Iron & Altar

Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers. - Acts 20:28a

Keep watch over yourselves first. That is the order Paul gives - not watch over the flock and neglect yourself, not sacrifice yourself without vigilance for what the sacrifice is doing to you. The self-watching comes first because the man who has abandoned his interior life cannot tend anyone else's.

For three years, night and day, Paul admonished them with tears. Not a weekend retreat. Three years of sustained, weeping, overnight investment in the people entrusted to him. That is what faithful leadership looks like in the New Testament. The tears are not weakness. They are evidence of the actual cost of the ministry received.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. Paul worked with his own hands so he would not be a burden. The giving that asks nothing in return - not recognition, not obligation, not the debt of gratitude - is the giving that models what the Gospel is doing. Brother, the question for today is simple: am I watching over myself, and am I giving from the center or the surplus?

Keep watch over yourself this week before you keep watch over anyone else. Identify one interior area - prayer, honesty, temptation, gratitude - that needs watching. Give it specific attention for three days. And carry [name] into it: Lord, let him keep watch over himself as faithfully as he watches over what he is responsible for.

Lord, let me keep watch over myself so I can tend the flock you have given me. Let the giving come from the center. Let the admonishing have actual tears in it. Come, Holy Spirit - appointed me as overseer of the things in my care, and keep me at it. Alleluia. Amen.