Being Enlarged in Our Heart to Have the Intimate Concern of the Ministering Life

All believers in Christ need to be the ministers of the new covenant – it is our privilege, our right, and our responsibility to not only enjoy the Lord but also minister Him as life to others for the building up of the church.

We need to come up to God’s standard and become ministers of life, ministers of the new covenant, those who supply Christ to our fellow members of the Body for the building up of the Body of Christ.

For us to be those who minister life to others we need to not only be constituted with the truth and filled with Christ, but we also need to have an intimate concern for the saints, for those around us.

If it were up to us, we would care only for ourselves, but our Father God has a loving heart, our Savior Christ is seeking and shepherding, and the Holy Spirit is enlightening and seeking man to love man, redeem man, nurture man, and bring man fully into God.

If we don’t have an intimate concern for others, no matter how much we try to speak the words of the Bible to them, we may rather damage them, offend them, or kill them, instead of giving life to them.

We need to lean from the Apostle Paul to have an intimate concern for the believers and be spent for their sake so that the Body may be built up!

Having an Intimate Concern for Others

We may have the desire and even the ability to carry out a work, to go and visit people, but if we lack an intimate concern, our work will be fruitless.

The reason for our barrenness is simply not having the loving and forgiving heart of our Father God and the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ (see Luke 15). God doesn’t come to teach us or help us learn good teachings and doctrines – He loves us and He has an intimate concern for us.

Our eloquence, our gift, our knowledge, our power, or anything else cannot touch people as much as our intimate concern for them can (see 1 Cor. 12:31; 2 Tim. 1:7; Philemon 9-12).

Paul didn’t just preach the gospel and establish churches, but he had an intimate concern for the believers he brought to the Lord. He was laboring over their souls, admonishing them from house to house and even with tears, imparting to them not only the good word of our Lord but also his own soul, desiring to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice of their faith.

How fruitful we are and how much our fruit will remain depends not on what we are able to do or how knowledgeable we are but on whether or not we have an intimate concern for the ones we visit, care for, shepherd, or meet and talk to (see 2 Cor. 12:15; 1 Cor. 9:22; Matt. 9:12).

Being Enlarged in Our Hearts to Have a Loving Concern

None of us are born with God’s loving and seeking heart as our heart. But we can open to the Lord and ask Him to duplicate His loving and forgiving heart into our heart, and give us Christ’s seeking and shepherding spirit.

Just as in human life some mothers may be short of wisdom yet they raise up their children in a very good way because they have a loving concern for them, so we need to not pay attention too much to outward things or eloquence but seek to have a loving concern for the new ones, the saints, and the ones the Lord put on our heart.

May we not kill others or offend them because of doing our best to care for them yet without a loving concern! Even if the words we speak are right, if we don’t have an intimate concern for the saints, we may rather put them off or offend them.

Whenever we work for the Lord one with Him to care for the saints in various ways, we need to not seek to display our knowledge, spirituality, gift, or ability, but rather learn to love them, care for them, and be concerned with their situation and condition.

The ministering life of our Savior God is in us, and as we visit others, we can allow the Lord to enlarge our hearts that the new ones, the saints, the young ones, the students, and all men would be on our heart and we would have a loving concern for them!

The result of a loving concern of the ministering life is fruit-bearing!

Paul: Cherishing, Nourishing, Humbling, Spending All!

We see a good pattern in the Apostle Paul in this respect: he was a minister of the new covenant and he had an intimate concern for the saints wherever he went.

He lived a ministering life that warmed up people by cherishing them in the humanity of Jesus, and then he nourished people in the divinity of Christ with the riches of Christ (see Eph. 5:29, Prov. 25:15).

Paul shepherded the saints and considered himself not as a teacher, preacher, or an apostle, but as a nursing mother and an exhorting father (1 Thes. 2:7-8, 11-12; Acts 20:19-20, 27, 31).

Though we may think that the believers and the new ones were not up to Paul’s level of experience of knowledge, in Acts and in the Epistles we see that he came down to the weak one’s level so that he could gain them for Christ and that they would grow in life and be conformed to Christ’s image (2 Cor. 11:28-29; 1 Cor. 9:22; cf. Matt. 12:20).

Paul’s testimony was that he loved the church one with Christ and he was, therefore, willing to spend all he had (his material possessions) and even to spend what He was (his being) for the sake of the saints – for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 5:25; 2 Cor. 12:15; 11:28-29).

What a pattern! If Paul could do this, we can also ask the Lord to enlarge our hearts and grow in us to the extent that we can also do this in oneness with Christ!

Lord, enlarge our hearts that the saints and the new ones would be on our hearts for our living and dying together. Save us from being focused on ourselves, our well-being, our house, and all things related to us. Lord, give us Your loving and forgiving heart, and dispense into us Your seeking and shepherding spirit. May we have a loving concern for the saints. Lord, an intimate concern for all the ones under our care!

References and Further Reading

• Sharing inspired from, Life-study of 2 Corinthians (pp. 379-386), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Unique Work in the Lord’s Recovery, week 4 (entitled, Ambassadors of Christ with the Ministry of Reconciliation and Co-workers of God with an All-fitting Life).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # To the lost world minister Christ, / By daily walk making Him known; / Imparting Christ by whom you live, / Share with all men what you own.
  # In the church of Jesus there is love for you, / Love most pure and tender, love most deep and true; / Why should you be lonely, why for friendship sigh, / When the church of Jesus has a full supply?
  # Foll’wing Thee, Good Shepherd, I would feed, / Shepherd those allotted me, / E’er I’d touch Thy heart’s desire, / Live in Thine economy. / O my Lord, All thanks to Thee! / Goodness, mercy follow me; / I’d ever dwell within Thy house, / As Thy Body glorious!
• Pictures credit: Loving Mother (via here) and Montana Pics (by a friend).