For ground that drinks the rain which often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned. But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. Hebrews 6:7–10. It is especially important to understand verses 7 and 8. The earth that brings forth the fruit is blessed of God. But if it brings forth thorns and thistles, it is close to being cursed.
The passage continues to point out that God is not unrighteous to forget this one quality which He desires: the love you show toward His name as you minister to the saints. One of the most fruitful things you can do is to build up and strengthen one another. Ephesians 4:11, 12 tells how the foundational ministries of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers were given for the building up of the saints unto the work of ministry. That is exactly what God has been doing: building up the saints unto the work of the ministry. A shepherd does not give birth to a lamb; that is the job of sheep. A ewe and a buck can produce a lamb, but a shepherd cannot. People sometimes think the minister should be the one who goes out and brings in all the people. He can do his share of that, but his calling is to minister to the flock and equip them so that they will be ready to walk in the promise of Psalm 144:13: And our flocks bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields. Sheep beget sheep. Shepherds take care of sheep in order that the sheep become fruitful. Shepherds provide the pasture, the water, and everything conducive to making them fruitful sheep.
God is not unrighteous to forget that you ministered to His saints and that you tried to see the Body make increase of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16). A ministry is not accomplishing anything if he is only concerned about doing his own thing, content to let everyone else in the church remain weak and do nothing. Suppose he were to go out single-handedly, and in a month bring fifty people into the church. What good would that do? It would be like hatching chickens and putting them in a refrigerator; they would not live very long. If you bring in the children of God, you had better see to it that they are ready to receive. They need a place where it is warm, where the love of God is flowing, a place where everyone is strong and dwelling in unity. You cannot bring someone new into a service and apologize for it being the wrong time of the year because everyone is fighting and bickering and going through something. If a new convert is full of the joy of salvation, it does not help him at all to find everyone singing the blues about the great trials and tribulations they are going through.
Are you going through a difficulty? Then get some ministry and pray it through, because the services are to follow this rule, according to I Corinthians 14:26: Everything should be done unto edifying, to build up the Body. When you remember that, then you are not concerned about your problem or about doing your own thing; but you come to build up the Body and make it strong. Then as you add to it, there is healthy growth. The new ones are quickly assimilated to that level of spiritual life and love they find within the Body. This shows the importance of understanding this verse: “But if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless, close to being cursed and it ends up being burned.”
And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish. Hebrews 6:11, 12a. “Sluggish” is a descriptive word. If your car is sluggish, you may pour all kinds of solutions into it, hoping they will burn out the sluggishness so the car will be able to move. No one wants that; neither do you yourself want to be sluggish spiritually.
You can almost determine what kind of church services you will have by the attitude of your faith. When you come with an expectancy, you can have a breakthrough. Expectancy can overcome weariness and fatigue, even the fatigue of spiritual warfare you may be experiencing. When you come expecting something, you will receive it. Expectancy is a very vital part of a Body that functions in faith. Sometimes you are believing God, but you still hope when you go to church that the Lord will be there. The Lord will not be there unless you take Him there. When you go to church, do not think of it as a building. The people are the Church, and the Church comes together, bringing the presence of the Lord. There is an overwhelming manifestation of the presence of the Lord if everyone comes with expectancy and with faith, and the Lord is moving in their spirits.
That you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply you.” And thus, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. Hebrews 6:12–15. I am believing to be like Abraham, a father of many multitudes, multitudes of sheep that will come forth, fruitful in the things of the Lord. I want to devote time, not merely to preaching sermons to congregations, but to preparing the sheep for this end time of fruitfulness and helping them into it.
If a pastor decides to deal only with people’s individual problems, he will face them all the time. He will do better to seek the Lord and minister to the other ministries, such as the elders and deacons. Efficiency comes when ministry is given to those who will yield the quickest return and will be able, in the shortest period of time, to take care of the needs of others. This is wisdom. A New Testament order service does not focus on all the individual problems, for they will always be there. Instead, it should deal with the leaders and the ministries who can take care of those problems. They will be the ones who will come forth in the fruitfulness. This is the first step toward many multitudes coming forth in the name of the Lord.
