Transcript
Scott Anderson: Paul, let's talk about one of these other aspects that you mentioned. It's a theme that can function as a mechanism for spiritual blindness and that is when ministry leaders or pastors confuse God's blessing on their ministry with God's endorsement of their lifestyle, that they look around and because God's blessing the ministry, He must be blessing me, and that that can actually lead to a spiritual blindness. How does that work?
Success Is Tempting Too
Paul Tripp: Well, it should be noted that it's not only suffering that's tempting. Success is tempting as well and one of the things that success tends me to do is to begin, in subtle ways, to take personal credit -- get the distinction here -- for what only grace could produce.
Now, when you do that, when you take personal credit, then you begin to say, "This success is about me. It's about who I am." And then, the next step is, "Then that must be God endorsing who I am because He's obviously blessed what I do."
And it's very important to understand that success in ministry is never God's endorsement of your character, it's His revelation of His. What is happening when there's success in ministry is God's revealing His character, the glory of His faithfulness and His grace and His power and His patience and His kindness; and you can lap character quality upon character quality there. That's what's happening. But there is a temptation to say, "My ministry tells me everything I need to know about who I am," and it just doesn't. If God can use Balaam's donkey, end of argument.
