is not the result of our being shamed into doing something for

Jesus. Our service for Christ is not even a result of our pitying the poor, lost sinners. I really believe that one reason so many missionaries—and I say so many advisedly because there are so many missionaries—who are returning home. By the way, I found some statistics of the day, and I am not too big on statistics because you never know who it was that gave you the statistics, but this impressed me because it was gathered from the various mission boards in our country among the major denominations. Did you know that out of 50, out of 50 people who surrender and volunteer for missionary service, only one ends up a missionary.

That is one who stays a missionary past the first term of service. There are a number who go off for a first term of service and they come back and they do not return. They go into some other field of ministry. But out of fifty who start out and volunteer and make themselves available—and I'm talking about foreign missions—only one ends up what we might call a permanent missionary. Now there are many reasons involved. I think some miss the call of God and later on find out that that was not God's call for them

and the best thing that a person can happen when he is out of the will of God is to get in it if that means getting out of something. And if a missionary is out of the will of God by being in the mission field he ought to get out of the mission field so he can get in the will of God. And I thank the Lord that some men have resigned from the ministry. They ought to.

I'm talking now about the formal ministry. Because if God has not placed them in that particular sphere of service, they're outside the will of God. But I believe that one reason, and having talked and counseled in just the past six months with several like this, I believe one reason that so many of these people, after one term of service, never go back is because they were impelled to foreign missions out of pity for the poor lost heathen. And I can remember in college and seminary on mission day the appeal that was made.

And we would all just grin and bear it, sometimes wouldn't grin, and every time mission day was over we would say, made it through another missionary without having to surrender. Because the atmosphere would become so thick. You talk about heavy. And if you did not run down and say, send me, send me to the most desolate place, to the most trinity place, you walked out of there feeling like a dirty, low-down dog. And so much of the motivation was on your pity for the poor lost heathen. And I'll tell you something, it doesn't take long for that pity to wear out.

Service is not the result of my feeling pity for the poor lost people. It's not the result of my being badgered into doing something or being shamed into doing something or doing something so that we can have more people than this church over here has, or so that we can be one of the bunch, or so that we can become a white sheep instead of a black sheep, or so that we can reach our goal. That is not service. Now, I suppose a low motive is better than none at all, and I suppose a fellow that goes out and witnesses because his pastor has scared him to death with a judgment seat of Christ, and that fellow's saved, there's a fellow that's saved

that wouldn't have been saved, perhaps. And a low motive is better than none at all, but that kind of service you have to continually pump up, pump up, pump up, and after a while the poor fellow just flat gives up. Service is the result, it is the expression of our experiencing the mercy of God. Service is the result of our experience with the mercy of God. In verse 13, Paul says, I obtained mercy. In verse 16, he says, I obtained mercy. In verse 16 he says, I obtained mercy. Now in verse 16 he says, I obtained mercy, and that mercy obtained related to salvation. In verse 13, the mercy that Paul obtained related to service. Now I want you to catch the sense in which Paul is speaking. He says, I am constantly thankful to the Lord Jesus Christ because he put me in his service.

Who? Who was before a blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurer. This is what I did to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every time I had the chance, I even went out of my way to speak contemptibly and to injure and to persecute. But I obtained mercy. God was merciful to me, and he gave me a chance to serve the gospel that I had tried so hard to destroy. You see, in verse 16, Paul says, I was lost. I was the chief of sinners, and I obtained mercy, and God delivered me from that lostness and saved me. But here he is saying, he was saying, I was persecuting the church. I was fighting the church. I was doing all I could do to destroy and nullify the work of Jesus, but God gave me mercy. And this mercy was he gave me a chance. He gave me an opportunity to serve the Lord Jesus whom I had persecuted.

And as far as Paul is concerned, it was the mercy of God that let him serve the Lord. And that's what mercy is. Mercy is not simply saying, I forgive you. Mercy is saying, I forgive you and I'll give you a chance to make it right and to make it good. And I'm going to give you a second chance and give you another opportunity. And all the harm that you have done, you will be able, you will be able to repay me. Paul says in Romans chapter 1, therefore I am deader both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. Paul said, I am infinitely in debt. I'm in

debt, but God has given me mercy in letting me discharge that debt. That's mercy. And this is why he says, I am constantly thankful to God. His service was sent as a reward of God's mercy. During the New Testament days, the Spartans were some of the most able in the Olympic Games. And the Spartans had an unusual reward given to those who were victorious in the Olympic Games. Their reward was not a corruptible crown. Their reward was the privilege of standing beside the king in the next battle. There is a story that is told of one Spartan wrestler who before he entered into the Olympic Games

was approached by a certain group of people who offered him a huge bribe if he would give up the fight and would purposely lose the match. And this Spartan refused and went into the match, struggled, and after long hours emerged in victory. The people that had tried to bribe this Spartan wrestler into throwing the match came up to him and with contempt said,

