The Magic Bullet to Success in Ministry = Abiding in Christ's Love

Ian Miller | 03/03/2025

Are you looking for a magic bullet in ministry? Love is just that. Let me explain.

Your problems in ministry spring out of your heart. Your unmet desires to be filled and loved, to be valued and happy (sorry to break it to you). I’ll be brutally honest. Ministry is a very bad place to look to be filled. But yet, so many of us instinctively look there to find it. It’s a noble thing to serve others, to give of our time, energy and resources to make a difference in the world. 

The only problem is when those people--the recipients of our selfless, noble service--don’t meet our expectations. We aren’t thanked. We don’t see the change we hoped for. We are taken advantage of. We aren’t respected. Our personal boundaries are violated. We feel hurt. Our contribution feels undervalued and even worse, is used against us. It is manipulated to try to get a little more out of us. 

I’m not minimizing the pain that accompanies ministry. I’m just being honest—it is quite disillusioning. 

I remember growing up in Mexico and feeling anger welling up inside of me when I would hear the banging at the front gate—again. She was back asking for more. Money for her bus fare. Food for her family. Or maybe an unpaid electric bill that she needed help with. Instinctively, I felt she didn’t deserve our help. She was back for the hundredth time, nothing had seemed to change in her situation, and she was expecting us—yet again—to help her out of the problem of her own making (or so I thought). 

Years later, I still struggle with feelings of resentment when I don’t feel validated for my selfless contribution. It’s one thing when I’m praised and honored for giving, but it’s a different story entirely when people expect me to give, and to give some more, and take my noble contribution lightly. 

I’m preaching through the Fruit of the Spirit right now at our church. The first in the series was—surprise, surprise—love. Where to even go with such a broad and deep topic. What can we learn about love in relation to the indwelling Spirit? And what is love anyway? 

In John 15, three words strike me with fresh meaning as they are woven together: Abide, Love, and Joy. I have highlighted their use in this rich passage. 

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” John 15:9-11 NKJV

The Love Circle

First, we are invited into the “love-circle” with the Trinity. Their perfect love for each other is now being shared with us. We can enter into their perfect giving-and-receiving-love-relationship. It is only in this amazing circle of love with the completely-satisfied and all-satisfying God of the Universe that we will be filled to overflowing. This position of continually being filled with His love is the only position out of which we can then obey him and love others selflessly and unconditionally. 

When we’re empty cups, we won’t—indeed, cannot—continue to give and give. When I’m filled with His love, I can follow His leading out into the selfish, broken and proud world to love. As I am being filled continuously with His love, I can pour myself out for others without needing any tangible response from them. Because now, I am looking to Him to fill me, not to others. 

Prone to Wander

Abiding is remaining. Staying. Not departing from the all-satisfying, infilling, relationship with Jesus. I continue, I remain, in Him. It makes no sense why we even have to be told this. I mean, why would someone ever—in their right mind—stray away from complete, all-satisfying love? 

It’s the finicky flesh. It subtlety pulls and draws us away from the very source of our joy, towards those many empty promises that bombard our senses everywhere. In the desert. In the city. On the mountaintop. There’s always a promise to find a more complete joy in someone or something else other than Christ. 

In ministry the pull can be especially strong:

• Success is found by doing A, B, and C

• Your ministry will be more effective if you _______

• Imagine the legacy you’ll leave if _____. 

It pulls on the heartstrings of selfishness and pride. And what’s so dangerous about the context of ministry is that our pride and selfishness hides behind spiritual and moral masks of doing good, making a difference, and serving others. 

But serving and giving without love results in nothing. Or, even worse, it just might result in us losing our own soul. 

Because there is nowhere that we are more prone to deceiving ourselves than in a position of publicly making a positive impact. People applaud our efforts and say we’re amazing, and we feel like a million dollars—and get puffed up. Or people attack us, tear us up and eat us for lunch. And we feel like a failure—and shrivel into self-pity. 

But what would it look like if we would accept Jesus’ invitation to abide—to remain in Him? What if the secret to our fruitfulness was found in this simple—yet terribly difficult—reality of staying put in our connection to Him as the endless source of love? 

I’ll tell you what it would look like. Actually, Jesus tells us. It’s a three-letter word. J-O-Y. 

J-O-Y

Maybe the word has lost its punch for you. Joy, that word that is printed on Christmas gift bags and sparkling, snow-covered holiday cards. Here are two definitions that might help. 

“Joy is the visceral response to our relationship with God. Our whole bodies respond as we encounter the living God.” —Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks

“Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.” —John Piper

We were hard-wired to respond emotionally to love. And that response is joy. When we experience love from God and others, we feel joy. If we anchor our joy in the love we receive from others, our joy will be as enduring as the love that others give us. That’s where ministry will wring you out and hang you out to dry. 

Coming back to the silver bullet. If you and I are deeply rooted in the love that we have found in Jesus, we can live perpetually-joy-filled lives. In ministry. In mothering. In a 9-5 job. In our local church. Our joy will be enduring. It is no longer dependent on how much others value or appreciate me. It is dependent on the continuous filling of Christ’s endless love. 

And that becomes our motivation. As we receive Christ’s love, as His love fills us, that becomes the driving force in our serving and giving. We are now a cup, filled up and overflowing, spilling grace and love into the lives of others. We still feel the sting of the hurts that other inflict on us. We still sense our unfulfilled expectations and a gut-wrenching feeling of disillusionment when people we love and trust let us down. Our emotions take us on a roller coaster ride. And we still find delight and joy in people, because God created us to experience that in community. But we remain in the deeply satisfying love of Jesus. And it is in that position of abiding in Him that our joy is full. 

Only then can we truly minister and serve successfully. Because we are no longer dependent on how others respond. Instead, we are anchored in the love of Jesus that never fails. 

That’s where I want to drop my anchor and never drift again.