God our Saviour

At our recent ministry leaders’ meeting I shared some thoughts on God our Saviour that were brought to my attention by Tim Chester’s blog in the UK.

In the book of Titus the phrase “God our Saviour” appears three times (1v3, 2v13, 3v4) and has a lot to teach us about ministry.  Here are two lessons:

1. God is other people’s Saviour

God is the Saviour who we all need and therefore the aim of all of our ministries is to point people to him.  Whether it is welcoming or Sunday school or crèche or projector actually the ultimate aim of all of them is that people will come to God as their Saviour

One implication of this is that we can’t save anyone.  Only God can do that.  We can’t fix anyone and their problems.  Rather all we can do is point them to God who is their Saviour.  He has the power and strength and love to help anyone who comes to him.

We must resist the temptation to fix people; instead we need to point people to God, depending on his Word and his Spirit in prayer.

2. God is our Saviour

Just as God is other people’s Saviour so he is also our Saviour as well.  We need to remember this in ministry because there is always the danger that we will start looking to our ministry to in some sense ‘save’ us.  We wrongly look to our service for our identity or standing with God.

One result of this can be that we get defensive when our ministry is threatened, we pretend that everything is going okay when it isn’t, or we get overly worried about what people will think of us if it is seen to ‘fail’.

However, the fact that God is our Saviour means that our identity comes from him and his grace.  There are always times when our ministries will be going better than others.  It might seem as if a lot is going wrong, and so we need to remember that God is our Saviour (not our ministry!) and rejoice in him.

So the next time you are involved in some Christain activity that threatens to discourage you, remember this:

• God is other people’s Saviour.  Your job is not to fix them but be faithful in pointing them to him.
• God is our Saviour.  We don’t find our identity in our service but rather in God’s love and grace.