Brief Summary of Andrew Yu’s sharing

On The Normal Way of Shepherding for the Building up of the Church (2-19-06)

            As saints in the Lord’s Recovery, we must know how to shepherd according to God. We do not like to see anyone in the Recovery dead and not functioning. We are determined and resolved before the Lord that all the saints will be able to function in a proper way. We need to realize that the life within us is a life that functions, that wants to serve and shepherd. In the Recovery we do not assign people things to do; it depends on our burden. When we have a burden, we are ordained. Our burden is our ordination and that’s what bears fruit.

            There are three things that the shepherding life in us is not. First of all, this life is not exclusively for the leading ones. It is for all the saints. Secondly, this life is not through the keeping of the law, but a life in which Christ lives in us. Thirdly, this life is not that we overcome once and for all. Rather, we will always fail. This is why we need to practice, and this is why we need to pray. Concerning our prayer, we can see two contrasting examples from the Old Testament: Samson’s mother, wife of Manoah and Samuel’s mother Hannah.  Manoah’s wife did nothing to bring forth Samson. There was no prayer on her part. A messenger of God simply appeared to her and told her she would conceive and bear a son. But Hannah prayed to bring forth Samuel. She prayed with her spirit, soul, and body, all exercised. This brought forth a different kind of living. As Christians, we need to live an overcoming life by our prayer moment by moment. Just because we overcome today does not guarantee that we will overcome again tomorrow. So everyday we need to pray to maintain our victory.

            As we live a prayerful life and have a revived living, we will then have a labor in shepherding that flows out from our love for the Lord. As we contact the Lord, we will receive a burden from the Lord, and we need to pray according to that burden. We must give ourselves to pray and pick up the burden to care for unbelievers, young believers, new believers, and weaker believers. The picture of the ephod and its shoulder pieces in Exodus shows that as believers we are firmly attached to the Lord and He picks us up as His burden. If we give ourselves to pray for others, we will be able to pick up some new ones in the same principle. Don’t say that we don’t know how to take care of new ones. Just pray and receive a burden from the Lord. When we have a burden, we will spontaneously know how to function and to shepherd.

            As burdens come, love from the Lord for others also comes. The Lord loves us before He saves us. He is our Friend before He is our Savior. Our thought is that we save people first, and then we will love them. No, we must love them first with the love of God. This love comes from our burden and this love will lead to genuine shepherding. It is true that none of us likes to care and shepherd people according to our natural disposition. The Adamic disposition is a disposition that takes care of the self and does not like to shepherd. Only a disposition in resurrection will be able to shepherd people in a consistent way. Praise the Lord as believers we all have a new disposition through regeneration. The disposition of our new birth is one that sacrifices our self, our soul, and even our lives for the care of others.  

             In shepherding others, we need companions. The shepherding according to God is not lone-ranger shepherding, but corporate shepherding. In Song of Songs 1:8 the Beloved charges His lover to “go forth on the footsteps of the flock, and pasture your young goats by the shepherds’ tents.” This shows that our shepherding cannot be individual, but must be with the saints. We need to find ourselves some companions, with whom we can pray at least 15 minutes three times a week. May we be so desperate to live an overcoming life and labor together with the Lord through our prayer and our shepherding of others. This will bring in the increase. We need to pray, “Lord, give me one fruit per year, remaining fruit, healthy fruit, fruit that is healthy just as I am.” (prayer from the Training and Practice of the Vital Groups, p.137.)