I’m thankful the Lord doesn’t say, ‘Be successful’, but he says, ‘Be faithful’.”
This gIves a new perspective on Luke 10:2 about praying that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers into His harvest. While trying to obey the command I tended to pray that God would send missionaries to the harvest fields of earth. I still think this is a good prayer. But after getting B___’s letter I saw something more. The ’something more’ is not the thousands of professional missionaries but the millions of little people scattered all over the world. These are the people God is using in many places.
The people I know of include B____ distributing tracts, the man who led a neighbor to Christ, the people with their little Bible studies, the parents bringing up their children in the fear of the Lord.
When you look at this command in Luke you see the relevance of John 15:1-8. The little people scattered all over the world need to do nothing other than abide in Christ. All who abide in Him will bring forth fruit. They are the ones open to His leading. And, also, how much of the time the person is not even aware of being used. How relaxing this is. All I have to do is abide in Him, sit at His feet and learn of Him. John 6:63: “The Word that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.”
Is this not very different from the frustration of wanting to be used by God in a great way? Most of us are too prone for pride for that, anyway. We want purpose in life. Paul said that his high calling was to know Christ: Phil 3:10-14. We are called to be obedient saints: That’s all.
This brings us to the second reason to abide in Christ. The first is, of course, so we can be used of God in His purpose. The second reason to know Christ is that we will be judged by His Word. In John 12:48 Jesus said, “The Words I speak will judge him at the last day.” But we can only obey what we know.