Having an Enlarged Heart to Embrace, Care for, and Minister Life to all the Saints

The first thing we should consider when we look at the person and heart of a leading one or a serving one in the church life is the matter of having an enlarged heart.

We may be lacking in this or that, but in caring for the saints we need to pray to the Lord to have an enlarged heart, that is, to be filled with wisdom how to care for His people and to have largeness of heart to minister life to them with an intimate concern.

It is very interesting to see that our ability and capacity are not what qualifies us to serve the Lord or to take the lead in the church; what qualifies us is our person and our heart. When we have the proper person and the proper heart, we can care for others and we can take the lead in life in the church life.

Actually, the New Testament begins by speaking concerning our heart and our spirit, for John the Baptist came to proclaim the gospel so that we may repent, that is, have a change and turn in heart, and the Lord Jesus came to regenerate us with His life in our spirit.

When we received the Lord, He gave us a new heart and a new spirit, for He took out our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh, and he put His Spirit within us.

However, as we go through things and lose sight of the Lord, our new heart may become old and stony again; therefore, we need to practice to maintain the newness of our heart and spirit before the Lord.

The Lord wants us to love Him from all our heart, and our service to Him should be in the newness of spirit, not in oldness of letter. We must continually exercise to deal with our heart and our spirit so that we maintain the newness of our heart and spirit in the church life.

With our heart we love the Lord and with our spirit we contact Him, receive Him, and contain Him. How do we maintain the newness of our heart and spirit? It is by first coming to the Lord and contacting Him, and then by repenting in His shining light.

Whenever we contact the Lord, He will shine on many things that we have done or said, and even on our attitude, our lack of living and loving Christ, and our lack of an enlarged heart. We simply need to repent, as the Lord shines on us.

The result of genuine repentance under the Lord’s light is not hopelessness or misery but the hope of life, for through our repentance the Lord renews our heart and transforms us to make it new and fresh.

As we repent before the Lord again and again, our stony heart is removed and we have a softened heart, a renewed heart, a transformed heart, a heart that is soft and open to the Lord for Him to do what He wants to do in us.

Actually, simply turning to the Lord is an act of repentance in itself, and calling on the name of the Lord is also a sign of repentance. As we repent, He renews our heart. As we repent, He transforms our heart.

Today we want to see further our need to come to the Lord and ask for wisdom and an enlarged heart so that we may care for the saints according to God, having the intimate concern of the ministering life, which is a fruitful life.

Having an Enlarged Heart to Embrace all the Saints and Minister Life to them with an Intimate Concern

We need to have an enlarged heart. David said that he runs the way of God’s commandments because God enlarged his heart (Psa. 119:32).

We must be genuine ministers of the new covenant, having an enlarged heart with the intimate concern of the ministering life, which is a fruitful life (see 2 Cor. 7:2-3). The apostle Paul had an enlarged heart, and his heart was opened to the believers, but the saints in Corinth were small in heart, constricted in their being.

We need to have the saints in our heart, and those whom the Lord gave to care for should be in our heart for our dying together and living together. This requires that we open to the Lord and tell Him to enlarge our heart so that we would have an intimate concern for the saints and minister life to them.

The first thing in serving the church and the saints concerns our heart. Our heart may be very small to contain only those whom we like, we know, or share commonality with us.

But Paul’s heart was huge, containing all the saints, and the saints and the churches occupied his heart. The Lord’s heart is also enlarged and huge, having us all on His heart to intercede for us.

We need to be able to embrace all the believers regardless of their condition, care for them with the intimate concern coming from the divine life within, and be able to speak to them and minister life to them (2 Cor. 6:11).

But if our heart is selective in whom we allow in it, if we choose whom we want to put in our heart and whom to embrace, we are small and constricted in our heart. We need to ask the Lord to not let us remain in our smallness, narrowness, and exclusiveness, but have an enlarged heart to embrace all believers.

We need to learn to speak with all the saints, contact them, and pray to have an intimate concern for them so that our heart would be enlarged and we would minister life to them.

Paul was able to embrace all believers and with an open mouth he spoke frankly concerning their real situation into which they have been misled. If we have an enlarged heart and the saints are in our heart, we will be able to care for them according to God, and when the time comes, we will have an open mouth toward them to speak frankly concerning their situation.

But if the saints are not on our heart, if our heart is not large enough to contain the saints and have them in us, we will not be able to speak to them in a frank way concerning their situation.

This kind of openness and enlargement is needed to reconcile and bring back to God the saints who have been misled or distracted.

