YOUR WORK

 "I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do." - John 17:4

The Lord has revealed to us that the number one thing we are to do is love the Lord our God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves. His desire is for us to know Him and the power of His resurrection. These mandates deal with our relationship with Him. The fruit of this relationship must then result in our glorifying Him by completing the work He has given each of us to do. It will become a by-product of this relationship, not an end in itself.
What is the work God has called you to do? Jesus never did anything the Father had not instructed Him to do. He lived in such communion with the Father that He knew when to turn left and when to turn to the right. Is it possible to have such a relationship with our heavenly Father? I think that if it weren't, He would not have given us such an example.
"Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know" (Jer. 33:3). What has He called you to do? Perhaps you are called to be the best CPA in your city or the best advertising executive or the best office worker or assembly line person in your company. Whatever work He has called you to do, He will use you as His instrument to accomplish something that He has uniquely prepared you to do.
When our life is complete, what a glorious day it will be if we can each say, "I have completed the work You gave me to do." This will have brought great glory to Him.

KNOWLEDGE THAT IS PRODUCTIVE

 

"For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." - 2 Peter 1:8 Productivity is a term all workplace believers can relate to. It is the by-product of what we desire from our work. Without productivity, we do not make sales, we do not deliver goods, and we do not achieve our goals. There are things in our work lives that can creep in making us unproductive. The same is true in our walk with God. The apostle Peter tells us that we can become knowledgeable of Jesus but fail to be effective and productive in our relationship with Him. We are a society that has great knowledge, but our comparable scale of productivity from that knowledge is extremely weighted to the knowledge side. The apostle Peter tells us there is a solution to this dilemma. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:5-8). Is your Christian experience filled with knowledge, but little power? Is there staleness in your walk with God? Is there unrest in your soul? It may be due to a need to develop character that only the Holy Spirit can develop out of an obedient heart. Ask the Lord today to add these qualities to your faith so that you can be productive as a soldier of Jesus Christ.

BEING PROMOTED BEYOND YOUR ANOINTING

 

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). Have you ever done a job so well that you were promoted outside your skill set? The exceptional salesman gets promoted to manager and fails as a manager. The secretary gets promoted to office manager but fails for lack of management skills. Understanding your anointing will enable you to know when you are moving in a direction away from that which God has intended for your life. I have seen this principle happen a lot over the years, said Hillman. There is a paradox between these two concepts that cannot be ignored. Sometimes God will place you in situations in which you have no natural gifting. In these cases, God puts you there to experience His power in order to accomplish your tasks. My wife, Angie, is a good example of this. Before she came to work with me full-time, she was a marketing and advertising manager for a non-profit organization. This organization hired a career consulting company to take all their employees through a series of tests to determine if each employee fit into his or her proper job function. When the results of Angie’s test were shared with the rest of her team, her profile revealed that one of her greatest weaknesses was lack of organization and focus. Her boss took exception to the assessment and publicly acknowledged that Angie was the most detailed and organized individual on the entire team. "How could that be true?" he asked. The consultant said, "Oh, I am glad you asked that. Angie is a perfect example of someone who has overcome her weakness, because even though she recognizes this is her natural bent, she has overcome this by learning to be focused and detailed." In essence, she has yielded this area to the Holy Spirit and God has worked through her weakness. God sometimes moves us beyond our natural gifting and allows us operate in a place where our natural gifts do not fit the job. Other times He is teaching us to acquire a new skill set for the given situation.

ASA, A MODEL KING UNTIL..........

 

"Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand (2 Chron 16:7). Asa was a godly king of Judah. There were two kingdoms during his reign – Judah and Israel. Israel’s king was Baasha, who was a wicked king. To the east of Judah was Damascus, whose king was Ben-Hadad. Asa was an amazingly faithful and righteous king for thirty-five years. He got rid of the idol worship and even deposed his mother for idol worship. God blessed his rule by allowing peace in the land for thirty-five years. When Asa came into power the nation was lost. There was no godly ruler. There were many wars and the people began to cry out to God for deliverance. God sent them Asa. When Judah was attacked by Zerah the Cushite who marched against them with a vast army and three hundred chariots, Asa called upon the LORD and God answered his prayer and delivered them from a larger and stronger army than Judah’s. However, thirty-five years later, Asa began to move away from trusting God and decided he could buy the favor of his enemy, the King of Ben-Hadad. Asa sent gold and silver to him as a bribe asking Ben-Hadad to cancel his treaty with King Baasha and go to war on behalf of Asa and Judah. Asa’s strategy worked and he defeated Israel. However, there was a cost.  "In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. Then in the forty-first year of his reign, Asa died and rested with his fathers" (2 Chron 16:12-14). What we learn from Asa is that whenever we place our trust and obedience in the Lord, God becomes our source for security and prosperity. However, when we move away from trusting God, that security is removed and we fail to receive those things God intended us to have.