OK, Spartan, now that you have won this match, what have you got out of it? And the wrestler said, I have won the privilege of standing in front of my king in the next battle. You see, his reward was the privilege of serving his king and even perhaps dying for his king because he would stand in front of the king so that any arrow that was aimed at the king would first pierce his own body. That was his reward, his victory issued in the right to serve.

We've heard several times about John Newton who wrote a great many hymns, perhaps the most famous, Amazing Grace. John Newton was a man that was awed by the mercy of God. He remembered the pit from which he had been digged, as the Scripture says. And over his mantelpiece he had in huge letters this scripture from the Old Testament, Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bond slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee. He composed his own epitaph to be placed on his tombstone after he died. That epitaph read, John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and a libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the gospel that he labored so hard to destroy.

Service is a result of our experience with the mercy of God. And I am fully convinced tonight that if there is not within you the burden, the spontaneous desire to serve the Lord in whatever capacity, whatever your hand finds to do, doing it with all of your might, then I am ready to say that you have an inadequate view of the mercy of God. And you are depreciating the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you do not understand what it costs to redeem you from your sins. And you do not understand the mercy of God. The mercy of God is not simply to make us safe from hell, but the mercy of God is to give us the unbelievable privilege

of standing before our King and serving him. It's an experience with the mercy of God. Now he goes on to tell us something else about the truth of service. He says that it is to be entrusted with a message. What does it mean to serve? Now I want to be very careful here because when we talk about a message, immediately we're getting back to this old idea of being a preacher or an evangelist.

But even if a man, if the only thing he ever does for the Lord is to receive the offering on Sunday night, he has still been entrusted with a message. And his life is to portray that message. If he is a visitor in the hospital and he never preaches behind a pole, but he still has been entrusted with a message. It makes no difference. He may be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, but he has still been entrusted with a message. And this is what Paul is trying to say in verse 11, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. That word committed means to trust somebody with a valuable, to deposit with somebody, to entrust something to somebody. And you know, the most unbelievable thing tonight is that God has trusted me with his gospel. In eternity past, God planned it. In the councils of eternity,

the Godhead devised what only the Godhead could devise, this infinite, mysterious scheme of salvation, of world redemption. And I want you to know tonight that every jot and tittle of your life, every second of your life has been infinitely planned and gone over by the Godhead in eternity. Even the hairs of your head are numbered because they fit. I don't understand how, but they fit into the redemptive plan of God. And it would absolutely amaze you and me tonight. We could not take it in if we understood the vast, the vast blueprint that God has made of his plan of

redemption for your life and my life. Everything that happened to you today, God knew about it even before you were born and allowed it. He passed and stamped it okay. God the Father planning it in eternity past. And then God the Son coming from heaven, living in exile for 33 years, fulfilling the law, being separated from his Father, giving up the adoration of the angels, and at last being separated from God,

being made sin for us, and enduring the excruciating agony of the cross that he might purchase this salvation. Then Jesus ascending back to the Father and saying to his disciples, Now I am going to tell my Father to send you the Holy Spirit who will perfect your salvation. And that Holy Spirit has come to indwell us and he has come to testify and to glorify Jesus. And the Bible says that there are two on earth that bear witness in John chapter 16, or John chapter 14, and it says the Holy Spirit shall testify of me, and you also shall testify of me. Now you think of this glorious

salvation, God the Father planting it in eternity past. God the Son purchasing it with his blood in history. And God the Holy Spirit perfecting it today with his indwelling ministry. And God has taken this magnificent, most costly gospel, and he has trusted it to you. He has trusted it to you. I want to know if you are living up to that trust. You are living up to that trust. Of course, this whole idea of the gospel of Christ being entrusted to us carries us to that judgment seat of Christ in thought. You cannot really think about

this without thinking about the judgment seat. Jesus told various parables illustrating the fact that someday when he comes back he will call every man to give an account of this stewardship. What is a stewardship? It is something valuable that the master has entrusted to a servant. And he says, all right, here it is. It's mine, but I have placed it in your hands. You're a steward. Now I'm going on a trip, and when I come back, I want to hear what you did with it.

