We should never put the fruit, the result, of our work as the goal. Only the Lord knows how many people will be saved through us; we do not know. Only the Lord knows how many churches will be helped through us; we do not know. We do not know how many churches will be established through us and how many saints will be edified through us; this is up to the Lord. Moreover, only the Lord knows how much truth and how many messages will be released through us; we do not know. The only thing we know is that we should devote effort to these matters. Our effort should be used mainly for learning, not for working.
The work does not depend on how much effort we exert; rather, it depends on how much we learn. Learning is the real work; the real work of serving the Lord is ninety-five percent learning, and five percent doing. The more we learn, the more effective our work will be. However, we should not estimate the effect; we should let God do the estimating, and God’s estimation will be determined at the judgment seat in the future. Our sight should never be set on results but on how we conduct ourselves, deal with God’s life, and handle matters. Ultimately, we must pay attention to these points and devote more of our effort to learn them.
Recently, I dealt severely with a certain brother who was quite peculiar. Regardless of what was put in his hands, he would work without common sense, consideration, and discernment. Consequently, the result was always a mess. One day I saw him and asked what he was doing. He said that he was reading a spiritual book. I said, “You should learn to do something practical.” I told him that if he did not learn how to do things, he would not be able to leave Taipei. He replied, “But there are not enough serving ones, elders, and responsible ones for the homes.” This exposes our true condition. There are not enough responsible ones and serving ones because we give messages ninety percent of the time while learning to conduct ourselves and do things only ten percent of the time. In other words, we put in less effort related to our conduct and to doing things than we do in giving messages. Our work is unable to produce serving ones because we are inadequate in the way we conduct ourselves and do things.
The inability of our work to produce useful people is a serious problem that we should not ignore. If we serve in a certain place for two or three years without producing an elder and some serving ones, it is because of what we are. If someone else were in our position, he would probably produce some useful elders in a year or less. In other words, those who can only give messages, but who are not skillful and experienced in the way they conduct themselves and do things, cannot produce useful people. For example, a bricklayer easily can produce a few workers in less than a year by simply training some apprentices. This is not achieved by speaking but by leading others to work. This is the case with the Lord’s work even more. If our personal dealings are insufficient, if our knowledge of the truth is deficient, if our handling of matters is not skillful and experienced, and if our knowledge of people is shallow, we will not be able to produce useful people even if we know doctrines from books and can tell them to others. Producing useful people requires effort. Only those who make an effort can produce useful people in the work.
I hope that we can look at these two things together. We must be diligent to know the truth, and we must labor to learn to be skillful in the way we conduct ourselves and do things. Giving messages can stir up people’s emotions to love the Lord but cannot enable those who have been stirred up to be perfected and useful. In order to perfect them and make them useful, we need to labor before the Lord. After our labor, we should spend another year and a half to work; as we work, we should bring the saints with us in order to perfect them, like a bricklayer brings his apprentices along with him for training. We do not need to open a school to teach the saints or have any kind of special training; rather, we can simply be faithful to bring the saints with us. After a year or less of working with us, they will be perfected to become useful ones.
On the one hand, the saints cannot rise up to serve the Lord after only hearing a message and being touched; they still need to pass through the stage of edification. Indeed, we have been lacking in this aspect. On the other hand, we have not been doing a proper perfecting work on some of the saints who have a heart for the Lord. These two aspects reveal our lack, and the main reason for our lack is that we have not learned enough. If we were more positive in these two points, the majority of our problems would pass away.