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About the Book
"You Can Have What You Say" by Kenneth Hagin is a guide to understanding the power of words and how they shape our reality. The book emphasizes the importance of speaking positive affirmations and declarations in order to manifest our desires and achieve success in all areas of life. Hagin stresses the Biblical principles of faith and confession, teaching readers how to align their words with God's promises to experience breakthroughs and blessings.
William Still
I recently read Dying to Live (Christian Focus, 1991), the autobiography of Scottish pastor William Still. I became interested in Still after reading his book The Work of the Pastor earlier this year.
The first half of Dying to Live tells about Still’s early years into young adulthood and his beginning in pastoral ministry. Still had an unsettled childhood. His parents were separated in his early years, and his father was an alcoholic. He was a sickly child who took refuge in music and became an accomplished pianist. He was part of the Salvation Army as a young man but then entered ministry in the Church of Scotland and served at the Gilcomston Church in his hometown of Aberdeen from 1945-1997.
The second half of the book deals with various aspects of Still’s pastoral ministry. Still was an evangelical. In his early ministry he worked with Billy Graham, Alan Redpath, and others in evangelistic events. With time, however, he moved away from what he came to call “evangelisticism” to develop a solid expositional ministry.
Still faced his fair share of hardships during the course of his ministry. When he moved away from pragmatic evangelistic methods, for example, more than two hundred people stopped attending his church almost overnight. In the preface, he references Martin Luther’s observation that there are three things which make a minister: study, prayer, and afflictions. He observes, “He who is not prepared to make enemies for Christ’s sake by the faithful preaching of the Word will never make lasting friends for Christ, either” (p. 93).
He describes one particularly difficult controversy early in his ministry when he confronted a group of disgruntled elders. At the end of one Sunday service, he read a statement confronting these men, which ended, “There you sit, with your heads down, guilty men. What would you say if I named you before the whole congregation? You stand condemned before God for your contempt of the Word and of his folk.” He adds, “The moment I had finished, I walked out of the pulpit. There was no last hymn—no benediction. I went right home. It was the hardest and most shocking thing I ever had to do in Gilcomston” (p. 124). That same week seven of his elders resigned and Still was called twice before his Presbytery to answer for the controversy. Yet, he endured.
Still maintains that in light of the unpleasantness one will face in the ministry that the minister of the Word must possess one quality in particular: “…I would say that this quality is courage: guts, sheer lion-hearted bravery, clarity of mind and purpose, grit. Weaklings are no use here. They have a place in the economy of God if they are not deliberate weaklings and stunted adults as Paul writes of both to the Romans and to the Corinthians. But weaklings are no use to go out and speak prophetically to men from God and declare with all compassion, as well as with faithfulness, the truth: the divine Word that cuts across all men’s worldly plans for their lives” (p. 140).
Still was a pioneer in several areas. First, he developed a pattern of preaching and teaching systematically through books of the Bible at a time when this was rarely done. He began a ministry of “consecutive Bible teaching” starting with the book of Galatians in 1947, calling this transition from “evangelisticism to systematic exposition … probably the most significant decision in my life” (p. 191).
He was also a pioneer in simplifying and integrating the ministry of the church. After noting how youth in the church were drifting away, even after extensive involvement in the church’s children’s ministry, Still writes, “I conceived the idea of ceasing all Sunday School after beginners and Primary age (seven years) and invited parents to have their children sit with them in the family pew from the age of eight” (p. 171). He laments “the disastrous dispersion of congregations by the common practice of segregating the church family into every conceivable category of division of ages, sexes, etc.” (p. 173).
Dying to Live is a helpful and encouraging work about the life and work of the minister and is to be commended to all engaged in the call of gospel ministry. As the title indicates, Still’s essential thesis is that in order to be effective in ministry the minister must suffer a series of deaths to himself (cf. John 12:24). On this he writes:
The deaths one dies before ministry can be of long duration—it can be hours and days before we minister, before the resurrection experience of anointed preaching. And then there is another death afterwards, sometimes worse than the death before. From the moment that you stand there dead in Christ and dead to everything you are and have and ever shall be and have, every breath you breathe thereafter, every thought you think, every word you say and deed you do, must be done over the top of your own corpse or reaching over it in your preaching to others. Then it can only be Jesus that comes over and no one else. And I believe that every preacher must bear the mark of that death. Your life must be signed by the Cross, not just Christ’s cross (and there is really no other) but your cross in his Cross, your particular and unique cross that no one ever died—the cross that no one ever could die but you and you alone: your death in Christ’s death (p. 136).
