Fiery Darts

Fiery Darts:

Unfortunately, where God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel. The fallen angels are close too. They seek to discourage us and distract us from the truth, tempting us to believe the Lord’s army is small and his ministers don’t matter. They constantly whisper lies in our hearts. They often heckle us through the voices of the secular and unbelieving world.

When I served an inner-city congregation in the Bronx, New York, many unchurched people were openly critical of our church’s mission and its values, in spite of all the social services we also provided to refugees and immigrants. I encountered countless government agents who were entirely oblivious to the holistic help that we sought to provide, caring for people’s temporal and eternal needs. They were awestruck by my claim that the most challenging work involved spiritual concerns and not bodily ones. Some would smirk when discovering the intense preparation that most clergy undergo: “How hard can ministry be? Why would you need a university degree?”