The Effectiveness of Service
The Effectiveness of Service
Is your service effective in the souls of those you serve? Does it have power, influence, and depth in people’s hearts? Does it bear spiritual fruit that multiplies day after day? Do you have a service that is inflamed like burning coals? Or is your service dormant and formal, having a form of godliness?!
Has your service been able to bring about a radical change in the Church? Have those you serve felt it, and have its fruits appeared in them? Has it budded? Has it flourished? Has it borne fruit? What is its condition? Is it increasing or decreasing?!
What shall we say about a service that has 200 students in primary, 100 in preparatory, and 20–30 in secondary, with the number continually decreasing…!
The Lord Christ sent twelve apostles to serve throughout the whole world, along with seventy others. According to worldly thinking based on planning, this number would not be sufficient even for one country, much less the entire world!
The Lord Christ did not plan based on the human ability of the servants, but on the power of the Holy Spirit for service…
Thus He appointed twelve servants, filled with the Holy Spirit, clothed with power from on high, and their voices were able to reach the ends of the world…
Stephen the deacon was filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. Therefore, when three philosophical councils stood before him, “they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke” (Acts 6:10).
So the matter is not the number of servants, but the power, the depth, and the Spirit — the effective and living word of the Lord upon their mouths.
It was said about the Church in the days of the apostles: “So the word of the Lord grew mightily” (Acts 19:20), and the number of churches increased day by day, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47)… The service had impact, effectiveness, and power…
Does your service also have power?
Does it have the power of the Spirit in changing souls?
The Spirit who gives a word to the evangelists magnifies power. O servants, meditate on this word “power,” which is mentioned in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles…
The Lord Christ said: “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matthew 9:37; Luke 10:2). We may say: They were few in Your days, O Lord. But now we have tens of thousands of servants. Does the phrase “the laborers are few” still apply to us?
Yes. The laborers who have the power of the Spirit are few.
The laborers in whom the Spirit of God works, whose service has deep impact and multiplying fruit — no doubt they are few… We have servants for the regular classes. But those who serve youth meetings, university groups, and who speak in conferences — no doubt they are few.
The word servant is deeper than the word teacher.
We have tens of thousands of teachers. But the servants who work by the Spirit are few.
A servant like the Apostle Paul, for example, his choosing was undoubtedly a serious event in the Church. He labored more abundantly than all the apostles, “besides… the care of all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28), and it is enough that he said: “Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?” (2 Corinthians 11:29). He who was called “the Apostle to the Gentiles,” whose preaching reached Spain in the west, and who wrote fourteen epistles…
We would be ready to dispense with tens of thousands of the servants we have in exchange for one Paul…
And his service would be more beneficial than thousands. The matter is not a matter of number, but of effectiveness, influence, power, and Spirit. Perhaps in one branch there are thirty servants with absolutely no fervor in their service, then a new servant enters the branch and makes it a blazing fire…
The tongues of fire that descended upon the disciples gave them a fiery tongue, fiery words, and a service with flame, effectiveness, fervor in the Spirit, fervor in prayer, and fervor in visitation.
They were coals of fire; though the world tossed them about, the whole world was set ablaze.
Believe me, the title “servant” is not deserved by many servants, and not every service has the spiritual characteristics of true service…
For this reason, at times I thought of gathering the old servants among whom we lived, in whom the Spirit of God was present, and forming from them a group to visit the branches and grant them a spirit — I mean the spirit that was working in those days when service was a blazing fire.
Consider what Augustine did, for example, when he entered the sphere of service. His influence was not limited to his generation; even now we still benefit from his service and meditations.
Theodore, the disciple of Pachomius, when he became a monk, how profound was his influence on monastic life in all the monasteries… Likewise John the Short, of whom it was said that he hung the whole of Scetis upon his finger.
In every generation there are persons distinguished from others, servants of a special kind, as the Bride in the Song says: “My Beloved… distinguished among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:10).
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