The Responsibility of One Called By God

Have you been called to be a watchman?    Has the Lord put into your mouth His Word.  Is it a burden of your heart to warn men and women of penalties of sin and reveal to them the free gift of salvation by Jesus?   If so take heart. 

Ezekiel 3:15-23 (ESV)

15 And I came to the exiles at Tel-abib, who were dwelling by the Chebar canal, and I sat where they were dwelling. And I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days. 16 And at the end of seven days, the word of the LORD came to me: 17 "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. 18 If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. 19 But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. 20 Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. 21 But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul." 22 And the hand of the LORD was upon me there. And he said to me, "Arise, go out into the valley, and there I will speak with you." 23 So I arose and went out into the valley, and behold, the glory of the LORD stood there, like the glory that I had seen by the Chebar canal, and I fell on my face.

  Notice, what is taught from the passage above, you are responsible only for your faithfulness!   You should not attempt to become responsible for the work that can only be done by His Spirit.   Oh yes, you should pray for the Spirit’s help.  You should pray for the Spirit’s powerful conviction to change hearts.  And in order to be faithful you must humbly submit to the direction of the Spirit, moment by moment.  In the work of fruit bearing the Spirit is always in charge.  The danger in taking up the responsibility for ministry outcomes is we open the door to the sin of the pride of self-sufficiency.  We are instructed to thank God for the outcomes.   If they seem great in your eyes or if they seem non-existent give Him thanks.   When you have faithfully trusted God and obeyed Him, when you have sought His face with tears, when you have spoken and lived out His Word, give thanks regardless of the apparent outcomes.

We are completely unsuited to evaluate fruit.   But wait you say if we see salvations and baptisms are these not valid fruit?    How many salvations did Jesus see during His ministry on earth?   How many did He baptize?    God’s big eternal plan for Jesus was not immediate fruit, but it was to make immeasurable fruit possible.   God has only given us a limited view of what He is about.  Few if any aside from Jesus understood the eternal purposes of the cross.  We must be very careful to listen to His Word and the voice of the Spirit when it comes to assessing what God is about. Our own thinking will be completely inadequate in this regard.   If we continually ask the Spirit will always tell us what we need to know in order to be faithful to our calling.

Servants are not put in charge of their own evaluation.   Too much evaluation can produce fruit called pride.  Our human evaluation often comes from comparison.  We are not to compare.  We are to be faithful to the calling to whichwe have been called. It is the responsibility of a servant to be found faithful for his calling alone.   To his Master alone is a servant responsible and only his Master is in a position to perform an accurate assessment.   Therefore take heart; keep your focus upon listening to the still small voice of the Spirit.   Keep your heart prepared for obedience and humbly submit to the Spirit’s leading and leave the results to God.

He has promised to work in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure.  May your faithfulness provide for His will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven, bringing great glory to His Name!