Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
The Gift of Work
The principal cause of boredom is the hatred of work. People are trained from childhood to hate it. Parents often feel guilty about making children do anything but the merest gestures toward work. Perhaps the children are required to make their beds and, in a feeble and half-hearted fashion, tidy up their rooms once a month or so. But take full responsibility to clear the table, load the dishwasher, scrub the pots, wipe the counters? How many have the courage to ask this of a ten-year-old? It would be too much to ask of many ten-year-olds because parents have seriously asked nothing of them when they were two or three. Children quickly pick up the parents' negative attitudes toward work and think of it as something most sedulously to be avoided.
Our Lord and Savior worked. There is little doubt that He served in the carpenter shop under the instruction of His earthly father Joseph, putting in long hours, learning skill, care, responsibility, and above all, the glory of work as a gift to glorify His heavenly Father. He did always those things that please the Father. Later He chose almost all His disciples from those who labored with their hands. Even the apostle Paul, a man of brilliant intellect, made tents.
Booker T. Washington, an African-American who grew up in the South when members of his race were expected to do the hardest and dirtiest jobs, learned his greatest lesson from the example of a Christian woman. A New Englander, the founder of the Hampton Institute, she herself washed the windows the day before school started, so it would be nice for those children who had been born slaves.
Is work a necessary evil, even a curse? A Christian who spent many years in Soviet work camps, learning to know work at its most brutal, its most degrading and dehumanizing, testified that he took pride in it, did the best he could, worked to the limit of his strength each day. Why? Because he saw it as a gift from God, coming to him from the hand of God, the very will of God for him. He remembered that Jesus did not make benches and roofbeams and plow handles by means of miracles, but by means of saw, axe, and adze.
Wouldn't it make an astounding difference, not only in the quality of the work we do (in office, schoolroom, factory, kitchen, or backyard), but also in our satisfaction, even our joy, if we recognized God's gracious gift in every single task, from making a bed or bathing a baby to drawing a blueprint or selling a computer?
If our children saw us doing "heartily as unto the Lord" all the work we do, they would learn true happiness. Instead of feeling that they must be allowed to do what they like, they would learn to like what they do.
St. Ignatius Loyola prayed, "Teach us, Good Lord, to labor and to ask for no reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will." As I learn to pray that prayer, I find that there are many more rewards that come along as fringe benefits. As we make an offering of our work, we find the truth of a principle Jesus taught: Fulfillment is not a goal to achieve, but always the by-product of sacrifice.
Author: Woodrow Kroll
Source: Lessons On Living From Abraham
Scripture: Genesis 17:10 Genesis 17:22-23
Instant Obedience
Genesis 17:10
"This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised."
Genesis 17:22-23
Then He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. So Abraham took Ishmael his son, all who were born in his house and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very same day, as God had said to him.
Instant Obedience
Supermarkets are filled with all kinds of instant products—instant pudding, instant coffee, instant soup, instant potatoes and so much more. We seem to want everything instantly these days. Unfortunately, no supermarket stocks instant obedience.
Throughout his years of walking with the Lord, Abraham learned that the best type of obedience was instant obedience. When God declared circumcision to be the sign of His covenant with Abraham and his descendants, this desert potentate lost no time in seeing that every male in his household was circumcised. Nor did he exclude himself. It was not a matter of "I direct; you perform." At the age of 99, Abraham subjected himself to the same temporary discomfort as everyone else. Doing God’s will knows no rank or privileges.
This same instant obedience should be a part of our walk today. To become a Christian is relatively simple; to live like one is another matter. We become a Christian by repentant faith; we live as a Christian only as we obey Christ’s commands. The extent of that commitment is measured by the speed with which we obey. The Holy Spirit says through the writer of Hebrews, "Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness" (Heb. 3:7-8).
If the Lord has been speaking to you about a matter of obedience, stop delaying. The blessing you receive by doing God’s will is directly proportional to the speed with which you begin to do it.
Salvation is through faith; maturity is through obedience.