Services of Serving Ones

The Lord Jesus is the Master, and I have been graced and blessed to be one of the serving ones of the Lord Jesus Christ. Since I got saved in 1997, I have been bearing the burden to serve the Lord in the way I can. In time, the Lord Himself made the way I could serve Him clear to me. In 2003, I received a direct call from the Lord through the word of God to serve Him. 

And now, O Israel, what does Jehovah your God ask of you except that you fear Jehovah your God so that you would walk in all His ways and love Him and serve Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 10:12

Since then, I have been graced and blessed by the Lord to go through the full-time training. And He has been training and perfecting me to serve. Twenty years have elapsed since I finished my training and started serving the Lord in different areas and in different capacities. The Lord has been faithful in leading me through and through all these years. To me, it is the sure mercy of the Lord that he has qualified and graced me to serve. In my self, I cannot. It has always been His life in me that enables and empowers me to serve. I have nothing to claim for myself. Nothing to boast, no glory, nothing for myself. It is Him who serves in and through me, fia ny glory, it is god's glory and glory to Him only. 

With these lessons, I also have been trying to help the saints who have the burden to serve. To me, it is impossible for any human to serve the living God without the life of the living God in the lives of the serving ones. This month I had been through a series of fellowship with four brothers. They all have the burden to serve, but they also need help. Serving the Lord is not according to natural ability and strength. It is purely His mercy that one can serve Him. The person of the serving one and the service of the serving ones are one. Without the person being proper, there cannot be the service proper. 

Therefore, in all the fellowship with these four brothers, it was mostly to do with their person and character rather than their services itself. The conditions and regulations given to them in a way of brotherly fellowship were to help them turn to the Lord and depend on the Lord fully so that they can be useful vessels to the Lord. To some, a strict instruction and a tight schedule were given; to others the need for diligence and faithfulness was emphasised. Yet to some, the need for coordination and submission was made known, and to one in particular, the need to exercise his spirit more to deal with his temper was given in writing.  

Before all these fellowships, I spent a considerable amount of time in prayer, bringing these matters to the Lord to get the Lord's feeling so that I may not misrepresent God in any way. Though I may be placed in a position to "decide" things officially concerning the serving ones, as this is one of my official responsibilities, I fear God. I dare not misrepresent God by giving my thoughts and feelings to anyone. I commit all the matters to God in fear and trembling that the Lord's perfect will be done in all these brothers' lives and services. I, too, am just a serving one, just like all the others. It has also been a time of training and learning to deal with people, especially saints, as all these are also brothers in the church life. One particular lesson that all serving ones need to learn is submission.

We need to learn the lesson of submission. Not only do the sent ones need to learn submission, the sending ones also need to learn submission. Only in the spirit of submission will a person hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. We cannot consider that a consensus is the standard for any work; rather, submission must be the standard. We should not send out a brother because we agree with him. Many times, even though we do not agree with the proposal of a certain brother, we still have to give him the liberty to do it. The matter is not about agreeing or not agreeing but about submitting or not submitting. The Holy Spirit can have a way only among the submissive ones. Excerpt from The Present Testimony (4): The Third Overcomer Conference CWWN, vol.11

In this regard, I had a fellowship with a brother whom I felt needed help. In considering his continuation in the service, I prayed over and sent an email to him concerning his coordination and submission and the need to exercise his spirit to deal with his temper as conditions for him to continue. A week later, he accepted the conditions and confirmed that he would continue.

I was particularly thankful to the Lord that He led me through in all these fellowships. I pray that the Lord will preserve them and me, too, that we can faithfully serve Him in fruitful ways all the days of our lives on this earth. This has always been my prayer, too, for myself and for all the serving ones: to be faithful and fruitful and serve in the newness of spirit.

But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter. Romans 7:6