IF NOT NOW THEN WHEN? 022

You need to watch, lest the busy activities of life lead you to neglect prayer when you most need the strength prayer would give. Godliness is in danger of being crowded out of the soul through overdevotion to business. It is a great evil to defraud the soul of the strength and heavenly wisdom which are waiting your demand. You need that illumination which God alone can give. No one is fitted to transact his business unless he has this wisdom. {5T 560.3}

Oftentimes God is made an addition to the various secular aspirations that we have as opposed to these secular aspirations being additions to God in our life.

I write about this type of thing a lot because it is what I see myself and the church most in danger of. We are at risk of relegating God to a day or to seasons in our lives.

I guess as a thought experiment, let’s try to imagine something.

Usually, a person works around 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. Well, what if we don’t feel like going to work? Well, we go anyway.

Whilst in university the same principles apply; there are deadlines and work to do that must get done regardless of how we feel.

What if we don’t know what we want to major in? Some go as far to even still enroll in post-secondary education, declare their major to be undecided and just work while they figure it all out, or at least some of it.

What if we don’t have jobs and can’t figure out what it is we want to do with our lives? Are we content with being broke? How do we pay bills, buy food, or afford leisure activities that may cost money? Maybe we get a parttime job and work until we figure out what we are passionate about.

The point is we may not know what as much as we know that we have to simply, do something.

Here is the thought experiment just in case you were wondering. Imagine secular expectations and demands were flipped with the spiritual ones.

Imagine you went to work for God 40 hours a week and persevered even when you did not feel like it. Imagine if you did not know what your passion in ministry was? Well, you’d do anything until you figured it out because you would know, “Hey, I just gotta do something.”

God has given every single person a “work” to do, Jesus was not even excepted. Jesus would let nothing deter Him from that work

John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

Jesus understood that He didn’t have forever, there was a specific time, that He had to work with.

Luke 2:49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?

I MUST be about my Father’s business, there are so many things implicated in that word business.

John 4:34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

Not a haphazard work that could be started and done at random, but a work that need to be –finished.

It’s a mindset shift.

Be a tradesperson – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

Be a lawyer – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

Be a general labourer in any company – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

Be an IT specialist – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

Be a healthcare professional – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

Be whatever you want to be but make sure that you are someone – employed in the Father’s business, that works earnestly because time is ticking, (can’t be wasting the business owner’s time.) and because there is a work to finish.

God give me genuine love for You. Love that propels me to action. IJN,

Amen.

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