It is when we have our heart enlarged that we can have the saints on our heart, we will care for their situation and condition, and we will seek the Lord what to speak to them when they are misled or distracted.

To fulfill the ministry of reconciliation and bring the saints into the Holy of Holies from any kind of distraction requires that we would have an enlarged heart to them.

Our ministry to the saints and to the church depends on the condition and largeness of our heart. Our heart is for the Lord to make His home in, and our heart is also for the saints to make their home in; therefore, we need to have an enlarged heart. We can tell the Lord in all honesty,

Lord, please enlarge our heart so that we may embrace all the saints and minister life to them with an intimate concern! Don’t let us remain in our smallness, narrowness, and exclusiveness. Lord, make our heart like Your heart, enlarged and enabled to embrace all the believers regardless of their condition. May our heart be a home for Christ and the saints, and may we have an intimate concern for the saints to minister life to them according to their need. Oh Lord, we confess that we are small in heart and selective in whom we allow in our heart. Enlarge our heart!

Praying like Solomon to have Wisdom and a Large Heart to Care for God’s People

Solomon is a very good example of one who was competent to oversee God’s people, and the secret is that he prayed that God would give him wisdom to lead, and God gave him both wisdom and largeness of heart (1 Kings 3:5-9; 2 Chron. 1:10; 1 Kings 4:29).

Even though Solomon asked God for the wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in among God’s people, God gave him largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore. The seashore encloses the sea, and God has set the sand as a boundary for the sea (Jer. 5:22); this shows that Solomon’s heart was larger than the sea.

We need to ask God for wisdom how to live, behave, and care for others, and God will give us both wisdom and largeness of heart.

One of the biggest problems in the eldership and leadership in the churches is the smallness and narrowness of heart. We all need to have an enlarged heart by praying that the Lord would give us wisdom and be our wisdom in the Christian life and church life.

Those who are wise have large hearts, but those who have a narrow heart are foolish. A small heart makes us proud and foolish; when a person is narrow and his heart is narrow, it is easy for him to be proud.

Pride is the expression of the narrowness of a person. If we are small people, narrow in our heart, unable to embrace and accommodate all the saints, unable to love all and care for all, we need to come to the Lord and ask Him to give us wisdom and to enlarge our heart.

This matter requires much prayer and dealing with the Lord.

To be clever or smart is not enough, and to have a heart that includes those whom you like or are like you is not good enough. We need to ask the Lord to give us wisdom how to discern things and minister life to His people, and we need to ask Him to enlarge our heart so that His believers would be in our heart.

Many difficulties in the local churches are because the elders don’t have a large heart; pride – which is an expression of foolishness – comes from having an arrow heart.

We need to always ask the Lord for wisdom how to be and speak in the church, and ask Him to enlarge our heart so that we may have largeness of heart to care for His people and bring many back to the Lord from any distraction or misleading.

The apostle Paul had the proper heart and the right ground to speak a frank word to the Corinthians in his epistles, but which of the saints are in our heart to such an extent that we can speak a frank word for them to be helped to come back to the Lord? Or do we speak and hang out with the same saints week after week, not having an enlarged heart to speak with and receive all the saints?

We all are short in this. We all need to humble ourselves and deal with the Lord in prayer very much, asking Him,

Lord, give us wisdom and understanding how to live, behave, and minister life in the church life among all Your people. We admit that we have a narrow and small heart, and many times we are foolish and proud. Lord Jesus, give us largeness of heart even as the sand that is on the seashore. Grow in us unto maturity and make us wise in heart so that we may love and care for Your people even as You do, and we may be able to intimately care for them with Your concern, speaking Your words, and ministering Your life, for their further being saved in life and reconciled to God!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, The Elders’ Management of the Church, ch. 3 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 4, The Heart and Spirit of a Leading One.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # O Father, Son and Spirit, send / Us increase from above; / Enlarge, expand all Christian hearts / To comprehend Thy love; / And make us all go on to know / With nobler powers conferred: / The Lord hath yet more light and truth / To break forth from His Word. (Hymns #817)
  # Oh, how we need the churches, / All of them, great or small! / We need their many portions / To profit us withal. / Yes, Lord, enlarge the churches; / We love their needs to bear. / Enlarge our hearts, Lord Jesus, / In fellowship and prayer. (Hymns #1265)
  # Oh, may Thy Cross within me / Deepen its work and burn / In me enlarge Thy measure, / And me to ashes turn. / Oh, may Thy Spirit fill me / Each day more than before, / And may Thy living water / On me and thru me pour. (Hymns #280)