on faithfulness over fruitfulness...

Today had an enjoyable time at the morning staff devotions. My friend read Chapter 15 from John Piper's Life as a Vapor. It's entitled "The Path of Wisdom may Not Be the Most Fruitful path for God's Glory". Just by the title itself,  you can tell it's a deep chapter. I think different ones took away different lessons from the reading.

For me, I took away the lesson that we sometimes measure our success too much in world terms. How many souls are we saving per day in such and such areas - it becomes very task-oriented and performance-driven. Yet I am reminded of stories told by my church missions focus-groups, of how some missionaries were never given to see the fruits of their labors.

There's this story of how this missionary had to plough for 30 to 40 years in a extreme remote part of the world, without having seeing a single person coming to receive the Lord Jesus as their personal savior. It is only after his death that the harvest was reaped in; whole villages came to salvation because this one man had done the work of the preaching of the Gospel.

I wonder what would I have done, had I been in this missionary's shoes? Would I have persevered on in the face of adversity, or just thrown in the towel? And what would I do if I've know this missionary as a friend. Would I have encouraged him to stay on? Or would I have have given him advice to be "wise" and evaluate his works, and return from the fields?

Others shared other thoughts. Another friends shared sometimes it's not so much of the results, but the knowledge that we are walking right with God. Are we in His will when we choose a certain path over another? Another person shared it blesses her heart  when she and her husband  read about the  life of Micah - on how no one really listened to his words (not even the kings) till about a hundred years down the road, where another prophet, Jeremiah's life was spared on account of Micah's words.

So in the end, my friend who was facilitating, shared a catchphrase that he learnt while attending a church back home in the States. It was "faithfulness over fruitfulness". Something to chew upon over the weekend for me, I guess...