It is not Desirable (for Some) to Leave the Word of God and Serve Tables

Something struck me as I was reading the Scriptures today. In Acts 6:2-4 it says:

Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, "It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.
Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business;
but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."

There are jobs that need to be done in every church, and the early church realised that for them to do the will of God the Father, they needed to be involved in distributing food to the widows and orphans. But the job was getting too much for the apostles to administrate properly. We can see that some people were getting neglected – namely, those who were not local to the situation – the Grecian Jews. The apostles could have applied themselves with greater diligence to achieve excellence in the ministry of caring for widows but instead they chose a different path.

From this passage I see that the apostles placed a high priority on devoting themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. No amount of effective administration or charity work can substitute for the regular delivery of an accurate timely Word from God, along with the power of the Holy Spirit.

I fear that we have gotten away from this, and this is why it seems to be quite rare to find someone preaching the TRUTH consistently who actually demonstrates the living power of God in his ministry. We seem to be falling short, but instead of a greater devotion to the Word, we are being encouraged to a greater devotion to success in the natural sphere. Its all very well to achieve success in the natural sphere, in business or what have you, but if we no longer show forth the power of God to defeat the devil, we have become losers. Really, the devil is not afraid of the money you hold if you can't hold the things of God in your heart.

There is a great need today for Holy Spirit filled preaching of the Word of God at every level, all over the world, even in my country of Australia. To do this job with excellence will require devotion to the task. The trend of late has been to encourage people that they may really be “called to business” - meaning, being Christians in the marketplace. While that may be true for many, it remains a fact that very few Christians “in the marketplace” or “in the pulpit” today are carrying the kind of power and accuracy in the Word that would demonstrate the reality of Jesus Christ. More attention is therefore needed to be given to Prayer and the Word. This is especially true for influential church leaders, who are often required to spend a lot of their time attending to administration problems, fundraising, church politics and so on. The most important task however is the task of truly connecting with GOD and delivering the true WORD. If we are going to do THAT job, it deserves to be done with excellence. But doing things with excellence requires an investment of TIME. It has been said that “Time is Money”. This is the point: it is going to cost money if we are going to have people who devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

The reason so many people have run around the globe seeking the anointing or "the breakthrough" at various conferences is because they do not have biblical results right now. This is because of a failure to diligently do what the Bible instructs us to do in black and white.

The churches are now full of semi-retired preachers. I'm told that 80% of pastors do not stay in full time ministry. I suppose I myself am part of that statistic. It is not as if the work of making disciples is done. Far from it. But the priority has been shifting to “a better life now”. It has been shifting AWAY from the salvation of ETERNAL SOULS. Where we invest our money and time shows where our TRUE priorities actually are. Too often they are firmly planted in this present age.

If you cannot or will not give more time and money to the ministry of God's Word and prayer, then at least encourage those who may be called to do so. For there are enough discouragements from the world, the flesh and the devil without our brethren in Christ also seeking to get us to focus more on temporal things.

It is not legalism to call for a more intense attention and devotion to doing the will of God through knowing and obeying Jesus Christ. Let us then see how we can give more time to prayer and more attention to the Word of God. It might make the difference between life and death for us or someone else.