Preaching and teaching the word of God are our primary responsibilities in our ministry.

We read in the gospel of Mark (1:35 ) that in  the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left, and went out to a secluded place, and was praying there. 

Though we need to study the word of God deeply, getting to know God intimately requires spending time with Him in prayer, and choosing to believe He loves you and has a great plan for you.

It’s about inviting God into every facet of your life. There will be days when you don’t feel like praying, reading the Word, or serving God, and there will be days when you don’t necessarily feel God’s presence. These are the days when you simply refuse to live controlled by your feelings. Instead, ask God to help you walk in obedience and submit to His Word whether you feel like it or not.

I often say that if we truly desire to live victoriously, then we must be willing to do what is right when it feels wrong.

God’s wisdom is revealed primarily in the cross of Jesus Christ, but not everybody sees this.

Paul pointed out that there are three different attitudes toward the cross.

Some stumble at the cross (1 Corinthians 1: 23a).

This was the attitude of the Jews, because their emphasis was on miraculous signs and the cross appears to be weakness. Jewish history is filled with miraculous events, from the exodus out of Egypt to the days of Elijah and Elisha. When Jesus was ministering on earth, the Jewish leaders repeatedly asked Him to perform a sign from heaven; but He refused.

The Jewish nation did not understand their own sacred Scriptures. They looked for a Messiah who would come like a mighty conqueror and defeat all their enemies. He would then set up His kingdom and return the glory to Israel. The question of the apostles in Acts 1:6 shows how strong this hope was among the Jews. At the same time, their scribes noticed in the Old Testament that the Messiah would suffer and die.

Passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 pointed toward a different kind of Messiah, and the scholars could not reconcile these two seemingly contradictory prophetic images. They did not understand that their Messiah had to suffer and die before He could enter into His glory (Luke 24:13–35), and that the future messianic kingdom was to be preceded by the age of the church.

Because the Jews were looking for power and great glory, they stumbled at the weakness of the cross.

Some laugh at the cross (1 Corinthians 1:23).

This was the response of the Greeks. To them, the cross was foolishness. The Greeks emphasized wisdom; we still study the profound writings of the Greek philosophers. But they saw no wisdom in the cross, for they looked at the cross from a human point of view. Had they seen it from God’s viewpoint, they would have discerned the wisdom of God’s great plan of salvation.

Some believe and experience the power and the wisdom of the cross (1 Corinthians. 1:24).

Paul did not alter his message when he turned from a Jewish audience to a Greek one: He preached Christ crucified. “The foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21) does not mean that the act of preaching is foolish, but rather the content of the message. The New International Version states it correctly, “Through the foolishness of what was preached”. 

Those who have been called by God’s grace, and who have responded by faith (2 Thess. 2:13–14), realize that Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom. Not the Christ of the manger, or the temple, or the marketplace—but the Christ of the cross. It is in the death of Christ that God has revealed the foolishness of man’s wisdom and the weakness of man’s power.