Proverbs 4 - Get Wisdom

 Read Proverbs 4

Two years of counseling inmate addicts brought me through this conversation on multiple occasions.

What are you going to do when you get out?

I’m not going to hang around old friends that will cause me to use drugs again.

That’s a great textbook answer, but please answer my question. What are you going to do when you get out?

I’m not going back to the old hood.  There’s trouble waiting for me there.

That’s all true.  Now answer the question that I put to you. What are you going to do when you get out?

I am not going to complain about how unfair the world is.

That should help, but what are you going to do when you get out?

My inmate clients had frustrated and perplexed looks by this point but did not comprehend my question. What are you going to do when you get out?

The reformatory system taught what not to do.  It pointed out land mines.  It posted warning signs.  It gave out laundry lists of things that might trip you up, but it was not equipped to give an inmate purpose.

What does purpose have to do with anything about the Proverbs? Is there a connection between wisdom and purpose?

From PoMo Poverty by Tom Spence

The Germans have a unique word:  Gestalt. 

It is a word that is used to say the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

It describes an integral relationship among all elements.

It’s more than integrity.

It is integrity plus synergy with a fully intertwined taxonomy.

OK, let’s just go with the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

 

How can something be more than the sum of its component parts?

In the world of life experience, purpose is often the cohesive, the organizing principle, and the multiplier.

 

A life expended with purpose is a life lived to its potential, what might seem beyond its potential.

Purpose gets you out of bed in the morning.

Purpose causes you to say, Good Morning, Lord, instead of Good Lord, it’s morning.

Purpose gets you to school

Purpose gets you to work.

Purpose gets you talking with God.

Purpose gets you up the hill.

Purpose lets the insult roll off while focus is maintained.

Purpose adjusts the sails when the wind changes.

Purpose cooks Ramen when the paycheck isn’t enough for the water bill.

Purpose crosses the minefield to save a friend.

Purpose gives insight into our Heavenly Father.

Purpose gives us insight into ourselves.

Purpose unlocks our gifts and talents.

Purpose gives us permission to say no to things we don’t need to do.

Purpose brings us to abundance—not in stuff or money—but in life.

Purpose purges poverty.

 

Those who live without purpose endure a cruel type of poverty.

This form of poverty just passes the time.

This form of poverty sees only immediate needs.

Character atrophies in those living in the poverty of purpose.

Commitment is foreign to anyone without purpose.

The power to effect desired change is irrelevant if there is no desire.

Fear rules.

Language sours.

Money is elusive.

There is no Sabbath to take in a life without purpose.

 

People without purpose are often deluded into thinking they have purpose or a plan or at least a general approach to life.  What we most often find is that they have an exact set of circumstances that they are looking for before they will pursue anything.

What circumstances?

Something that pays a lot, requires little, and doesn’t require any commitment.

 

People without purpose are often deluded into thinking that they can do anything that comes along.  Sure, they can be a manager, or salesperson, or inventory specialist.  They won’t show up to apply because that would shatter the delusion. 

 

People without purpose gravitate to infomercials.  Something priced at $29.95 in which you get 2, not 1, of the save-your-life item offers allure.  When you have no purpose, anything that glitters must be gold.

People with purpose enjoy a good conversation but can’t pause for long.

People without purpose love to talk all day but are terrible conversationalists.

People with purpose love to engage others who will challenge their thinking.

People without purpose avoid thinking.

People without purpose avoid life.

People without purpose feel cheated out of something.

They have cheated themselves out of life.

People of purpose arrive at the job site thinking, what can I accomplish?

People without purpose arrive reluctantly at their job wondering when the day will end.

People of purpose are amazed at how fast the day passes.

People without purpose are tortured by the never-ending day.

 

People with purpose seize the day.

People living in the poverty of purpose dread the day.

 

It is a pitiful sight to see a human void of purpose.

There is no life in the eyes.

There is no spring in the step.

There is no confidence in the voice.

There is no firmness in the handshake.

There is no place to go to find peace.

There is no hope to carry this miserable person to a better place.

 

What a burden to carry—to exist without reason.

What a burden to believe that you have no purpose.

 

What a burden to be blind to the truth.

God made us all with purpose.

Living without purpose is not natural.

Living without purpose is to reject God.

 

Purpose is part of life.

Purpose is integral to abundant life.

Purpose pervades life and gives no purchase to poverty.

 

Yet I deal with people every week who make life decisions in an instant, and postpone simple decisions for months or years.

I meet with people that come seeking money to pay a bill with no idea of what they will do to pay the bill next month, much less what they want to do with their lives.

My skin crawls when people come to me and say, well I guess we’ll get married.  It was as if they were choosing between Ziploc bag sizes.  Yeah, OK, that one will work.

I have mixed thoughts when some people without purpose come and tell me that they are leaving town.  Something happened at the school.  We can’t stay here.  No teacher is going to correct my child.

I get blank stares when I ask, why is your child in school?

