Pastors and missionaries (need) to know God and to find in him a Treasure more satisfying than any other person or thing or relationship or experience or accomplishment in the world.

We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.

So, you have three possibilities in world missions. You can be a goer, a sender, or disobedient. The Bible does not assume that everyone goes. But it does assume that the ones who do not go care about goers and support goers and pray for goers and hold the rope of the goers.

...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.

"How are you doing?" - - - better than I deserve.

We need a Savior. Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight.

The greatest threat to your ministry, dear brothers, is that you lose your joy in God.