Work Diligently Series

Maybe another way to look at sovereignty/grace vs. man’s responsibility would be a two-cycle engine. If you are familiar with a weed-eater or something, it has the oil/gas mix you have to put into the engine. If you don’t get that mix right, a couple things happen. If it’s too much gas and not enough oil, you get that high-pitched squeal, then the oil blows up because there’s not the right mixture of oil in there. But if there is too much oil, the engine eventually runs down and goes too slow to work. If we say sovereignty is the oil side, it’s absolutely the lead piece and needed. But oil without gas doesn’t get anything done. Same way if it’s all gas, if it’s only what you do, eventually, you’ll blow up. You get real dis-illusioned.

There is this balance that God has for us, that farmers understand. The downside for us as Western believers is that we didn’t grow up in farming world. We don’t understand the natural rhythms. Most people that are farmers understand the rhythms intuitively. I think God gives us more and more clues in the Scriptures to help us out with this. Jeremiah 29:11-13, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” God’s plan for you is good. His sovereign plan, He created you not for junk, but for purpose. Everybody has something valuable no matter how gifted or un-gifted you perceive you are. There is a dynamic creation of God in you that has a great plan attached to it, thank You, Lord. Sovereignty of God, we had nothing to with it. Now, “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Now as you respond to God’s sovereign initiative, the outcome becomes the destiny and inheritance God has for you. There is God’s initiative and our response that creates that beautiful balance of grace and response to God that produces what He has for us. With that as a background, with work as a holy and right God-thing, what I want to do is cover three major aspects. Work is God’s provision, work is a place of witness, and work is a place of contribution.

Let’s start with work as a place of God’s provision. Philippians 4:19 “MY God shall supply all of your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus.” Just as Jeremiah 29:11 says God has a great plan for your life, in the same way this promise is absolutely true for everybody in this room. God will supply every need according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus. But there is a partnership piece to enter into it. It is not that the Father has not committed to take care of you, it is that your response then to God’s initiative and affirmation. How do we create an environment to always be provided for? We are just the soil and the seed, it is God who rains on it and causes the growth. The first thing I want to mention here is in order to create that environment is that we do our work unto the Lord, and not unto man. Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.” Here’s how you know whether you are doing your work unto the Lord: What do you do when nobody’s looking? What do you do when your boss or parents or teacher’s not there? How you do your work is whether you have got this piece down or not. King David is the best example of this. He started off as a shepherd boy; he was the youngest of all the boys. This meant when the inheritance was doled out at the end, he would get the least amount of inheritance from his father. He was a shepherd; he took care of the sheep away from the rest of the family. The shepherds were the bottom of the social rung; he was never going to be anybody of notoriety in this world. He also was alone a lot of the time, and so really nobody was looking except God. His response to God would determine how well the sheep were taken care of or not. The Bible says that David took on a lion and a bear to protect the little sheep. If I was out there by myself, taking care of somebody else’s sheep, and a lion came – I would run like crazy and say, “I’ll buy you a sheep later.” I would NOT be thinking, “Take this sucker on. It may cost me my life, but I would rather be a faithful man and die early than a fearful man and lose my inheritance.” Can I say it again? I would rather be a faithful man and die early than a fearful man and lose my inheritance. David was faithful. When God needed somebody for something greater in His Kingdom, or a work that was great, He found David. The Bible says this in 1 Samuel, it says that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. God chose this man, because He saw His heart. Do you know that if you are a faithful man or woman in any arena, and specifically in whatever work God has given to you, that God will find a way to bless you and will find a way to honor that work? Proverbs 18:16 says, “A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men.” There is nothing to fear about God’s provision if you work heartily unto the Lord and you do it faithfully, even with a sacrificial attitude, you can trust God to provide.