As the Lord’s faithful and prudent slaves today, we need to use the Lord’s gift to build up the church by giving others food at the proper time.
This means we need to be those serving others with Christ and ministering Christ as grace to them out of love for the Lord and in oneness with Him.
According to Matt. 25, we believers in Christ are, on one hand, virgins who love the Lord and keep themselves fresh and living for Him, seeking to buy the oil in our vessel by allowing the Spirit to saturate our inner being and transform us. On the other hand, we are the Lord’s slaves, His servants, those who were given a spiritual gift, a talent, by the Lord to serve Him until He returns.
We all have received a gift from the Lord, so we need to minister it among ourselves as good stewards of the varied grace of God. First we need to enjoy the Lord as grace, and then we need to minister Him to others; we need to give others food at the proper time.
In the aspect of life, we all need to seek the Lord to fill us with the Spirit in our vessel, asking Him to saturate and permeate our soul with Himself.
In the aspect of service, we need to minister Christ to others as grace for their enjoyment, for we are in the household of God, and we all have a spiritual gift which we must use and exercise to do business for the Lord and to feed His people.
May we be those who fan into flame the gift of God given to us, our God-given human spirit, and may we minister something of Christ to those with whom the Lord has put us together.
If we are faithful in these small things which the Lord has entrusted us today, if we are prudent not to enjoy the world but enjoy the Lord, and faithful to minister food to God’s people at the proper time, we will enter into the joy of our Master when He returns.
Entering into the joy of our Master is the greatest reward that we can receive from the Lord, for this means that we will participate in the Lord’s joy. Oh, to make the Lord happy by being one with Him in our living and serving today!
May we not despise our talent by thinking that, since we don’t have five talents or two talents, we are not useful to the Lord; may we realise that our talent is useful to the Lord in the church, and five of these one-talented people when they function equal one five-talented ones.
If all the one-talented believers would exercise their function today, the whole world will be gained by the Lord, and the church would be built up!
Serving the Lord out of Love for Him, through Him and unto Him, and in Coordination with the Saints
Our inward motive for serving the Lord should be our love for Him (see Exo. 21:5; Rev. 2:4-5). We should not serve the Lord or participate in the church service merely because we have to, because we were assigned to do it.
In Mal. 3:14 the people of Israel said that it is vain to serve God, and what profit is that they kept His charge and have walked mournfully before Jehovah of hosts. Oh Lord Jesus!
We may serve the Lord without any rejoicing but mournfully, like the people of Israel; this is not good. We should serve the Lord with rejoicing (Psa. 100:2).
May we turn our heart to the Lord, love Him with our first love, and have the inward motive of loving the Lord as we serve Him.
Our serving the Lord should always proceed out from Him as the source of blessing, be through Him as the means and the power, and be unto Him for His glory (Rom. 11:36; cf. Num. 18:1).
If the Lord within us moves us to serve, we should go and serve one with Him; as we serve, we should take Him as our means and our power for service, and the result should be that He gains all the glory.
In this way, we will not commit the iniquity of the sanctuary; it is possible for us to sin against the Lord as we serve Him, because we don’t do everything out from Him, through Him, and unto Him.
If the Lord is not the source of our service, if He is not the means and the power, and He is not the One who gains all the glory, we may sin against the Lord even in our service to Him.
We need to serve the Lord with our whole being according to the counsel of God by coordinating with the members of the Body (see Rom. 12:1-2, 11; Acts 13:36; 1 Cor. 12:14-22).
Our physical body is a picture of the Body of Christ; the Body is not one member but many, and God has placed the members of the Body – each one of them – even as He willed.
May we not despise our function and covet the function of others; rather, may we treasure the function that the Lord has given us and committed to us, and may we accept others’ function in the Body.
Also, we should not be proud of our function and consider we don’t need others’ function, thinking we are all-inclusive and thus despising others; rather, we need to appreciate and receive others’ function and serve together in coordination in the Body.
May we love the Lord with our whole being, offering up our body as a living sacrifice for the building up of the church, and may we learn to coordinate with the other members in the Body! May all our service in the Body be according to the counsel of God and by Him, together with all the saints.
Lord Jesus, we love you, and we serve You and the saints out of our love for You. Here, dear Lord, in the church, we give You our first love and we want to do the first works. Lord, we want that our service be out of You as the source of blessing, through You as the means and power, and unto You for Your glory and expression. We want to serve You with our whole being according to the counsel of God by coordinating with the members of the Body. Amen, Lord Jesus, thank You for placing us in the Body, where we can serve You by ministering Christ to others, and we can serve the saints in coordination in the Body!
