In conjunction with Provocations & Pantings‘ Puritan Reading Challenge, I thought it best to bring out Isaac Watts’ “Questions for Ministers.”  These have been very encouraging over the years and I hope they will prove to be encouraging to you as well.  If you are like me you like to get a good start on reading, I’m not the fastest reader so every little bit helps.

Next month’s (March) Puritan Paperback reading is “The Godly Man’s Picture” By: Thomas Watson

The Godly Man's Pic

These questions will go nicely with The Godly Man’s Picture.  The Questions for Ministers can be read in its entirety (compliments of Banner of Truth Trust) by clicking here.  But what I will do is take one section and divide it into 5 or so questions per post.  This will allow us to digest them properly.  Here are the sections.

Summary of Titles…

1.      OF FAITHFULNESS IN THE MINISTRY (13 Questions)

2.     OF DILIGENCE IN THE MINISTRY (10 Questions)

3.     OF CONSTANT PRAYER AND DEPENDENCE (5 Questions)

4.     OF SELF-DENIAL, HUMILITY, MORTIFICATION, AND PATIENCE (8 Questions)

5.     OF CONVERSATION (10 Questions)

Again I will break them up for us to devour.

Now lets begin with “Faithfulness in the Ministry.”

The first 5 questions are:

1. Do I sincerely give myself ‘to the ministry of the word;’ Acts 6.4; and do I design to make it the chief business of my life to serve Christ in His Gospel, in order to the salvation of men?

2. Do I resolve, through the aids of divine grace, ‘to be faithful to him who hath put me into the ministry,’ and ‘to take heed to the ministry which I have received in the Lord that I may fulfill it?’ I Tim. 1.12, Col. 4.17.

3. Do I honestly and faithfully endeavor by study and prayer to know ‘the truth as it is in Jesus?’ Eph. 4.21. and do I seek my instructions chiefly from the ‘holy scriptures which are able to make me wise unto salvation, through the faith that is in Christ, that I may be thoroughly furnished unto every good word and work?’ 2 Tim. 3.14.17.

4. Do ‘I hold fast the form of sound words,’ as far as I have learned them of Christ and His apostles? 2 Tim. 1.13. That I ‘may by sound doctrine exhort and convince gainsayers;’ Tit. 1.9. and do I determine to ‘continue in the things which I have learned, knowing from whom I have learned them?’ 2 Tim. 3.14.

5. Do I resolve to give the people the true meaning of Christ in His word, so far as I can understand it, and ‘not to handle the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commend myself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God?’ 2 Cor. 4.2