People literally cannot answer this question.  Maybe if they said: so she can get an education, or so he can learn something, or something along the lines of so they can better themselves; then an honest discussion might be possible.

Maybe when people can see that life is greater than the sum of everything that’s happened to them, a true conversation is possible.

But when there is no purpose—or the parents do not comprehend the purpose and just go along with the crowd—discussions about staying the course, learning discipline, and reinforcing the rules set by the teacher are bad subtitles on a foreign film.

I said that I had mixed thoughts about people without purpose leaving town.  Among the other thoughts are which of my contemporaries should I warn as the people void of purpose head their way.

 

Purpose is part of life.

Purpose is integral to abundant life.

Purpose pervades life and gives no purchase to poverty.

And yet so many will have nothing to do with purpose in their lives.

 

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.

 William Shedd

 

Why is Tom talking purpose?  I thought we were in the Proverbs.  I thought we were talking wisdom.

So, I will ask you, what are you going to do with your life?

Wisdom tells us to receive the godly counsel of our parents and of God’s word.

Wisdom tells us not only that there is God’s way and there is everything else but it tells us to stay on the path that God has set for us.

Get wisdom.  Seek instruction. Stay the course.

Those committed to wickedness will not be persuaded by the new you.  You should not expect their support.  Stay the course of wisdom. Proclaim the good news but stay the course.  Press on towards the goal.

Guard your heart!

Don’t let wickedness gain a foothold in your heart or your mind.  Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ Jesus.

So what are you going to do with your life?

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I will walk in the light as he is in the light.

I will be known as a follower of Christ Jesus by my love.

I will take the words of my Master and put them into practice.

I will live as if tomorrow is not promised but eternity is.  My choices matter and I chose to seek the Lord in all that I do.

That means that I will have an intimate relationship with this lady named wisdom.  I will embrace her. I will take her counsel so I stay on the right path and am protected from those who would pull me from it.

I will live my life so that my choices bring glory to God.  God has equipped me with wisdom if I will just receive it and he has placed his own Holy Spirit within me if I will just listen to and obey his Spirit.

I will keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and not swerve to the right or the left.

What am I going to do with my life?

I am going to live like never before, seeking God and seeking to bring glory to God in all that I do and knowing that wisdom has offered to equip me for this task.

There is God’s way and there is everything else and I chose to live God’s way.

Amen.

Farmer's Patience

Read James 5

It takes 1 woman 9 months to have a baby, but a government study has concluded that 9 women could have 1 baby in only a month.  A 9-month term is too long to wait.  We don’t like to wait.

The kid at the fast-food counter apologized that I had to wait.  My wait was almost 45 seconds.  He stilled messed up my order, but did apologize that the messed-up order took so long.

When I think about waiting when I am dining out, I can’t help but think about what Yogi Berra had to say on the subject.  Nobody goes there anymore.  It’s too crowded.

You want to understand waiting in the modern world, think FTP.  That’s File Transfer Protocol.  Back in the day, if I needed some information, I had to have my computer dial up the computer that had the information via a telephone line, connect, do the online handshake thing—protocol sounds way more official—and then get the down load.

The 10- or 20-page document that takes 15-20 seconds to download now, took half an hour.  During that entire time, you hoped and prayed that you didn’t lose the connection.

I have waited at our one and only traffic light as the light cycled through a couple times and I am still sitting in the left turn lane on Sooner Road.  There has been no traffic at all for over 2 minutes but I’m stuck at the light.  I must decide to just run the light, get out of my car and wave my arms so the sensor that has been asleep knows I am there, or just wait patiently.  Most of the time that I am stuck at that light are not days in which I have practicing patience on my to do list.

If the people in front of you on the golf course are playing slowly, you want to play through.  It only makes sense.  Why should you have to wait?

After my stroke, the doctor recommended that I limit myself to one cup of coffee per day.  I complied with his instructions on one cup per day.  I have fully complied with one cup per day.  Right now, I am up to January 24^th, 2029.  Why should I have to wait for the day to arrive?

We don’t like to wait.  We will pay extra not to wait.  We will complain when we have to wait.  Sometimes we even throw a tantrum when we have to wait.

Do you know who learns to wait better than most?  The farmer.  Unless you are growing radishes, there is usually a significant amount of time between seedtime and harvest.

You just don’t see a farmer sowing wheat on Monday and firing up his combine on Friday.   This whole business of a seed producing a plant that produces something to harvest is incredible, but not instantaneous. 

The farmer without patience is a frustrated farmer.  The immediate gratification mindset of this age doesn’t go well with the principles of the farm.

So the farmer plants his seed and then can binge watch Netflix for the next few months, right?  Not exactly.  The farmer always has something to do between seedtime and harvest.

We need to understand that patience is not procrastination.  Just because the harvest is some time away, does not mean that there are not things that need to be done now.

These things don’t bring the harvest any closer but are essential nonetheless. 

This is the season of Advent.  We prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus.  We celebrate God with us.  We remember what we generally call the Christmas story.  We sing of a babe in a manger, shepherds watching their flocks, a silent night, a holy night, and we even ask Mary if she knew when she kissed her baby that she kissed the face of God.

