Watchout For WOLVES: Keys To Discerning Authentic Ministries & Evaluating Doctrinal Trends

to please people, I would not be Christ’s servant . – NLT

All of these questions that we ask ourselves, require raw honesty. All of us would like to believe certain things about ourselves. We would like to believe we are noble, we are humble, we are other’s orientated, we only want the will of God and we only want to live lives that being glory and honor to the name of the Lord. Most of the time this is not completely true. Purity in our desires is a struggle and it is not a battle that is won once and for all in this life. We need God’s help. We need to real ize that we need God’s help. We need to stand with David and ask the Holy Spirit to assist us in searching our own hearts and help us to see where we need repentance and change (Ps. 139:23-24). Examining our own heart is so important if we are to live as Christ lived, if we are love as Christ loved and if we are to serve as Christ served. As we examine our hearts compared to the heart of Jesus we soon realize that we need a spiritual heart transplant. This means putting Jesus on the throne of our lives and the center of our hearts. Leaders must maintain and continually cultivate the heart of a servant. Jesus was very clear about those that would serve as leaders to His people. They had to be those that positioned themselves as servants who were willing to lay their lives down for others. In other words, all ministers are first and foremost the servants of the servants of the Lord. The New Testament makes this clear in referring to leaders in servant language such as: Maintaining a Servant’s Heart

• Servants of God (2 Cor. 3:6; 1 Th. 3:2).

• Servants of Christ (Rom. 1:1; 1 Cor. 4:1).

Servants of the Gospel (Col. 1:23).

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