Blog Archives
Spinning Your Wheels at Work? Not Making a Difference? Maybe You Are…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
20 So I came to regret that I had worked so hard. 21 You work for something with all your wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then you have to leave it all to someone who hasn’t had to work for it. It is useless, and it isn’t right! 22 You work and worry your way through life, and what do you have to show for it? 23† As long as you live, everything you do brings nothing but worry and heartache. Even at night your mind can’t rest. It is all useless. Eccl. 2:20-23 GNT
5 I would like for all of you to speak in strange tongues; but I would rather that you had the gift of proclaiming God’s message. For the person who proclaims God’s message is of greater value than the one who speaks in strange tongues—unless there is someone present who can explain what is said, so that the whole church may be helped. 1 Cor. 14:5-6 GNT
I once thought that when I left management behind to become a pastor, I would leave behind the feeling of futility that often plagued me.
You know, the feeling of having to juggle three balls at once, and then someone throws in a torch, and another person toss in two pieces of your wife’s china, and then another person tosses in three sticks of TNT?
I mean you know you can do a little, but you keep on thinking the torch is going to hit one of the pieces of TNT and then…
I don’t care if you pastor a church of 150 or 1000, or administer a computer system, or a washing dishes on graveyard shift at a Denny’s. There are times where you feel like you are spinning your wheels, and you being to regret that you work so hard, and it all seems useless. And if you are about to go on vacation, and are struggling to get it all ready, and your daily Bible reading gets to Ecclesiastes, you are probably feeling this way!
God does have a sense of humor!
And the feelings Solomon writes about are very real. Most of us have to deal with them on a regular basis. Anxiety, heartache, feelings of unfulfillment, uselessness and even the idea that while you don’t gain from your dedicated work, someone else will – all these feelings can crush us. And they often do.
Yet, in the midst of that stands our “proclamation”. And in all of those places, in 1981 at Denny’s in New Hampshire, (and again in 85-86), at Pepperdine, and as a pastor, I’ve seen God at work in the lives of people. It’s not about certain vocations proclaiming Christ, or even people of a certain age. It is about being in the moment, and recognizing the grace of God, and sharing it, “proclaiming” it, to those who need to see it as well.
I heard a long time ago, that while we work, we are ultimately there because God sent us there. The pastor said that while we are employed by Company X (I think it was Ford) who we are representing is God. Therefore we work in a way that would bring glory to God) So while we are devoted to our job, (washing dishes, analyzing financial and security reports or preparing a sermon or study) and work hard, the ultimate reason we are there is to bring God glory, and as appropriate, proclaim how great His love and mercy are.
It is those moments we cherish, the moments that make a difference. For example, as you help the guy at the counter sober up, and go home to talk and pray with his wife, because there is now hope that God can bring healing to his broken marriage. Another example could be the young college student, who thought their world was over because their boyfriend dumped them, or they didn’t get a good grade in that class. Because God had someone there, they knew that God wouldn’t forsake them. The stories live on, and even to this day, I don’t remember what I said or did, I remember the look in their eyes, and the release of all the tension built up in their bodies. It is how they left, knowing that they were there as well, in the presence of God
So look for those moments, look for the people God has sent your way this day. Find ways to share with them, as St Peter advised, the Reason your have hope in the midst of a broken world. Pray for them, and as you have the opportunity, pray with them.
This is what matters, this is what makes a difference, and this is what is not vain. You are sent were you are, by God, in order to be a blessing to others. To help them, slowly at time, to discover the love of God. As they do, the joy you will know, is beyond words.
Self-Examination and doing great things for God
“I don’t want you ever to lose your supernatural outlook. Even though you see your own meannesses, your evil inclinations—the clay of which you are made—in all their raw shamefulness, God is counting on you.” (1)
There are times, when I am about to start a sermon, or a Bible Study, or say the words of institution and serve the people of God the Feast He has prepared for them, that I have a moment of panic.
What am I doing up here? Why do I think I have the role to “play” at being a pastor.
I know myself, well, not really. I think I do. As described in the quote above, I see my own issues, my own frailty, and there is a tendency to focus on those things. And when I do, it makes no sense that God would call me, use me, work through me…. work in me. How could something so sacred work in something so… human, fallible, broken. It is a challenge that I often feel – and I am not alone. A pastor with over 30 years experience and I were talking about this very thing – and he noted he even once consulter a psychiatrist about the nerves and issues he goes through, as he is about to preach….
Such thoughts I know as well – go through the mind of people who aren’t pastors, who know God is nudging them to do something – whether it is something grand like heading to the mission field, or something even more scary – like inviting their neighbor to church. Or reaching out to that busybody or grouch at work, or challenging the dysfunction in their family, as they desire to bring God’s healing and peace to where it has been never known before. And in the back of their minds, just as in pastors…there lingers doubt – not of God’s will or God’s faithfulness, but of our suitability to be used by God for something holy.
To you (and to I) the words of St Paul bring…a reduction of anxiety, and a quite assurance that God can.. and will provide all we need to see His will accomplished.
15 Here is a saying that you can rely on and nobody should doubt: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I myself am the greatest of them; 16 and if mercy has been shown to me, it is because Jesus Christ meant to make me the leading example of his inexhaustible patience for all the other people who were later to trust in him for eternal life. 17 To the eternal King, the undying, invisible and only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Timothy 1:15-17 (NJB)
If God can take a murderer like Paul, or a murdering alduterer like King David, and transform them, equip and empower them to do what God accomplished through them… then indeed He can do what He is calling us to let Him accomplish through our lives. He is counting on you – not to do things by your own intellect or power, but simply to follow His lead..to allow His love to work through you…
For then like Paul, you will see that all honor and glory is His, even as He invites us to dwell with Him in it.
One last thought blessings.. for this day:
20 I pray that the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood that sealed an eternal covenant, 21 may prepare you to do his will in every kind of good action; effecting in us all whatever is acceptable to himself through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen! Hebrews 13:20-21 (NJB)
(1)Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). The Forge (Kindle Locations 1934-1935). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