We need to Use the Lord’s Gift to Build up the Church by Giving others Food at the Proper Time
What does it mean for us to be faithful in service? In Matt. 24:45-51 we are told that the Lord commissioned us, each one of us, to take care of His household; He has given each of us at least a talent (a spiritual gift), and now we need to take care of His household.
God’s household is the believers in Christ (Eph. 2:19) who compose the church (1 Tim. 3:15). The Lord charged each one of us to minister food to His household, to the believers in the church.
“Give them food at the proper time” (Matt. 24:45) is what the Lord wants us to do. We need to use the Lord’s gift to build up the church by serving others with Christ and ministering Christ as grace to them (see Matt. 25:27; 1 Pet. 4:10; Col. 1:7; 4:12).
We need to serve the Lord as laboring priests of the gospel of God, saving sinners to offer them to God as acceptable sacrifices and eventually presenting them full-grown in Christ (according to Rom. 15:16; 12:1; Col. 1:28).
The initial stage of our service and offering is that we preach the gospel to save the Gentiles and offer them to God acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit.
Then, we need to labor on the ones that got saved until they present their bodies as a living sacrifice for the Body life (Rom. 12:2). And we should not stop here, but work on the further until we present them full-grown in Christ (Col. 1:28).
For this, we need to supply others with Christ as their spiritual food at the proper time. We need to speak Christ to all kinds of people daily in season and out of season (see Acts 5:42; 8:4; 2 Tim. 4:2).
And when we meet together, we need to desperately endeavor to build up a habit of speaking in the meeting, even in any meeting (1 Cor. 14:26, 4-5, 12, 31).
In caring for people, we need to care for them with the loving and forgiving heart of our Father God and the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ (John 21:15-17; 1 Cor. 12:31; 14:4-8, 13).
The most excellent way for us to be anything and do anything for the building up of the Body of Christ is love; we should not merely care for others but have the Father’s forgiving and loving heart, and care for them with the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ.
May we not classify others, thinking some are good while others are bad, and we should not criticize or condemn them; rather, we should love them even as the Lord loves them, and we should show care and love for them even as the Lord Jesus did when He was on earth.
In the church life we need to exercise our spiritual gift to give food at the proper time; we shouldn’t consider that only those who have the gift of teaching or preaching the gospel should function, but rather, we should exercise to speak in every meeting!
The Lord has given us not only the church as His household but also the talent to minister the life supply; so we need to exercise our spiritual gift and minister Christ as grace to others.
We should not say that we are not gifted; rather, we should realise that all believers are gifted, and they all can speak in the church meetings for the building up of the church.
We need to consider what is the proper time; a mother knows that there has to be food for the family at least three times a day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the food needs to be abundant and rich.
Similarly, when we meet together is one of the “proper times”, so we need to minister the proper food to the Lord’s people. But if we don’t labor adequately in the word, what we will give them is a “coffee and doughnut”, not solid food, proper food.
For us to cook a nourishing and good meal we need to be diligent; we need to be diligent to be in the Lord’s word not only for our nourishment but also for the Lord to have a way to nourish others through us.
Hallelujah, the Lord has given us both the skill, the ability, the gift to care for our obligation, and the saints in the church as the object for us to serve!
Lord Jesus, we want to use and exercise the spiritual gift You have given us so that we may minister Christ as grace to the saints in the church for their nourishment. May we be diligent to labor in the word of God not only for our own nourishment but also to have some food to minister to the saints. Lord, save us from condemning or criticizing others; grant us the loving and forgiving heart of our Father God and the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ in our care for them. May we take the way of loving others, the most excellent way, in serving the saints, so that they would open, enjoy the rich Christ, and grow in life unto maturity in the Body!
This article can also be read in the Romanian language / Citiți acest articol în limba română vizitând următorul link, Să folosim darul Domnului pentru a zidi biserica dând hrană altora la timpul potrivit.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1985, vol. 5, “The Way to Practice the Lord’s Present Move,” ch. 10, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Church Life and the Christian Life (2019 spring ITERO), week 7, Being Watchful in Life and Faithful in Service.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Serve and work within the Body, / Never independently; / As the members of the Body, / Functioning relatedly. (Hymns #913)
# For His servants Christ will come / And reward each faithful one; / Slothful ones will be undone— / Serve in time! / Make your single talent count, / All self’s problems now surmount, / Serve with Christ, the living fount— / Serve in time! (Hymns #1304)
# That I might be a minister, / A minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, / A laboring priest of the gospel of God, / A laboring priest of the gospel of God, / In order that the offering, / The offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, / Having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit, / Sanctified in the Holy Spirit. (Scripture song)
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