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