My 5-year-old daughter already knew, although the words did not understand them, that fidelity meant "finishing what was beginning".
When I asked her to fix her room, she did not need explanations to understand that being faithful to what was expected of her meant achieving the expected result: to see her room fixed.
What does my daughter's room have to do with the mission?
Well, I just wanted to show you that in the simplest things we all apply the concept that being faithful implies achieving what is expected of us.
The same happens when a boss sends his employee to send a letter. In all these daily cases it is natural to assume that the fidelity to these tasks consists in "finishing them" and "achieving the expected result" in the other.
But look at what paradox, miracle, clouding of mind or I do not know what extrasensory phenomenon happens to us in the head or heart when we talk about realizing the Mission that Jesus sent us in Acts 1.8.
Very few relate their fidelity to God with "realizing or fulfilling these mandates" in their congregations.
Jesus and Paul called concrete results "fruits" which means "result of" or "product of", showing that every action that is carried out ends with a concrete result in the view of all.
Jesus called the concrete result fruit production and He and God expect it from those who are elected his people
"The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to people who produce the fruits of it" (Matthew 21:43)
Looking first at our lives, in the second place, our cell as a basic group of Christian community and thirdly our church as a people of God that together is empowered to fulfill its mission, we can notice that the three aspects in which we cite our fidelity to God has not always included productivity, that is, seeing "concrete results", "agreed facts", achievements ".
Harmful ideas in our search to bear fruit for God and fulfill our mission:
- Confuse Fidelity with productivity.
- Have a wrong idea of Fidelity.
- Believe that God does not expect our fruit.
- Assume that God is more merciful than just.
- Do not encourage us to believe that God can make us fruitful.
One of the first steps we should try to take in our life, our cell and our church if we want to move forward, is to stop using our fidelity to God as a mask to hide our lack of productivity.
I will not fill in these lines with passages from Jesus about the importance of bearing fruit.
I prefer to tell how for several years I hid in being a faithful person (before I had another concept of being faithful) and I spent many years participating in programs, meetings and events that distracted me for a long time.
When I had to go through the passages related to our production of personal, group and church fruit, there was no answer.
For example, when Jesus asks:
Why is he consuming the earth in vain? "John 13.7
My heart began to dream of a different life, fruitful in the personal, group and as a church leader
I reflected looking at myself in the words of Jesus when he says "Look, three years ago I came to look for figs on this fig tree, but I never find anything. Cut it off "John 13.7
I have no doubt that while I was a Christian who did not bear fruit I was not achieving God's purpose for my life, I was not an example for my cell and I could not guide a church to bear fruit and produce the harvest that God expects from it. .
If we are not thinking about the fruits that God expects from our life or we are not serious or too alive.
Either option leaves us far from achieving what God wants to do through our lives.
The Mission God has for his church is the same as he had for Israel, and the verse in Matthew 21:43 shows that they failed in the crucial aspect of producing "fruit" or concrete results in view of all.
And we?
The mission is composed of a result to achieve among the people around us
Beyond the good behavior that Christians can achieve, the fruits of attitudes they can express, the results in their personal actions they achieve.
God expects from Christians the definite fruit of reproducing their lives in others through wise work, committed example and the expression of God's power in their lives.
Jesus Christ concretely looked for this result when he joined 12 people and in Mark 3.14 it is seen that his final purpose was to make them "men in Mission" when he indicates the "for what" he gathered them.
Paul sought the same when approaching the churches. His purpose was not content with communion and worship, he sought to produce new people, visible results of the product of his life (Romans 1:13).
For some fidelity means to say that one tried and tried to do what he had to do.
For all of us in our daily acts, fidelity means finishing our task, achieving what is sought, not abandoning until reaching.
Each biblical mission contains the concept of faithfulness to work until we see what we want to do, work until we see what God asked us to do.
For Noah was to finish the ark, for Moses was to liberate the people, for Joshua to tear down the wall, for Nehemiah to build the wall, for Jesus to go to the cross for us and for his church "to be witnesses in our neighborhood, in the neighborhoods nearby and to the end of the earth ».
WE SHOULD NEVER BE SATISFIED WITH OUR ACTIVITY AS PEOPLE, CELLS OR CHURCHES IF THIS DOES NOT LEAD US TO OBEY THE COMMANDMENTS OF JESUS
Nothing will calm the true Church until it sees itself performing the Mission that Jesus commanded us.
Nothing will relieve a Christian leader until he sees in his church the works that Jesus entrusted to us.
The church can recover the sense of fidelity in seeing how God produces what he expects from us, but we must incorporate the attitudes that will lead us to achieve results.
We must as Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3:13 "Do not tire of doing what we should do."
Or as the protagonist of the parable of the lost sheep that did not say "I was faithful, I looked for it" but "looked for it, until I found it" (result).
Or as Peter in Luke 5 who did not say "I was faithful, I worked all night" but said "in your name we will go again" and achieved the results that I had not seen until then.
All of us have struggled to see our churches grow.
Recently a person who was about to give up seeing how one of his most precious dreams came down asked: do you think it's worth fighting?
Someone answered: Always the fight worth fighting is the one in front of us.
God has put before us the challenge of being people who bear fruit.
He has promised to "give growth" and impels us with a clear mission (Mark 16.15 and Matthew 28.18-20) and a simple strategy (Acts 1.8)
Everyone who wants to obey and believe God will discover his power.
We are doing it and He is responding.
Why do not you try?
