The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success

Verse:

Luke 10:20

"Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you ..."

Lesson:

1. Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live.

2. Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go "outside the camp, bearing His reproach" (Hebrews 13:13).

3. In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice.

4. We have a commercialized view — we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God's grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them.

5. Important Precept:

Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God.

6. Important understanding:

One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.

7. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God's testimony to us as His workers.

8. Important responsibility:

God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.

9. Unless the worker lives a life that "is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups.

10. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an "if," never with the forceful or dogmatic statement — "You must." Discipleship carries with it an option.

Most Meaningful Statement:

Yet our work only begins where God's grace has laid the foundation.

Thoughts:

1. For Christian workers, pastors and so on, the most dangerous trap is desiring spiritual success, congregational recognition, and public acceptance. Our desire for success becomes patterned after the world's model.

2. Often we have a commercialised view of Christian service. Some of us measure this by the number of ministries we serve in, others measure it by how high their visible profile is in church, still others measure it by the amount of recognition they can from the church pastors. But we all miss out on how God feels about it.

3. What does God look for in us? God's testimony to us as his workers are the lives we have discipled spiritually. These lives are the evidence of our service to God, not fame or recognition.
4. God brings us up to a certain spiritual level and it is our responsibility to disciple others to that level. Remember that discipleship is an option.