In building and ministering to people there is the constant tension between meeting their needs and directing their focus outward. I find that many people who are not committed Christians who do believe there is a God tend to feel He has better things to do than focus on their own little selves, and only resort to prayer in totally desperate situations. In the church here in our nation I find the opposite, an unhealthy absorption with self, a relationship with God that veers towards the consumerist; often mere consumers of the God product and its attendant by-products, whose only concern is in needs being met, and who are often supremely oblivious to all else. And so of necessity, one must keep directing their focus outward, to the mission of God in the earth.
I am concerned that too many believers are totally uninterested in bringing others to the knowledge of God. We seem to think it does not matter, that God understands that it’s not my thing; yet the more I pore over God’s word, the more I am convinced that it does, that indeed it is an imperative, it is a command of God that we are glibly and gleefully disobeying. I fear we are too often wasting our lives on ourselves only, preoccupied with being ‘blessed’ and oblivious to our mission on the earth. Will we not find to our chagrin when we stand before the throne of God that we have been most unfaithful?
As a leader, the challenge is to strike the balance; preach a God who deeply cares about us as individuals, who loves, saves, delivers, heals, restores and yes, prospers us, but who also has expectations of us, that we live in a way that honours Him, and that we devote your existence to serving Him and bringing others to know Him; a God who counts His wealth in human lives.
How wealthy are you making Him?