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM

 

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near (Matt 3:2) God is doing a unique work on the earth today. There are seasons in which the Holy Spirit speaks things to the Church. During one decade it might be a focus on evangelism. During another, it might be a greater awareness of the Holy Spirit. During yet another, it might be a focus on social problems in cities. Today, God is speaking very clearly to the Church about societal transformation. Fifteen years ago, the idea of a community being totally transformed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ was a foreign concept. However, according to George Otis, Jr, director of the Sentinel Group, there are over 500 communities that are in some form of quantifiable transformation process today. The defining characteristic of a community that is being transformed is that the socio-economic traits are being positively affected. The crime rate goes down, the economy is improved, and the number of Christians in the city increases, prayer increases, and the city leaders become Christians. It is the manifestation of Deuteronomy 28:13, "The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom." In order to go beyond the Gospel of Salvation to the Gospel of the Kingdom we must exercise a different level of faith for our communities. Jesus talked about the kingdom of God more than 70 times in the New Testament—much more often than he mentioned salvation. While salvation is part of bringing the kingdom of God on earth, it includes much more. When the Gospel of the Kingdom comes into a life and a community, everything in its wake is transformed. How might God want you to be the catalyst to bring the entire Gospel of the Kingdom into the lives and communities you are called to influence?

OPENING OUR SPIRITUAL EYES

 

"And Elisha prayed, 'O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.' Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha." - 2 Kings 6:17 Elisha was counseling the nation of Israel against the impending attack of the king of Aram. The Lord supernaturally gave Elisha the plans that the king was implementing, and in turn, Elisha warned Israel of each intended attack. The king could not understand why his plans were continually foiled. It seemed there was a secret informer in his midst. He was furious when he was told it was the God of Israel who was to blame for this inside information. The king decided the only way to resolve the situation was to get rid of the problem - kill Elisha. The king's forces arrived and surrounded Elisha and his servant. Elisha's servant became upset and fearful when Elisha was not upset. Elisha immediately prayed that his servant's eyes might be opened to see that there was no need to be afraid because the angels were protecting them. And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, "Strike these people with blindness." So He struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked (2 Kings 6:17-18). Who is the Elisha in your life? Do you have a mentor friend who can see the activity of God in your life when you cannot see it? We all need to have somebody we can trust to help us see the activity of God. It is often difficult for us to see what God is really doing because we are so consumed by the circumstances of the moment. Ask God today to help open your spiritual eyes so that you might see Him in your circumstances.

HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD - EVEN ON THE JOB

 

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me. . . . My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:14,27). Tom Fox is a successful financial investment manager who heads up a workplace ministry in the Twin Cities, Minnesota area. He used to be troubled when he heard Christians say, "The Lord told me . . . " He certainly had never heard God speak to him like that. "What is different about those people and me?" he wondered. In the book of John, Tom had read that Jesus had said that His sheep hear His voice, but he didn’t understand how they could do that. His pursuit to answer that question began his quest to discover how to hear God’s voice himself. Today, Tom realizes that God does speak and that we, as His children, can hear His voice. He has discovered how to hear God’s words of guidance in his daily life, which includes the day-to-day operations of his business, and he is teaching others how to hear God’s voice as well. A friend of mine told me a story about an experience he had in Israel that demonstrates how sheep know their shepherd’s voice. He and his wife were visiting some of the famous biblical sites when they saw a group of shepherds and their flocks. They watched as three different shepherds put their sheep in the same pen for the night, and they wondered how in the world the shepherds would separate their sheep the next day since none of them had any identifying marks on them. My friend got up early the next morning to watch the shepherds gather their sheep. The first shepherd went over to the pen and called out to his sheep. One by one, his sheep (and only his sheep) filed out to follow him. The same thing happened with the other two shepherds. My friend said it was amazing to watch how only the shepherd’s sheep followed him while the others remained in the pen—and all because they recognized his voice. What a picture of Jesus’ words spoken centuries earlier. Ask God to help you hear the voice of God—even on the job.