One of the most important challenges God's servants face today is to shepherd God's flock after His heart.
However, it is found that a servant of God can be cautious and devout before God in the beginning, fearing that he may mislead God's people by saying or doing something wrong, so he actively seeks God's will and offers up prayers and petitions with cries and tears.
But he seeks God and prays less and less over time after gaining experience. As a result, he looks the same as before in the pulpit, but without the fellowship of the Holy Spirit or God's presence.
Instead, he actually serves himself, no longer valuing God's will or seeking His plan, and thinks highly of his own ideas and plan.
He considers how to let his congregation grow and make church services achieve his goal.
Planning really matters, but the key is whether a plan is made according to God's will. If not it has no value. It makes us serve ourselves to the extent that ministry becomes our glory and idols.
Moreover, some people know God's will, but deliberately refuse to follow it.
The result of the disobedience is a loss of power in preaching and testimony coupled with the weakness and failure in their life.
Maybe the number of their congregation increases and their church seems prosperous, but those churches are not churches at all. In essence, a church must center around God and develop based on God's plan and will.
If a man who serves God is not edified by the cross, the longer he serves God the more disobedient he is to God's word.
Not only affecting himself, his disobedience also brings about enormous harm to other people his influence reaches.
Saul in the Old Testament is a classic example. Saul was careful and trembled with fear when Samuel was about to anoint him. 1 Samuel 10:22 said that he hid himself among the baggage with the fear of being found out. But the God-fearing man with caution finally took his life. It was because he started to not regard God with reverence and obedience.
It was recorded in 1 Samuel 15:20-23:
"But I did obey the Lord," Saul said. "I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal."
But Samuel replied:" Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king."
He valued wealth more than the word of the living God, so how could he please God?
Solomon, who had plentiful wisdom and property and received abundant blessings from God, had a totally different ending.
1 Kings 11:1-2 said,
"King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter-Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites.They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites,'You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.'Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love."
His downfall resulted from the loss of his fear of God and disobedience. God forbade the Israelites to marry foreigners, but Solomon did anyway. The Bible declared that his wives led him astray and he later built high places for idols and commit adultery. This led to God's wrath and his kingdom split into two halves. If he kept fearing and obeying God like his father, everything might have been different.
After my service to God for years, what I fear most is that I may be a castaway as a preacher.
As we serve God longer, we should pray more to God to give us a heart of reverence and obedience because we come to know the importance of fearing God after seeing our own corruption, ignorance, and Satan's attacks.
- Translated by Karen Luo
