14 I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16 Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. 17 For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. 1 Corinthians 4:14-17 (NASB)
We often lament the vast number of church leaders, pastors, Christian writers, et cetera who have compromised their ministries with the ways and means of the world from various motivations….
Instead of doing all for the glory of God, these have some other focus most often fixed upon selfish ambition in one form or another. What about the genuine, God-called Shepherd of the Sheep who obediently takes care of those entrusted to him by our Lord? What is his modus operandi?
In John Bunyan’s classic work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character, Christian, is instructed by Evangelist to leave his country, The City of Destruction, in order to Fly from the Wrath to Come. He tells him to leave town and knock at the little Wicket Gate at the end of the field before him. Christian eventually makes it to the gate and knocks. The keeper of the gate, Good Will, pulls him through the gate then instructs him to proceed down the straight and narrow path. The first place he comes to is the house of the Interpreter. There he will learn great and mighty things that will help him along the way to the Celestial City. Christian comes to the house and is brought to the Interpreter.