And Paul lets us know it didn’t happen overnight; it was the result of deepening relationships.  You became dear to us (v.8). Love grows through knowing people, being there when they hurt, sharing in their joys--listening, learning, growing to love.

It is, as James Dobson and others say, a tough love—exhorts or admonishes, comforts, and urges (v.11). This kind of love is no cozy sentimentality. It is tough and truthful but flowing from a heart of cultivated love.

I remember sitting in a church service where a new pastor’s hard, condemning sermon from the previous week brought a public backlash.  In the discussion a wise member said, “Pastor, if you had preached that sermon after you had been with us a year, it properly would have been heard differently.”  Most people have to know we really love them before they fully hear us.

Love is the first characteristic of a ministry given to people; labor is the second. Labor with the people you serve (v. 9). The word here is difficult labor; sweat on the brow kind of work. In Paul’s context he refers to his tent making work, “that we might not be a burden to any of you.” But it also refers to intense spiritual labor — v. 3:10 “night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face and perfect what is lacking in your faith.”

Ministry is hard work. Forget this 40-hour workweek. The minister is on call 24/7.  If anyone tells you the ministry is easy, you know they are lying. If you don’t think so you haven’t done much ministry. Second Corinthians 11:27 is Paul’s testimony of the labor he knew: “in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness — besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches.”

I saw an example of love and work in a visit with our son, a youth minister. He got up at 4 a.m. to take a man to work. That wasn’t in his job description; that isn’t something a youth minister does. He’d already put in an extra workweek taking the youth on a ski trip. The pastor doesn’t risk breaking a leg — that’s the youth minister’s job. But ministry responds to need, and works hard to help meet a need so that the gospel can have an entrance and a life can be changed. Determine to work hard in loving people and building the church and your ministry will never be in vain.

Give your ministry to people; love them, and labor with them. The third panel of this spiritual pyramid: Live among the people you serve (v. 10). What a life!  The full life is holy toward God, righteous and without blame toward believers and the world.  We must live so that our life will bear close inspection. Any of you remember your mother or dad saying when you left the house, “Now you behave yourself.” Our Father asks us to behave ourselves. We must “walk worthy of God who calls us into His own kingdom and glory,” so that no one can use our life as an excuse to walk unworthily.

Love, labor and life linked together and given to people, grounded on the powerful presence of God will help us have a ministry that is not vain. Instead of it will be full, influential, eternally valuable, penetrating the darkness of a sinful world.

Two gas company employees stopped their truck in a suburban neighborhood to check the meters on a row of houses. They parked at one end and worked their way from house to house. At the last house a woman inside watched them. When they finished checking the meter the older supervisor challenged his young colleague to a foot race back to truck, declaring he was more physically fit. They ran down the street and as they approached the truck, the woman from the last house was huffing and puffing right behind them. She said, “When I saw you check my gas meter and start running, I decided I better run also.”

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Bill D. Whittaker is President of Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, KY.