In my second year on staff at a church near Atlanta, I invited a fellow youth pastor and his students to join us for worship and Bible study one night. I wanted him to see the product of disciplined ministry.
Our youth group was serious. In fact, we were beyond serious. We were studious. I would stand up to speak and announce the Bible passage of the night, and you could hear the pages turning. I was so proud of our very serious, biblical, awesome, humble youth group.
Knowing the depth of my disciples, I anticipated that the visiting youth pastor would approach me after the service and say, “Brother, teach me your ways. How have you done this?” I couldn’t wait.
Well, the day came, and I was not disappointed in my group. We had our worship time, and every hand in the room reached high as they worshiped. When it came time to read, everyone focused on the Scripture. Few teens said a word, even in the back of the room.
Sure enough, after the service, the visiting youth pastor made his way to me. I’ll call him Ron.
“Man, great night with your youth group,” Ron said. “We had a great time.”
“Yeah, well, we’re a pretty focused group,” I said with an exaggerated nod. “We really like to get into the Word, and we have a close bond.”
He had one question. I was not ready for it.
“Yeah, it’s a great group,” he said. “Um — where are the lost kids?”
I stared into space.
I thought, Oh, my goodness. We have a lopsided youth group. No one from the world was showing up, which meant we weren’t reaching a soul. We were so deep into the Word that we weren’t reaching out at all. I discovered the hard way that we can nurture one area to the exclusion of another.
The maturing follower of Christ strikes a balance between pouring into his or her roots and reaching out to others.
Colossians 2:6 – 7 states, “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (emphasis added). Here is scriptural proof that we must be rooted to thrive.
Our faith is rooted when we’re planted by the constant living water of God’s Word and prayer, providing us with stability and strength. But what does it mean to abound in thanksgiving? While it obviously means to be grateful, the word abound carries the connotation of action.
Abound is the verb form of abundantly, the word Jesus uses in John 10:10 to describe the thriving life he intends for us. To abound in thanksgiving is to purposely direct the overflow of our root system into other people’s lives.
The only fruitful Christian is the one who abides (hangs in there) with Jesus. We can’t abound (thrive) unless we abide in Christ. When we do, he produces the fruit. We can reach out in a million and one ways. We hear him in his Word; we sense the Holy Spirit’s nudges; and we move. This is what it means to reach out. It essentially means to obey. The Bible says that to obey is better than sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22). We can offer ourselves in the grandest ways, make noble sacrifices, and still please God less than we do when we yield to his lightest whispers.
Approach that hurting girl at the next table in the cafeteria and tell her about Jesus.
Sit next to the guy everyone thinks is strange and be his friend.
Obedience isn’t a ball and chain. Rather, it’s liberty in Christ. It’s the most freeing feeling possible. It is life itself.
We are stewards of all of Christ’s resources, especially our hearts. The overflow of an abiding disciple of Christ is natural, not forced. I’m convinced from God’s Word and from experience that the thriving Christian will give of the financial, physical, and spiritual resources which God has entrusted to him.
I could write about volunteering at church or school, taking a missions trip, loving on orphans, and any number of other ways to reach out. But what matters is how our lives and tongues confess Jesus to the people in the places where he has planted us. Our thriving in Christ surfaces when we share our faith, disciple others, and carry out acts of love and compassion.
We easily concede that glorifying God is our mission. Yet I’ve seen a lot of followers of Jesus who rarely want to admit that reaching out to others is the method God has chosen for us to accomplish the mission.
Point to Remember
The thriving believer does what God says to reach out to others.