the single person’s search for intimacy
The other night, my best friend and I watched a show together from a thousand miles away. If I can’t fly to D.C. and she can’t come to Mississippi, at least we can fire up our laptops and enjoy Anne with an E  at the same time, texting our commentary to each other throughout. As a child, I was always enthralled with Anne’s relationship with her best friend, Diana. The two were kindred spirits, confidants through thick and thin, always advocating for one another. I always wanted a friend like Diana, and, by God’s grace, I’ve been given several friends who fit the bill. I needed these friends as a single person, and I need them now as a wife. When I was engaged, a friend of mine pulled me aside. “You are in a love haze right now, but don’t forget your friends. You still need them.” She was right. Marriage is not a self-sufficient island of Christian community. It’s one in a network of meaningful relationships that are in the business of conforming us to the image of Christ. Made for Others God made us for community. It was not good for Adam to be alone, so God made Eve. And while the story of woman’s creation is the first love story, it’s also a story about community. Adam was not made to fulfill his mission on earth alone; he needed Eve to help him. When she did, they began populating the world and filling it with more people who were called to worship God in community with one another. “Marriage is not a self-sufficient island of Christian community.” Adam’s need for Eve is a bigger story than a man’s need for a wife. It’s the story of man’s need not to live in isolation. It’s the story of man’s need for community. We need the entire body to grow in the image of Christ — not just our spouses. Ephesians 5 paints a beautiful picture of the intimate relationship between a husband and his wife, but that relationship is couched in the context of the previous chapter: we are a body of believers called to unity (Ephesians 4:1–3; 13). We are a family. This view of community not only puts our marriages in perspective and takes undue pressure off our spouses to be everything we need all the time; it also knocks against our tendency to isolate singles from our understanding of community. Intimacy Is More Than Sex This is good news. It means that marriage is not the only biblical means for gaining intimacy. Our society often equates intimacy with sex. We tease snidely that when people are tense, it must be because they need to “get laid.” We joke — with eyes bulging — about the woman who’s gone several months (or, God forbid, several years) without sex. We are uncomfortable with the idea of friendships between men and women because friendship leads to intimacy and intimacy leads to sex. We are uncomfortable with close friendships between people of the same sex for the same reason. In fact, we side-eye David and Jonathan for loving each other a little more than we’re comfortable with men loving one another (1 Samuel 18:1). “Marriage is not the only biblical means for gaining intimacy.” In a culture that so often equates intimacy with sex, it makes sense that singles in our churches feel isolated from intimate relationships. If sex is the primary means for intimacy in a relationship, and if unmarried people in the church should not be having sex, then single folks are out of luck. This is a hopeless position for people whom God made to long for fellowship with other human beings. We All Need Each Other In his message “Five Misconceptions About Singleness,” Sam Alberry said, “We just can’t imagine that there is a kind of real intimacy that is not ultimately sexual. . . . It’s a profoundly unhealthy way to think. We’ve downgraded other forms of intimacy because we’ve put all of our intimacy eggs in the sexual and romantic relationship basket.” Marriage is not the only road towards intimacy because sexual intimacy is not the only kind of intimacy. Nor is it the most important form of intimacy. Biblical intimacy among siblings in Christ is rooted in God’s love towards us. It is rooted in the fact that we have been invited into an intimate relationship with the Son (John 10:29). When we make marriage the primary means of intimacy in the church, we do a huge disservice to the singles in our fellowship and the idea of Christian community as a whole. Marriage is not an island that we move to in order to bring glory to God; it’s just one picture (and a very prominent one) in a gigantic network of human relationships meant to deepen our understanding of Christ. We All Need Christ When we understand this, we unflatten our definition of intimacy and realize that its purpose isn’t ultimately about our own sense of self-fulfillment, but about God’s glory. Our relationships are not in the business of completing us — from marriage to friendship to fellowship — but rather, they are a tool God uses to conform us to his image (Romans 12:1). “Marriage isn’t the only road towards intimacy because sexual intimacy isn’t the only kind of intimacy.” Ultimately, the person that we need is Christ. And every other relationship in our life is designed to point us back to our need for him. Anne of Green Gables often called Diana her kindred spirit . I love that term. A kindred spirit is someone who understands you more deeply than any other person. And what better place to find those spirits than in the body of Christ, as siblings in him? What better people to remind us, single or married, that we were not made to live alone, but to partner together to spur one another on for God’s glory?
