Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.” ~John 6:29 (NIV)
The work of God is the work of faith. It is challenging work to continually look up instead of around. To keep our eyes on the fact that the victory has already been accomplished through Christ. In John 6:68 Peter tells the Lord, “We have come to believe and to know..." (NIV) To believe in the one God has sent is to know what Jesus accomplished through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection from the grave. It wasn't the law that saved us, it was the Lord. It was impossible for us to be good enough, so Jesus came and took away our sin and God's wrath and replaced it with forgiveness and love. He extended His mercy and grace to the most undeserving, the worst of the worst which was you and me. Now He expects us to extend that same mercy and grace to others. We need to think long and hard about how we respond to the daily tasks God assigns us. Do we complain about helping others? Do we neglect what the Lord puts on our agenda, pushing back what we know we have been resourced for and are capable of doing to help others? Do we resent the missions God wants us to accept to be a blessing to the undeserving? If so, we might just be leaning on our own understanding and our own strength in our daily walk, not doing the work of faith. When we believe in Jesus’ finished work and rely on Him it enables us to go out and perpetuate His work throughout the earth. Our earthly possessions are tools to carry out Gods mission in the earth, not instruments to measure our success or lord over others. Jesus said in John 14:12 “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (NIV) We are able to do "greater things" because the Holy Spirit lives in every believer. Jesus was our example of what can be done when we allow the Spirit of God to be our guide. But first we have to believe in the finished work of Jesus.
A very common idiomatic phrase in our culture is “it is what it is”. That phrase is the epitome of what the Lord refers to as walking in the flesh. It takes all account of the facts and of the circumstances and no account of the power and ability of our great God! Instead of saying “it is what it is”, we need to be going around telling people “it is finished!”. That is faith at work. Believing in God’s word and the finished work of Jesus is the only thing that is going to bring hope on the scene. If we are going to use the term “it is what it is” we might as well carry around a white flag of surrender because it personifies hopelessness. To walk in the will of God and the power of God we need to be able to convince a lost world God can change people, relationships, and circumstances if we take Him at His word. We must become the change people need to see in the world. If you want to be able to love others unconditionally, you must believe that you are loved unconditionally. If you want to be able to forgive others when they have sinned against you, you must believe that you have been forgiven of all your sins. If you want to be able to extend grace and unmerited favor to others, you must believe that grace and unmerited favor has been extended to you. You can’t give what you don’t have. Believe in the finished work of Jesus and extend it to others. Be quick to give, love and forgive others, just as Jesus is quick to give, love and forgive!
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ~Hebrews 10:24 (NIV)
How do you respond to opportunities of giving and serving?
Write an answer
Write an answer
Comments