I want to hear what you did with it. One man received ten. One man received five. One man received one. Varying responsibilities, but still one responsibility to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ with that with which he has committed into my hands. And a talent isn't the ability to sing a song or play the piano, it's just an opportunity to serve. And the amazing thing about that story is that the man with one talent was just as responsible

and just as accountable as the man with ten talents. You see, God did not judge the man on the basis of the degree or the quantity of his service, but on the quality of his service. And so Paul, looking forward to that judgment seat of Christ, says, The fire shall try every man's work, of what sort, not what size, but of what sort it is. And I want to know tonight, what sort is your service? What is the quality of your service? Not the quantity.

I'm really not interested in how much you've done for the Lord and how much you plan to do for the Lord or how much money you've given or how much money you plan to give. But I want to know, as God is going to want to know, about the quality of your service, of what sort is it. Have you lived up to the trust with which God has entrusted you? This glorious gospel, the gospel of the glory of the blessed Lord.

You know what literally in the Greek that says? It says, it's the glorious good news of the happy God. I'll tell you what, it's good news that God is happy. When I know my sin, when I know my wretchedness, the glorious good news, the glorious good news, and it is good news, it's good news that God is blessed. God is a happy God in and of himself,

and God wants to share himself with this. And I think this is what Paul was saying when we come to verse 15, as we did this morning. First of all, you see, Paul is saying, this is what my service is. God has committed to me a service, a message. Now here it is. This is it. The faithful say, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief Now I said a moment ago that I don't want us to think that the only way that we can serve the Lord and be in Trust with the message of the gospel is simply by standing behind a pulpit But I do want to say this that I do not think it is It is possible for you to be faithful to the entrustment that God has placed in your hands without opening your mouth once in a while and saying something about it. A fellow said to me some

time ago, I know it was a lady who said to me some time ago, she said, well, I never say anything, I just witness with my life. You know, that sounds so good. It sounds so holy and pious, you're afraid to say anything about it. I just let my life witness. And I have visions of this woman living such an immaculate, such an impeccable Christian life that as she walks by, people just fall on their faces being saved. I wanted to say to that lady, you're the most audacious and arrogant woman I've ever seen. Because you're saying that unlike the Lord Jesus Christ, your life is so holy and so heavenly that you don't even have to say a word about it.

And yet Jesus Christ, who knew no sin and who himself was the glory of God manifest in the flesh, found it necessary to open his mouth and explain what he was doing and what he was about. You say, well, I thought we were supposed to witness to our lives, with our lives. Right.

Your life is supposed to make people say, hey, tell me, what happened to you? You see, this is what Peter is saying in 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15. Sanctify Jesus as Lord in your heart and be ready to give to everyone that asks of thee a reason for the hope that is within you. You see, here's what he's saying.

He's saying that once you sanctify Jesus as Lord in your heart, you better get ready to start answering people because they're going to be asking you for a reason for the hope that you have. Say, has anybody come up to you lately and asked you anything? Anything? Anybody come up and said, listen, I notice something about your life. And the same things that bother us when things are so bad in the office and everybody else

just hits the panic button, you just seem to have such control. I notice when other people gather around for coffee break and begin to cut down the boss and talk about this person and talk about that person, you never join in. I notice when others are telling their filthy jokes that you never take part in it. I notice that there is something about you that is pleasant, generous, and seems to always be happy, so friendly, so concerned. What's your secret? You see, the lie is supposed to be lived in such a way that it will cause people to question and to say, I wonder what it is about him. Maybe he must have been brought up in a pretty good environment.

Maybe he had a barn with guru and has learned how to meditate. He says, sanctify Jesus Christ as Lord in your heart and then get ready to give an answer to everybody that asks of you. You cannot faithfully discharge this entrusted message without opening your mouth and saying something about it. And by the way, let me just add a little bit more to this. Witnessing with our lives without ever witnessing with our lips brings to us all the glory.

People go away talking about you. But you must open your mouth and give the explanation as Jesus did. Jesus was constantly doing this. The people were seeing his work, seeing his miracles, and they were overwhelmed by it. They were impressed by it. And Jesus said, listen, what I'm doing, it's the Father. It's the Father.