Many times in the personal ministry services, pastors and elders and deacons take care of everyone else who comes in, but once in a while they need to be built up themselves, so they will have a better word and a better ministry for those who come to receive it. The Lord must give people a word that propels them right on into their ministry. Once a group of young people came from a far distance to a service, but no one was aware that they needed ministry. After church, we found them sitting outside on the curb, crying because they had not received ministry. I would cry too if I had come all that way and had not received a word. We took them inside and as we ministered to them, the Lord began to meet them. When people seek ministry and a living word from God from those who are in authority in the Body of Christ, they must receive that word. God is raising up a ministering Body to have the word and to have the anointing, so that when the people come, they will be met. They must not go away disappointed. If they do, what a shame that will be. The people who come for personal ministry are already hungry. They only need to open their hearts to the word that God has for them. God has a place for them, and He will make them to be a part also of His ministering Body.
God’s ministering Body will be like Abraham, the father of multitudes. The multitudes will come until no longer will church meetings be called conferences, but rather family reunions. In a beautiful way, the Father is building up a family, and everyone in the family is a fighter, a part of the warring army, the holy priesthood unto the Lord (I Peter 2:5).
If we are believing to be like Abraham and we want to be a father of the faithful, let us see how Abraham went about becoming a father of many nations. Romans 4:16–21 tells us: It is by faith, that it might be in accordance with grace, in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you”) in the sight of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. God calls things into being that do not exist. He has a way of doing that when you start prophesying to one another.
God said to Abraham, “Let’s take a walk. See those stars up there?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Can you count them?”
“No, Lord.”
“Your seed will be like that. Do you see the sand you are walking on? Can you count all those grains of sand?”
“No, Lord.”
“That is how many your descendants will be.”
I am sure God was speaking of more than the natural descendants of the Hebrews. He was speaking of Abraham being a father of the faithful. He was to be a father of men of faith.
God said he would be a father of many nations; but Abraham had no children yet—not even one. God said, “A father of many nations I have made you.” And Abraham believed it. He believed in God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope he believed (even though there was no hope in the natural realm, yet he still had a hope), in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” And without becoming weak in faith (notice that it did not bother him) he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead…
Glass mirrors had not been invented at that time, but people were able to make something very similar. They could polish brass to such a fine sheen that they could see their reflections in it (Exodus 38:8). Can you picture old Abraham looking into a shiny brass mirror, seeing that his body was as good as dead? But that did not bother his faith.
Abraham contemplated his own body, … now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief (the King James Version reads, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief”), but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. It takes a lot of faith to disregard circumstances; sometimes it takes even more faith not to disregard circumstances, but to look right at them and still believe the word of God. Abraham looked at his aging body and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; and in hope against hope he did not waver, considering his own body as good as dead. In other words, he did not think about it. Neither was he concerned at seeing that Sarah was an old woman. He refused to let it disturb him. Sarah herself was not always full of faith. One time she overheard the Lord talking with Abraham about a promised son and she laughed. The Lord asked why Sarah had laughed, but she denied it (Genesis 18:10–15). When the boy was born, he was named “Isaac,” meaning “laughter.”
What did Abraham think about Sarah? He believed for her. He could look right at the situation without being moved by it. He was only moved by what God had said. He did not waver by the evidence of his senses. He trusted in the Lord with all his heart and did not lean on his own understanding. In all his ways he acknowledged Him and God directed his path. It is a big order sometimes to trust God when your sight, your hearing, and every other sense gives the evidence and tells you that something else is the reality. But when God’s Word tells you what the truth it, then you believe it.
This is the way of faith. Faith is not necessarily reasonable. In the history of the world, the processes of the mind have never been known to produce the kind of faith that changes a world. It is always the radical who changes the whole scene—the man who refuses to believe in circumstances, who refuses to accept his own limitations, and who dares to believe God.