Pruning Hooks and Swords: The Full Time Ministry and It's Divine Sustenance Plan

Pruning Hooks and Swords: The Full Time Ministry and it's Divine Sustenance

[My Offline Bible] Joel 3
10 Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.

Jesus Christ sent His disciples to go preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. He told them to preach and offer kingdom solutions howbeit freely. But He also said, the laborer is worthy of His pay even as He didn't give them anything nor permitted them to take along from their wealth. The dilemma we grapple with today is how those who preach the gospel would live by it without merchandising or tasking the people.

To many, it's not just possible to do. The result is that we go into merchandising and exploitation. The very things Jesus Christ warned against. Some claim that Jesus Christ rescinded on that command, the scriptures being used is that where he told them to go get swords...to me that instruction is deeper than the surface meaning that doesn't agree with what we know Christ to have preached.

Today, denominations save money by discouraging people going into full time ministry. Others latch on to the "tent making" doctrine taken from Paul's experience with Priscilla and Acquila at Corinth, his statement to the Ephesians elders about working and to the Thessalonians. The problem is they won't know what conditions or why he deviated and they don't care to know his fundamental belief on the matter and those scriptures that point to how he was ministered to by individual believers and churches.

Paul, who took his time studying Christ knew what Jesus said about it and stayed with it. 1Corinthians 9 contains his basic belief about it and went back to what Jesus Christ said in the gospels.

[My Offline Bible] 1 Corinthians 9
9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? 10 Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. 11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? 12 If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. 13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? 14 EVEN SO HATH THE LORD ORDAINED THAT THEY WHICH PREACH THE GOSPEL SHOULD LIVE OF THE GOSPEL. 15 But I have used none of these things: neither have I written these things, that it should be so done unto me: for it were better for me to die, than that any man should make my glorying void.

He mentioned two reasons why he didn't always use that, one is that he won't want it to hinder the gospel. I'm sure Jesus Christ knew better before ordaining it, but it's a possibility that requires personal discretion and not a generalized instruction.
He also said he didn't use that so that no one will make his glorying void. If it will affect your self esteem, it should be avoided. Many give to ministers to buy them up and shut their mouths or control them and that should be avoided. Some hands that feed are poisonous.

He also mentioned somewhere how he won't want to be a burden to his children as it is the Father that lays up for the children and not the children laying up for the parent.

But to operate in that mode of living by the gospel,  a minister must be assured that he or she is so called. If it isn't backed up by divine authority and ordination it can turn to serious sufferings that can lead to all manners of abuses.

It also requires a lot of faith and conviction. Ordinarily, every believer ought to live by faith in God in spite of whatever commerce, trade or job he or she is involved in, in line with what Jesus Christ taught. It is our basic pruning hooks to harvest from the grace of God as our Father who provides richly for His children. When a person is called into the higher calling that requires a full time attention to preaching the gospel, that same pruning hook that he or she has been using for civilian upkeep is now required to be turned into a sword to keep him up at the battle front otherwise, the soldier will be entangled in civilian affairs and will be ineffective in delivering quality service to the one who enlisted him.

When people's faith fails, it becomes a problem locating the worthy men and women already positioned in destiny to minister to the Minister out of their substance per time according to Christ, His teachings and His practice. See Matthew 10 and other references in Luke 6, 9 and 10 as chained together.

It's not only faith failure that affects righteousness in a minister's sustenance. Demas loved the then world and left preaching. If greed and covetousness take a hold of a minister, no matter how anointed, he'll misbehave. He'll become a servant to his needs and wants, and his belly will become his God. He will make merchandise of God's people and see them as commodities to exchange for money and cows to milk dry.

Another potential point of failure financially is when people who should give freely won't give. When Nehemiah went back from exile to go rebuild the wall and the temple in Jerusalem, one reform he had to deal with was that of the priests being absent from the service at the temple. When he investigated, he found out that the people had stopped giving and offering things at the temple and the priests who had no inheritance among the tribes had to go buy lands and were farming and trading to sustain abandoning the work of the Lord. It is replicable today as lots of people question the operations of being on full time ministry. I remember someone saying full time ministry is fool time ministry. And I asked if Jesus Christ and His disciples were fools for committing their lives to preaching the kingdom of God.

The truth is that we preach what we feel is convenient to maintain without thinking if it's God's word or not. In unbelief people don't see the possibilities or workability of God's instructions not just in this area but in many other issues of spirituality.

In recent times, a lot of questions have been raised concerning tithes. Sometimes you want to ask why the hassles? The bottom line is that we as believers have responsibilities to those who have given their lives to preach and teach God's word either being over a local assembly or being on the road preaching and teaching the word on full time basis diligently and with visible grace either you believe in tithing or not.

To keep ones "glorying" you want to be modest, keeping quiet about it and living your life by faith doing whatever you are capable of doing and it's OK but that results in people not knowing exactly the position of Christ on the matter and only see those who abuse the system. And there is already a widespread ignorance among the people both the ministers and the people and the result is the abuses we see daily as people are doing their best in not giving to ministers and the ministers are doing all sorts to wring out as much as possible from the people with both seeking to outwit each other.

But the wise remains wise in turning their pruning hooks into swords as ministers and as God's people ministering to ministers of God out of their substance.

[My Offline Bible] Galatians 6
6 Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. 7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. 9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. 10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Ministers should understand how God has ordained things to be in all sincerity without greed and plug their faith into the operations ordained of God and the faithfulness of God's loving grace will answer to them. Trying to do it by oneself will undermine the process and topple the purposes of God bringing distraction, frustration and depressions without any result in effective sustenance.

I pray the grace for sustenance reach to all serving Christ in all sincerity!