I can do nothing of myself. It's the Father doing it. Jesus was always carefully to explain his life, to give the explanation for his life and his power. And he was constantly pointing them to the Father who indwells him. And you see, you may walk around without ever saying a word and live such a tremendous life and such a gracious life and everybody compliments you and say nice things about you but unless you open your mouth when the opportunity arises

and give them the explanation that you obtained mercy then God is not getting the glory for that life. And I tell you something a good life is a tremendous platform from which to witness. You're going to be pretty hard put to witness from the platform, a good life is a tremendous platform from which to witness. You are going to be pretty hard put to witness from the platform of a bad life. This may be a reason some of us cannot open our mouths, because what we say with our lips

would be in utter contradiction to what we are saying with our lives. What is service? Service is being entrusted with the message of God. Now there is one final thing, and Paul gives it to us here. Service, what does it mean to be a servant of Jesus Christ? And to me, this is one of the most thrilling aspects of this service. This is what lifts it out from fruitless effort into a glorious experience. Service is being empowered by God's own might. Verse 12, And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, enabled by the might of God. He hath enabled me.

God's not asking Paul to do something in his own strength, and God's not asking you to do anything in your own strength. God hath enabled me. That word enabled literally means to have a dynamic within you. It means to be strengthened inwardly. There is a little preposition in on the front of the verb, prefix of the verb, intensifying the fact of two things. First of all, that this enablement that the Christian has is a self-contained enablement. The power of the Christian that enables him to faithfully discharge the trust that God has committed to him is a self-contained,

it is something within, something within. It's not how much talent he has. It's not how much ability he has. It's not how much education he has. It's not how much training he has. It does not have a thing he has. It's not how much training he has. It does not have a thing to do with circumstances or situations or environment, but he has within him a divine dynamo,

and the secret of a Christian's strength is within. He's strengthened within. And he doesn't look to favorable circumstances. And this is why Paul says preach the season, preach the word in season, out of season. And that means simply preach it when it's tough and preach it when it's not so tough. Now that's a paraphrased translation.

You won't find it anywhere, but preach it when it's tough and preach it when it's not so tough. Well, how can you do that? In other words, Paul is saying that in season, out of season ought not to make any difference. Your preaching, your gossiping the gospel ought to be just as effective, just as effervescent when it's in season, when it's out of season, when it's tough, when it's not tough. How can you do that? It's only when you realize that the enablement that God gives you comes from within. It comes from within. But it means something else. It also means that this is sustained. The Greek word, verb that Paul uses here means that God has enabled us and it has abiding effects, abiding effects. We get our word dynamite from this. I've heard preachers through

the years make a big deal out of it. It's dynamite, gospel dynamite, and God gives you dynamite. I really think that's a pretty good description of the service of most of us, dynamite. You know what dynamite does, don't you? Well it makes a lot of noise, stirs up a lot of dust, and then there's nothing left. And I really think that's a pretty apt description of our service. I mean, we sit around, may not do anything for six months, revival comes along, we get all charged up and get a new shock. And so, man, we make a lot of noise, stir up a lot of dust and a lot of activity. But I tell you, after the noise has died down and the dust has settled, you couldn't find

a scrap of that dynamite to save your life. We not only get our word dynamite from this, we get our word dynamo from this. And listen, that's really what our service is to be. It's not to be a lot of noise and a big raising of the dust and then over and done with. It is to be a continual source of energy. A continual source of energy. I think that there is nothing that God wants so much in the life of the believer as consistency and stability. A little boy one day loved horses. He had always wanted a fancy horse, but all he had was an old, rejected plow horse. He had that noodle back. The horse looked like one giant horseshoe himself, just standing there with the tail switching to keep the flies off.

He had had it. But the boy was proud of that horse. That's his horse. One day a man came by and the boy was standing beside his horse, and this man thought he would have a little fun with this boy,oked a little fun at him. Son, is that your horse? Yes, sir, that's my horse. He said, Son, can that horse run fast? The little boy thought for a minute and looked over at that horse. Can he run fast? The little boy said, No, sir, he can't run fast, but he can stand fast. Now, you know, the book of Philippians chapter 1, Paul tells us to stand fast,

therefore striving together for the gospel. Now, you put those two together, stand fast, steadfastness, consistency, stability in striving for the gospel. So much of our striving for the gospel is running fast and giving up after a while. But it must be consistently standing fast in this matter of striving together for the gospel. And he says, he hath enabled me. He hath given me a continual source of energy. Now, I want to point out just a couple of other things about this twelfth verse. He says that he enabled me, but why did he enable me? He

