{"id":4110,"date":"2016-10-30T08:31:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T08:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=4110"},"modified":"2016-10-30T08:31:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T08:31:20","slug":"god-ordained-pastors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=4110","title":{"rendered":"God-ordained Pastors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have heard someone say that the age of the local church is past and<\/p>\n<p>that there is no longer any use for God-ordained Pastors. It is easy for<\/p>\n<p>a weed to speak this way, because it can thrive upon that which is<\/p>\n<p>natural, without any tending, but the flower of God\u2019s planting is not<\/p>\n<p>so. It is what it is because of the continual attention and masterful<\/p>\n<p>touch of the Husbandman.<\/p>\n<p>The Master Gardener takes great care to continually water, prune,<\/p>\n<p>protect, defend from parasites and walk among His garden. He uses the<\/p>\n<p>same means He always has in order to accomplish this:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/biblia.com\/bible\/kjv1900\/Ephesians%204.11\">Ephesians 4:11<\/a> And<\/p>\n<p>he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and<\/p>\n<p>some, pastors and teachers; 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the<\/p>\n<p>work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we<\/p>\n<p>all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of<\/p>\n<p>God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness<\/p>\n<p>of Christ.<\/p>\n<p>Since God gave gifts unto men, and men as gifts in order to accomplish<\/p>\n<p>these spiritual things, are we expected to believe that He no longer<\/p>\n<p>desires to bring His people to maturity, unity and greater knowledge in<\/p>\n<p>Christ, or that He has found a better way to do it that He has not<\/p>\n<p>revealed in His Book? The language of the goat is absurd to the sheep.<\/p>\n<p>The goat may wander and scrounge and eat whatever scrap lay in their<\/p>\n<p>path, but the great Shepherd tenderly loves His sheep, and so He still<\/p>\n<p>says to His men, in the timeless language of His glorious word, \u201cIf you<\/p>\n<p>love Me, feed my sheep.\u201d Chris Cunningham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have heard someone say that the age of the local church is past and that there is no longer any use for God-ordained Pastors. It is easy for a weed to speak this way, because it can thrive upon that which is natural, without any tending, but the flower of God\u2019s planting is not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-chris-cunningham","category-gospel-preaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4111,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions\/4111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}