Broken and Poured Out- Come and Remain- TUESDAY
Broken and Poured Out
by
Rocky Fleming
Tuesday - Come and Remain
Honestly, I am amazed when I continue to see how negligent the Church has become in understanding the connection with equipping of a believer for serving our King with our abiding with Him. There is a reason and warning that Jesus clearly gave that we would not bear the supernatural kind of fruit He can produce through our life without abiding in Him. And yet, we forget His equipping plan and tell people that He says, "come and see and come and die" without telling them that He also said "come and remain in ME." This is an essential message from Jesus to us, for He invites us to the place where we are prepared for serving Him. It is critical for our success in life and ministry, for without this preparation we will eventually become discouraged by the toils in our life, and by our sincere, yet frustrated efforts.
I know that my message about abiding in Christ has become the central focus of my writing and exhortation. Some might be bored by it. But there are so many misunderstandings about what it is, how we find it, and what it means to God's family that are not being represented. Therefore, I hope you will hang in there with my message and me until it is fully embraced by you and you are taking the message forward to others, for it is sorely needed. Let me explain why I am so impassioned about it.
Since I was once a college football coach, I can see a correlation with our message to come and see and come and die as a challenge to all believers, similar to what I see with high school players who are being recruited to a college football team. In essence, college programs are saying, "come and see, and come and commit." But different from a college football program that knows what to do with those players who respond by coming, churches haven't figured out how to prepare believers for their service like players need to be prepared to play the game on Saturday. I can see our failure to understand this for I see our neglect to help believers abide in Christ. Consider:
The neglect of this dire need in the body of Christ for each believer would be similar to motivating a prospective player to come join our football team. We could fire him up and give him our uniform to wear to be identified with us. We could tell him that he's the greatest player on the field through our motivational speakers. We can share inspirational stories to bring him to a desire to deny himself and serve his teammates as more important than himself. We can give him a game plan, and it could be a good one. But if he is not fed the right and nutritional foods, if he is not trained in the fundamentals of football, if he is not coached and nurtured and rested and protected as a player, if he is not taught to work as a team player, then this recruit will not fulfill the expectations promised to him. We will see nothing but disappointment with this football program and you can bet there will be very few games won.
We can see this clearly with a football program. But do we see this neglect in our churches similarly? How is this any different with our churches and ministries that issue the call to come and see and come and die, but do not issue an equal call that says, come and remain in Christ? The truth is, we recruit members to join our church. They join and we give them identity. We inspire them with great life stories to give them models and remind them of the need to serve. We put them in places of service. We give them knowledge of the rights and wrongs. But we fail to take them to the place where JESUS equips His men and women for that service. We neglect Christ's message about the intimate relationship with Him that He offers to us, and instead replace it with our own idea of what we think needs to be done to prepare our "team" for making a difference in their world. We tell them to come and see and come and die, and before long they come and concludethat there's got to be more to the invitation from Jesus than what they are hearing from their leaders. They were ready to die for Jesus, but they had no idea that it would be so hard and frustrating. Now get this. I know what it is like to try and play any kind of sport when I am not mentally and physically prepared. It is hard and it is frustrating. It is discouraging and an athlete looks for the exit when it comes to that time. It is the same when we issue a challenge to a believer and expect him to simply become something without following the strategy that Jesus gave us for preparing His child for a life of service. We burn them out and they walk out the back door as frequently as our new "recruits" walk in the front door, and we can't understand why.
The following quote is how Jesus Himself would answer that question in case you have not read it before now. I will close with His words. I think you will understand clearly that what He teaches is next after we come and see. Look at how many times He mentions the word in this one scripture, as He emphasizes the importance to remain in Him:
"Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it mustremain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." (John 15:4 NIV)