enabled me, first of all, because he counted me faithful. Now here is where Paul really gets overcome by the mercy of God. Why has God put within Paul this dynamo so he can serve? Because God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, counted Paul faithful. He is not saying that now that his life is over, now that his service is terminated, now that he is standing before the judgment seat of Christ, God picks up the book of Paul's life, reads the record, and comes with the verdict, I count you faithful. That's not what he's saying. Paul is referring to something that happened at the beginning of his Christian life. You talk about God entrusting us. Paul is saying, God enabled me, and I thank God for the mercy,

because I, who was a blasphemer and a persecutor and an injurious person, God looked at me. And the word count means to account or to figure. It literally means to lead the way and to regard somebody as a certain thing. And he says, God looked at me and God accounted that I was trustworthy. That's grace. That's not works. It would be works if at the end of his life, at the end of his life, God said, okay, now I count you as faithful. But it was grace and mercy, and it was God's trustworthiness being expressed when at the beginning of his Christian life God says, I count you faithful and trustworthy.

And so I'm going to entrust you with my glorious gospel. You see, it means to lead the way. What Paul is saying is this was God's idea, not mine. It was God's idea, not mine. God had an idea. He said, I believe that you will be trustworthy. I have confidence in you, and so I'm going to entrust you. And then notice the second thing is, he not only accounted me trustworthy, but he appointed me in his service. Putting me. That word putting means to appoint someone in a particular place.

To sit someone in a particular place. Now, every one of us tonight has a divine appointment. A divine appointment. God has set you in a certain place. Where is that? Where do you work? This word minister, as I said, doesn't refer to a pastor. And every time a man or woman gets turned on with the Lord and begins to faithfully serve him, this doesn't mean that they ought to then become a preacher. Becoming

a preacher will ruin some of them. I mean, what if every time we started serving the Lord excitedly and effectively, we said, Okay, I need to pass the church? You know what would happen? We would have all chiefs and no Indians. All saluting and no shooting. All spectators, no team. Where has God placed you? Where has God placed you? You say, I have made up my mind to move to Irving. Oh, that's in the plan of God. Where has he placed you?

You think about a minute where you are. Where has he placed you? You think about a minute where you are. Where has he placed you in the classroom? You think about there you are, and you're a person who has experienced the mercy of God, and you are a person that has been deposited and trusted with the glorious good news. You have a message, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and God has entrusted you and placed you in that place, and he is counting on your faithfulness.

And in order to help you to live up to his faith in your faithfulness, he is constantly enabling you, enabling you to do the job that God has called you to do. You see, what God demands, he provides. He says, I consider you to be trustworthy, and to make certain that you can be trustworthy, I'm going to put a dynamo in you that will give you all you need. You know, there's one thing about this divine appointment. Actually, that gives you divine assurance.

You see, God never sponsors a flop. And when God places you in a particular spot for service, that is guaranteed you are going to be successful. Success is God counts success as faithfulness to the word. I'm not talking about success as the world counts success by statistics or numbers. God counts success by faithfulness

to the word. I'll tell you the moment the moment I knew that God had placed me as pastor of this church I knew I knew that God had placed me as pastor of this church, I knew that it would be a successful ministry if I was faithful to him, if I were faithful to him. Paul said, When I went to Corinth, I came unto you with fear and trembling,

and I determined not to know anything among you save Christ and him crucified, so that when I left, now listen, so that when I left your faith, see, he knew there was going to be people who were going to believe. Man, he had to guarantee his success. Why? Because God sent him there, and God never sponsors any failure. And if God sends him there, he knows there's going to be fruit. So that when I left your faith, might not send in the wisdom of men, but in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. Well, that's an encouragement to me,

whether it is to you or not. And God has placed you in a church. God has placed you in a job. God has placed you in a neighborhood. God has placed you in a town. And placing you there, He has deposited with you the glorious good news, and He is depending and counting on

your faithfulness. And in order to help you to be faithful, he is constantly energizing you from within. All you have to do is open your mouth and be obedient and say, Lord, I'll do it. Just speak. Just speak. And that's the truth about service. The Ron Dunn Podcast is available only for personal edification, And that's the truth about service. slash bookstore and search Ron Dunn. For more Ron Dunn materials, including sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from a study Bible, please visit rondunn.com.