Do I have a job? Am I productive? Am I supporting my family, and clothing and housing them? Am I working also for the Lord to supply and provide for the work of God? Then I supervise myself; I monitor myself. I am to superintend my witness, my holiness, and even my capacity to provide. That is all in this word ‘maintain’. Let him be the overseer of his working life. Make sure he is productive.
We are not thinking about those wealthy churches who are very good at drubbing up enormous funds, and then they spend the money wastefully. We hear of some amazing things, unnecessary and ridiculously expensive things that churches can do, some of these mega churches. They spend money on things which they have no business spending money on. We are thinking about ordinary people of God, providing for the pressing needs of the gospel and the support of the work.
The late Vernon Higham who ministered for so long in Wales told of how he went to a certain Eastern European country which the church where he ministered had been supporting for years. This Eastern European church had just put up a new building after years of persecution. When he visited them and saw this new building, it was such a palace, and there was gold everywhere and extravagant things, and he thought, ‘Well, is this what we have been toiling and providing for?’ It was a church going way over the top in its splendour and expenditure. We are not thinking of that. We are thinking about necessary uses, pressing needs, whether it's for the gospel, or whether it's compassionate.
Are you bearing fruit? I remember reading in the life of the Hudson Taylor how, when he was a medical student in London, and he was surviving on very small allowance, that it became known that half that allowance would be given to the work of God. He that is faithful in little is faithful also in much. A lad who at 18 or 19 trained himself to give, even though he had little to give from, was to become the great giver in the context of missionary work, the great toiler. This phrase resonates for us: ‘that they be not unfruitful.’ Will you end life's journey suddenly realising you are going to face the Lord? ‘How fruitful have I been: in witness, in service, even in stewardship?’ You are a fruit bearing tree for the Lord.