We Have This Ministry
Today’s devotional
A responsibility may begin as a gift and gradually feel like something you must keep earning. Someone trusted you. An opportunity opened. You were willing to serve. Later, each difficulty begins to sound like a question about whether you deserved the trust, and the work becomes a continuing defense of your right to be there.
Paul locates the beginning of his ministry in mercy. His confidence follows an account of the new covenant, the Spirit’s work, and a sufficiency that comes from God. He is speaking about the gospel ministry entrusted to him through Christ. Its reality rests in God’s gracious action before it becomes an account of Paul’s endurance.
That beginning shapes his conduct. He refuses deception and proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord rather than promoting himself as the center of the message. Mercy gives him a foundation for truthful service. He can care about the Corinthians’ response without making their approval the source of his calling or the measure of the gospel’s worth.
Our ordinary responsibilities need their own discernment, and no role is beyond correction simply because we regard it as a calling. Still, we can serve from the belonging we receive in Christ. A difficult day does not require us to win God’s welcome again. We can hear feedback, acknowledge limits, and repair mistakes within grace.
Remember one gift that made your current service possible: a person’s encouragement, an opportunity to learn, or a need you were able to meet. Let gratitude loosen the demand to prove yourself through every outcome. Then ask what truthful love requires today. Mercy provides a place from which to act with responsibility and freedom.
Adapted from Chapter 4: We Have This Ministry in The Courage to Continue by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice what these words reveal about God and the life before you.
2 Corinthians 3:4-6 · WEBU
4Such confidence we have through Christ toward God,
5not that we are sufficient of ourselves to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God,
6who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Corinthians 4:1-6 · WEBU
1Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we don’t faint.
2But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
3Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who are dying,
4in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
5For we don’t preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake,
6seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Pause and respond
For reflection
Where has gratitude for a responsibility turned into pressure to prove that I deserve it?
A practice for today
Recall one gift that helped you enter your current work. Give thanks for it, then identify a necessary action you can take today without asking it to establish your worth.
A prayer
God of mercy, remind me that your welcome comes before my usefulness. Help me receive the gifts that have made service possible and respond with truthfulness. Free me to hear correction, repair mistakes, and offer today’s work without demanding that it prove my right to belong. Amen.
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