The Burden of the Outcome and Works Salvation

I think I have only recently come out of some sort of works salvation. This type of works salvation revolves around our thinking that the outcome of a spiritual event is our responsibility. And because we feel the weight of this expectation, that the outcome of the spiritual event is our responsibility, we then try by pulling ourselves up by our boot-straps, to ensure that the outcome is almost guaranteed. In doing so, we inevitably fall from grace, and begin to feel the weight of trying to accomplish God's works with our fallen flesh's efforts.

Extrapolate this point, and you probably see where ministry workers experience burn-out, and the effects of burn-out are usually the victimizing of the sheep. This is not to say that the shepherd is bad. The shepherd simply lost the script of grace for awhile, and that's where the communion of saints come in. Ephesian chapter four contains the ministry gifts as part of the package of Christ's blood-bought salvation for His predestined, elected and chosen saints from before the world began. These are ministry 'gifts', of grace, and definitely not of fallen man's works!

So as I struggled with these matters recently, the gracious Lord, by His Spirit showed me that the outcome of the spiritual event or activity was in His hands, and not mine. In addition, He also showed me that I am not responsible if another brother fails to exercise initiative in any given matter or situation, with unhappy results. I will have to share the effects of the fall-out, in solidarity with that other believer, but I was not to feel responsible that somehow I was supposed to have stepped in and 'rescued' the situation.

As this wonderful truth dawned and filled me, immediately I felt a fresh supply of the gracious Spirit of God as His revelation washed over me. Yes indeed, we are not to take on the ownership of the outcome. The 'battle is the Lord's', and surely, the outcome too. As the truth of the Lord came in, indeed, I was set free.

A lesson I learned from this episode is how so easily we can fall from grace, of course not totally, but instead of 'keeping in step with the Spirit', we fall out of step, to our own soul's detriment. And, the communion of saints through bible study and prayer fellowships, become an avenue for the Lord to use His body to reach out and minister grace to one who has missed a step. We need Christ in each other. We need Christ in each other to increase, and we decrease. May Christ indeed increase, multiply and spread His fragrance of love in and through us to a decaying world.