Matt Bennett » work

The Work God Requires

Matt — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:20:43 +0000

Scripture

Observation

Do not waste your efforts by spending them on too small a goal – food that perishes. Work for food that endures to eternal life. Jesus is the only one who gives this food. He gives this food to those who believe. The work God requires of us is to believe in Jesus.

Application

There is a progression in these verses that I need to follow. First, I must stop working for earthly, temporary satisfaction. Next, I believe Jesus and the Truth He reveals through His Word. This takes effort – effort to discover and discern the truth and effort to cling to it during the trials life brings. The effort is worthwhile though as Jesus promises eternal life as my reward.

Prayer

Lord God, help me see areas where I have been working for food that perishes and forgive me for that wasted effort. I choose to put forth the effort to believe You, no matter what challenges I face. Thank you for giving me spiritual food that truly satisfies and endures to everlasting life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Matt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:10:54 +0000

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music, or pictures, or architecture, or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. – Samuel Butler

Matt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:07:19 +0000

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that is why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. – Mother Theresa

Matt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:04:59 +0000

Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all to aim at the glory of his God. – Abraham Kuyper

Matt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:49:37 +0000

In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world’s intelligent workershave become irreligious, or at least, unintersted in religion.

But is it so astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the first demand his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. – Dorothy Sayers