Perhaps the most fruitful servant of the Lord in the New Testament was Paul the Apostle. Perhaps the most afflicted, pressured, and troubled man in the New Testament was Paul the Apostle.
Perhaps the most useful servant of the Lord in the New Testament was Paul the Apostle.
Do you see a pattern between Paul’s troubles and His usefulness?
Paul was pruned in every way imaginable—shipwrecked (that would be a patience builder), imprisoned (that would be a faith builder), beaten repeatedly (that would be a bitterness antidote), mocked, scoffed and ridiculed (that would be a love builder), out of touch with everyone dear to him (that would be a hope builder), weak and sick and tired (that would be a prayer builder, with only the Lord to talk to), fighting demonic attacks 24/7 (that would be spiritual warfare workout daily), and on we could go through the endless opportunities Paul had to grow through all those problems in life. And guess what? He took most of them. He let God prune away at him until almost nothing remained but what was constantly useful to the Lord!
What is fruitfulness for the Lord? It is simply being useful for Him. When we are tools that God can use, we are fruitful.
Anything useful to you, that serves you in some way this morning—that object has been captured and harnessed to become so useful. Take for instance, some common useful items that serve us. Look at their existence from their perspective,
• The glass you drink from at lunch started peacefully resting with billions of other grains of silica, soda ash, and limestone on earth’s surface. But to be useful to you everything changed. It was mined, sifted, poured into a dark tube, dumped into a fiery cauldron, burned until it melted with trillions of other crystals into a glassy sea, poured into a mold, pressed into a shape, cooled, finished, boxed, shaken, and shipped to where you will eat today. Then after resting again in darkness briefly it was pulled out, filled with freezing cold ice, poured over with a drink, plopped on a table, used by you, dropped into a plastic tub, placed into confinement, sprayed with scalding hot water laced with chemicals, heated hot until dry, and placed in a ready spot to be used again until broken and cast away to reside again in the surface of the earth. If the glass was plastic (and by the way a “plastic glass” is an oxymoron) its existence is even more harsh and brief.
• How about that spoon? Blasted and scraped up from the ground where it had laid since creation, it became a river of ore shipped, smelted, blasted with fire into molten liquid steel, mixed with carbon, chromium, manganese, phosphorus, and sulfur to become stainless, squeezed into a bar, pressed into a thin sheet, rolled into a coil, shipped to a factory, stretched, surfaced, cut, and shaped into a spoon. All that to just be useful in such a small way.
• And then that paper napkin? Just think of living in a quiet and peaceful forest, growing in the fresh air, sunlight, rains, mists, and seasons. Then came the roar of chainsaws, the tug off chains and bulldozers, the sting as cables strapped you onto flatbed trucks, the piercing stream of water that stripped off the bark, the cutting jaws of a chipper, and then being boiled alive in a cauldron of acid, ground into a thick sludge, bleached white, pressed into paper-thin sheets, rapidly dried, and finally cut to shaped, stamped, folded and boxed—all the be useful for only moments.
God wants to capture us by His love, harness us by His Spirit, shape us by His Word, and change us into usefulness by His PRUNING! That is what our life is all about. The shaping, refining, pruning Hand of God is with us all through life—either we accept it and grow, or resent it and miss the eternal blessings.
(WWJ-70; 041114AM)
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