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.

 

I invite you to build a faith community together with me. Join my social media channels and let’s connect, especially if you want freedom or fullness in Christ.

My Telegram has a ministry channel. On Tiktok I have many videos and new ones regularly.

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