Many years ago, I was sitting in Missions class listening to one of my favorite professors, Dr. Cal Guy, lecturing a group of want-a-be-pastors-and-missionaries on the pressure of perfection in ministry. He said something I\u2019ve never forgotten. I didn\u2019t write it into my notes and it wasn\u2019t on a test, but I remember the exact statement. Dr. Guy said, \u201cReleased from the necessity of being perfect, you are now free to be good.\u201d Later I would discover he was paraphrasing a line from the end of a book entitled, \u201cEast of Eden\u201d by John Steinbeck. One character, Lee, says “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” The Apostle Paul, who surely was as near perfection as anyone other than Jesus, admitted that he had not reached perfection, but rather pressed on toward it (Philippians 3:12). Remembering this quote from my own Seminary student days, also led me to wonder what my former students and persons to whom I\u2019ve preached and served over the years, remember from my comments \u2013 not ideas, but direct quotes or at least paraphrases. I guess it\u2019s one of the things old professors\/ministers do \u2013 sit around and wonder if anyone remembers what they tried to teach\/preach. Since I remembered, let me pass it on to my readers \u2013 be released from the pressure of perfection. Be good today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many years ago, I was sitting in Missions class listening to one of my favorite professors, Dr. Cal Guy, lecturing a group of want-a-be-pastors-and-missionaries on the pressure of perfection in ministry. He said something I\u2019ve never forgotten. I didn\u2019t write it into my notes and it wasn\u2019t on a test, but I remember the exact…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}