- Matthew 18:12-14 What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.
Today I will give you a message about ‘management.’ Management is truly important. Even after building a house, if you don’t manage it, it will grow old right away. And even a beautiful garden will soon turn into a forest of weeds if you do not manage it. Even if a child has been born, you have to keep taking care of the child in order for the child to continue to exist. Gaining and obtaining is important. But, ‘management’ is also extremely important. It is ‘managing yourself.’ It is ‘managing the things that pertain to you.’ It is ‘managing the lives.’ If you fail to manage, you will lose to Satan, a cursed being, the things that the Trinity blessed you with, the things you received by working hard and struggling, the lives you raised and nurtured through working hard and struggling together with the Trinity, wealth that you gained through your struggling, and even your life, which you cannot trade for the world and you will become a beggar.
Think about the time when you gained or obtained something. In order to obtain it you struggled working so hard while sacrificing sleep and food, right? Think about even just the time when you were evangelizing lives. In order to evangelize them you struggled so much, sacrificed clothing, food, and sleep while investing your time. And God, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Son Lord helped you and prayed with you so that you would meet the lives that you will never come across again in your life. With joy she invests [time and effort] and raised and taught the baby with hope [in her heart]. A life that is newly evangelized [usually] bear ‘fruit’ in 1~3 years. However, because during that important period of time you don’t give them ‘the Word’ properly, are negligent about ‘management,’ they become like a tree with weak roots and so they fall over because their physical nature is strong. At that moment Satan will come in striking at the thoughts of their brain and at that moment the life will sadly cross over to Satan and you end up losing that life. You have to take possession of the brain with ‘the Word and the working of the Holy Spirit’! You have to conquer it! Why? Because the brain is like ‘a spiritual body part of love.’
The body-part for physical love is ‘the core body-part of the lower body.’ In the world, when a woman gives her ‘lower body’s core body-part,’ it becomes the possession of the person she gave it to. Through that, the other person makes it his and takes her as his beloved. If that is the case, how do you think God, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Son Lord take the lives as ‘Their beloved? ’When you look at it on a magnified scale, the Trinity are ‘the man, the position of a bridegroom.’ All the lives on this earth are ‘women, in the position of a bride.’ Physically people achieve a relation of love with ‘the physical body.’ But spiritually, the spiritual love is achieved by you ‘listening to the Word and taking action on it.’ You become that person’s possession if you give your body’s body-part of love. In the same way, if you hand over your brain body-part of love to Heaven and put the Word in it, you become someone who belongs to Heaven.
The time when you listen to the Word and take action on it is ‘the time when you are loving God, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Son Lord.’ Those who stay far from the Word will gradually have ‘the things of the world and the things of death’ creep into their brain and so they will end up living ‘the life of death.’ Depending on what you put into your brain, you will become its possession. Therefore, if you don’t put ‘the Word of truth’ solidly in your brain, you will lose your thoughts to other things and ultimately, will lose your body and your daily life.
‘Management’ is truly important. Through management, ‘the destiny of the things you have done until now’ and ‘the destiny of the things you received until now’ are determined. When you were evangelizing, you swallowed all of your pride to bring them,
called on God, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Son Lord and ask Them to let [the people you’re evangelizing] get evangelized. However, once that is done, you don’t manage them with the heart you had at that time. Let’s say that a woman is aged and thus cannot bear a child.
However, she prayed for 1000 days and then gave birth to a child. At first she lives practically holding the baby [at all times]. But when the baby grows up and is able to walk around, she takes her hands off and not manage the baby. Is that right? She should not forget that she gave birth to the child preciously after praying a thousand days and raise the child while continually educating and teaching. If you are lazy, slothful, and lax in your heart, an accident will happen one day and the child will even die. But once that happens, it is too late. Even weeping and wailing will not help. The same is true with the lives you evangelized.
If you continually manage them with your life on the line, those lives will ultimately grow up. Once that happens, then they will take action on their own.
You have to put the Word into their ‘brain,’ make them take action and raise them working fully with a sense of devotion and desire. It is to ‘manage them with the Lord.’ Evangelism cannot be done by yourself alone. [Evangelism]will not work if it isn’t the working of God and the working of the Word and the Holy Spirit! You have to let them be grafted only with the Lord’s mentality and thoughts. Then they will grow and will be blessed as a result of that. While managing lives, if you say upsetting words saying, “Do whatever you want” just because they don’t listen, that will become a reason and they will slowly go to the world and eventually become hardened to the world and stop coming.
The best time to manage them is first, ‘when they are learning and when their faith is young.’ You have to take care of them well, teach them properly, and lead them at that time. You have to really handle them well in the beginning when they are first evangelized and when they are learning because they want to know. If you evangelized, then you should know to raise them and nurture them. When it is time to manage, you should ‘manage solidly.’ However, no matter how solidly you manage a person, if you do it after ‘the right time’ passed, it will not work. If you manage a person when their mentality has already shifted to the other side and has hardened that way, they will ultimately leave. If you do an average job, you will lose them. When managing people, you have to manage them while solving their problems.
If a sheep is tied down and you only keep shouting for it to come, it will only feel even more burdened. You have to see what rope is tying it down and make sure to cut it. I hope that you will cut the rope together with them by praying every day for their rope to be cut.
If you can’t do it by your own strength alone, you can ask the Lord and cut it together with the Lord.