WORK, EAT, SLEEP AND REPEAT!

Work, eat, sleep and repeat! Sound familiar? One of the consequences from the fall of man was not that Adam had to start working, for he was doing that before the fall. But the curse changed the nature of his work. It cursed work as it did everything else. After God created Adam, the first thing He did for Adam was to give him a responsibility, a job, something to do. Work was good and Adam was a workman in the garden of God and he had no need to be disgruntled or ashamed of it. For, he was perfection in every way. It was only through his wrong choice that he blew or forfeited the joy in his work and the first usage of the word toil came into being. Today, mankind is still doing what Adam did before he sinned. We are tending the earth and its inhabitants. Yet, in Exodus we are commanded to work and tend this cursed world for 6 days and then we get a day off to rest from our work as God Himself set the example for us to follow. Work was always God’s design for mankind, yet now we work against the curse to extract what joy we can get out of it. It is not always an easy task and oftentimes very hard, but we must work and toil in it, because it is a world that has a curse on it.

Some days all my work seems to overwhelm me, both physically and spiritually so. I catch myself wishing and praying for another hour in the day to catch up and finish my task, as I seem to run out of minutes in completing them all. As a Christian God has called me to a higher level of commitment as His child both in my workplace and as I serve Him in any other area of my life; be it in my home, my Church or my community. In my quiet time this morning, as I was reading in the book of 2 Thessalonians, I was reminded of that old song, “We’ll work ‘til Jesus Comes, then we’ll be going home”. How refreshing to know that one day there will be a rest for the people of God at the end of their work as well as the rest that we have while we are in the middle of it. A rest that will have made our journey and our work, worth the effort that we had put into it.  

I recall a statement that I have heard many times that says, “The world is divided into three categories: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the vast majority of those who have no idea what is happening.” In the Scriptures, the Thessalonian church was crippled in 2 Thessalonians 3 by those who backed away from their responsibility, refusing to work, leaving the load in the hands of others. No other book reflects better what the consequences of being lazy and unconcerned are, or that our involvement is essential, not optional as Christians. Christianity is not a spectator Sport, there are no bleachers or grandstands. God does not put one player against another. For the body of Christ is one and all inclusive. The parable of the talents teach us to invest wisely in our eternity in the spiritual work that we are to be about. We are to abound in our work knowing that our toil will not be in vain and that we will reap an imperishable reward that will never be taken from us. Hebrews 12 exhorts us to consider the life of Jesus and His life and work. His goals and commitment was intense and single minded. We are to follow that example. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians verse 9 that he and his colleagues had been setting the examples for them to follow. They offered their time, their love and their service to the Thessalonians in order to offer a model for them to follow. During the last visit that Paul had made to this church, he had worked day and night so as not to be a burden to them, in I Thess. 2:9. Paul had made sure that he had paid his own way, picked up his own tab and was no burden to anyone. Paul had every right to be supported by the church as he was caring the gospel to the lost and disciplining those that had received Christ already. Yet, he willingly forfeited that right for the sake of being an example like in I Cor. 9:1-4. The sternness of his example in 2 Thess. 3:6-15 was not to those that could not work, but to those who would not work. We are never to be a “me first kind of Christian” but to always be an “others first, Child of God”. We are never to cling to what we may think are our rights, but we are to empty ourselves of all rights and cling only unto Him, His will and His ways. The degree of our willingness to give up our rights will reflect what our true priorities are. The most exhilarating times in the Christian’s life, is their climb upwards. But it takes work to get there and yes on occasion, the climb will leave us winded and at times weary, but for those that make it up to the peaks of our Christian commitment, the view is so very worth the climb.  Let us keep pressing on, never giving up, never giving up!

 

Loving on you today,

Bren

 

 

DONT PANIC- JUST FOCUS ON TRUTH!

Kathy, a school volunteer hurried inside the school’s walk in freezer to retrieve several bags of ice for their school’s annual field day event. She knew the children were hot and thirsty and were waiting for her return with the ice for their drinks. There was no one in the school cafeteria to get the ice for her, so she proceeded into the large walk in freezer herself. She picked up the ice and turned toward the massive steal door when she suddenly realized there was no handle on the inside, only a steal square plate in the place of where the handle should be. Her heart began to race as she quickly moved to the point of full blown panic. As she realized that no one knew where she had gone, she began to scream at the top of her voice when suddenly, the door opened and there stood the custodian. He gently smiled and said, “it’s a swinging door ma’am, just push”.

You can imagine her fear of not knowing the facts and her imagination getting carried away with her leading her to fear a situation that was not even real. While God designed our bodies with defense mechanisms that get fired up when our brain knows that we may be in danger, they can sometimes if we allow it, to malfunction and the result can be an over exaggeration of the situation before we have all the facts.  Panic attacks like Kathy had are nothing more than episodes of intense fear or apprehension that are triggered by a situation that was not thought through, which allowed her body to imagine the worst. Her mind was preparing for a false fight, forcing her body to take over to help face the situation or to run from what her mind perceived her danger to be, real or not. While I am in no way an expert, nor am I trying to inject any kind of would be medical or professional help in the matter of fear and panic, I am however, someone just like you, that has experienced  the pangs of fear and panic it in my own life and through the Word of God is learning to apply I Corinthians 9:23-27 that helps me to gain control over my feelings and emotions. It says, “ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize”.

I am learning that I can get control over my body by making it mind me and do what I want it to do, instead of allowing it to randomly go off on its own, parked on STINKING THINKING. As we learn to work with it rather than against it we can learn to move quickly through our fear and worries getting to the other side of them. Under the right circumstances, anyone of us could likely find ourselves in a situation like Kathy. Maybe not is a walk in freezer, but in a situation where our mind is racing with thoughts of worry and fears that may not be life threating at all but can absorb much or our energy and time dwelling on fiction rather than facts.

Patronizing someone that is going through this as well, will just put them on a higher alert making them angry and feeling stupid for feeling the way that they do. Telling someone not to worry in their moment of “Stinking Thinking” might only force them to panic more. Instead, the best thing that we can do or say to them is to realize that we ourselves have more than likely been in that situation and may need to say something more like, "I understand that you're upset and I am here to help you walk through your situation while praying that God will help you to see and focus on Truth and not the moment." Saying things like "there's nothing to worry about," or "it's all in your mind," or "you're overreacting" will exacerbate the problem. Their fear or worry is very real to them at that moment, and the best you can do is help lead them to the Lord and allow Him to show them what they need to see, minimizing or dismissing their fear or worries in any way can make their situation worse. As a child of God, one of the many wonderful things that I have and am learning in my walk with Him is that; I never have to worry about knowing what is and is not truth. Because if I really want to know in humility, the Holy Spirit of God will reveal it to me or either God has another plan that involves me not knowing at the time and even in that, I have peace trusting in His reasons. You see the closer we walk with God the less we find that we have to know, in order to believe and trust in the plans that He has for our lives. When we are overcome by our thoughts getting away with us, we simply need to learn how to beat our bodies/minds bringing them into our submission and control. It is when we lose control that we head off into the realm of “Stinking Thinking” and the only thing that “Stinking Thinking” does for us is put off an offensive odor to others revealing the old dead carcass that we are lugging around with us and have not yet buried.

Loving on you today,

Bren