All of us can and must be among the gifted persons listed in Ephesians 4:11. The key to your becoming an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, and a shepherd and teacher is the Word. If you take very little of the Word into you, you will not be much of a gifted person. But if your being is saturated with the living essence of God’s Word, not merely with the knowledge of it, you will surely be His sent one. How much you take the Word into you and let it mingle with your inward parts determines the extent to which you can be God’s spokesman. When you become the embodiment of God’s Word, you spontaneously are one of His sent ones, speaking for Him and shepherding others. You do not need any official title, or appointment, or position. Those are outward and count for nothing. But if you are filled and saturated with God’s living Word, you are surely God’s apostle sent to this world and speaking for Him, and you are surely the shepherd caring for His people and teaching them God’s economy.
This is what God expects you to be. Do not say that you are not qualified. You have been chosen, saved, regenerated, and called by God. He is now working in you, saturating you with the Word. It is your duty to go to the Word, even in a legal way, morning and evening and during the day as well. Even if you can take only ten minutes each time, you will see how much benefit you receive.
Thou art the Word with God’s fullness in Thee,
Thou too the Spirit that God my life be;
Thee in the Word I enjoy as my food,
Thou in the Spirit art water to me.
Now to enjoy Thee I come to Thy Word,
On Thee to feed till my hunger is o’er.
Now in my spirit I turn unto Thee,
Of Thee to drink till I’m thirsty no more.
Hymns, #811
All the churches, both in the United States and abroad, have been making this turn to the Word. I encourage you to continue to do this increasingly.
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