Slaves only obey their masters, but sons act on what has been modeled in their household. Sometimes we can live like a slave waiting to be commanded rather than like a son who understands the values and vision of a healthy, holy household. As believers, we are called to be about our Father’s business!
To be used of God. Is there anything more encouraging, more fulfilling? Perhaps not, but there is something more basic: to meet with God. To linger in His presence, to shut out the noise of the city and, in quietness, give Him the praise He deserves. Before we engage ourselves in His work, let’s meet Him in His Word… in prayer… in worship.
Many Christians thinks it’s all right if they pattern after Jesus in a sort of way. They imitate Him, and they do the things which He did; that is, they outwardly do them. They perform kind acts, and they do other things which Jesus did. But the secret of Christianity is not in doing, the secret is in being. Real Christianity is in being a possessor of the nature of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is being Christ in character. Christ in demonstration. Christ in agency of transmission. When one gives himself to the Lord and becomes a child of God, a Christian, he is a Christ man. All that he does, and all that he says from that time on, should be the will and the words and the doings of Jesus just as absolutely. just as entirely, as he spoke, and did the will of the Father.
The Church is always preparing us to die and go to the sweet by and by. All that is well and good but what some of us need is the Church to show us how to live the abundant life in the nasty now and now! It is time to be the light in the darkness of the night! People need to see the light in us! Otherwise Jesus would have saved us and took us on to heaven when we were born again! You are here for a reason! Arise shine!
It is not only right to ask God for wisdom and inspiration in our work; it is part of the original precedent. The power of the Holy Spirit is not only for ministry in special circumstances and spiritual situations; it is also given on a day-by-day basis to those not only conscious of His calling, but conscious of their dependence on Him in faith.
Have I then no work to work in this great matter of my pardon? None. What work canst thou work? What work of thine can buy forgiveness or make thee fit for the Divine favour? What work has God bidden thee work in order to obtain salvation? None. His Word is very plain and easy to be understood, “To him that worketh not, but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). There is but one work by which a man can be saved. That work is not thine, but the work of the Son of God. That work is finished.
You can be caught up in all your doing for God and miss God in it all. You can also be resting and trying to seek Him when He’s asking you to go out where He is leading you. The way isn’t “I do more and have less intimacy, or I do less and have more intimacy.” The goal is, in all your doing- be with HIM in it all.
Though I am always in a haste, I am never in a hurry, because I never undertake more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit.
God not only wants us to do extraordinary things, He wants us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
Satan’s ploy is to make you believe your core value as a person is tied to how much work you do, how much activity you can accomplish, how much stuff you can accumulate, how much business you can generate. In order to possess any worth under this system—just like Israel under Pharaoh’s rule—you’ve got to be able to rattle off everything you’ve been doing, one by one, adding it all up into a big gob of bullet points and checklists that ought to impress anybody.