We get that part.  We celebrate with joy knowing with certainty that 25 December isn’t the date on our Lord’s birth certificate, but it’s when we celebrate his birth into this world.  He was the King of Kings as birth but lived the life of the suffering servant.  We celebrate that salvation had come.

We also look forward to our Lord’s second advent—to his return in which he will claim all of his children.  He is coming for us.  We won’t be looking for him in a cave or a barn or some twig hut—in mean estate as the vision we have of the first coming.  He will come as he left—from heaven above.

And some days, we cry out Maranatha—come Lord Jesus, come.  I am so ready now to leave this world.  We want him to come to get us now.   We understand that when we say these words we had better be loving the Lord with everything we have.

But other days, perhaps we are not calling out for his immediate return.  On those other days, we find ourselves doing his work, loving our neighbors, proclaiming the grace and favor of the Lord, bringing our kids up in the way they should go.

We still look forward to the time when the Lord will come and claim us but we are not anxious.  We are patient.

For the Lord is not slow in coming.  He is patient with us.  His desire is that none perish. 

The Lord is patient with us.  James tells us to be patient as we wait uponthe Lord.  But just how can we be patient?

Today, I challenge you to be patient by being purposeful in every moment of your life. 

When you go to work, work as if you are working for the Lord and not for men.  It is the Lord, Christ whom we serve.

When you go into the world, be the salt of the earth.  Be the God seasoning of the planet.  Let others taste the goodness of the Lord.

Be the light of the world.  Let people see what you are doing—not for your own edification—but to bring glory to God.

Give your whole life to God as your offering, your sacrifice, your gift to him. 

Purpose your days and your hours.  Lord, teach us to number our days.  Let people see through us how precious this gift of life is.  Why would anyone want eternal life if they can’t see the value of every moment of life?

I have mentioned on many occasions that today’s world has gravitated to the twin gods of apathy and ambivalence.  People are living without purpose.

Sure, people get up and go to their jobs.  They pay their bills.  They even get their kids to school, sometimes they even get them there on time.

But, life, time, work seem like punishments or at best, necessary evils to those living without purpose.  We who live purposeful lives consider these resources, gifts, blessings.  Our lives, our time, our enterprises are blessings of purpose.

How can we patiently wait upon the Lord?  We do so by living a life of purpose.  Jesus said that people will know that we follow him by our love. 

Some fool themselves that they have not found their purpose in life.  The fact is that it is not and was never hidden.  Love God and love each other are surely at the heart of our purpose.  How we work these things out will vary, but we share these common purposes.

Loving God and loving others are purposes that are not hidden.  Let me get Presbyterian on you, and add one.  Let us enjoy God very much.

How can I wait upon the Lord?  How can I be patient while I wait? 

Love!

Number your days.

Live with purpose.

Enjoy your relationship with God so very much!

You know the saying that time flies when you are having fun.  It may be true but it’s not all-inclusive.

Time flies when you are living with purpose.

Time flies when you are living a life of love.

Time flies when you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The tasks may be challenging.  The price paid may be high.  There may be some suffering involved but the wait itself is not debilitating. 

I used to dread a visit to the doctor or dentist.  It wasn’t the time with either that bothered me.  It was the time lost in the waiting room.  Well, I don’t mind those appointments so much anymore.

As I wait upon the doctor, I am writing a sermon, preparing a lesson, writing a book, listening to or counseling the person next to me, or sharing the gospel.  Time in the waiting room goes quickly.  I can wait patiently because my waiting time is purposed time.

But you think that all waiting can’t be purposeful.  Life happens.  Pain happens.  Suffering happens. 

James tells us that we are right.  Life happens.  Pain happens. Suffering happens.  Then he has the audacity to tell us to persevere and be blessed.  Perseverance without purpose is just stoicism.  James is telling us to continue in our purpose, to persevere in our purpose, to endure until the day of the Lord.  And while we are at it, be patient and know the Lord’s timing will be exactly right.

He has the boldness to say that waiting for the harvest is just the way it is supposed to be.  Look at the farmer.

James reminds us that the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.  We are not waiting and wondering.  We wait with anticipation of the good things that the Lord has promised.

Some of you can hardly wait to celebrate Christmas day.  Immediate gratification is our nature, but we are to be excited and patient at the same time as we wait on the coming of our Lord on a day announced only by his coming.

It sounds like something impossible—be excited and patient.  It’s not impossible.  Our hearts can cry out Come Lord Jesus and we can listen to the Spirit that lives within us and be patient as we wait for the Lord’s return.

You know what I couldn’t stand in school.  It still gets under my skin.  What was it?  Busywork.  Just doing something for the sake of filling the time.  We don’t fill the time!

Waiting on the Lord seems excruciating when we are just filling the time.  Waiting on the Lord’s return while we are living this life to the full, living purposefully, living lives of love is just being patient.  If we are enjoying our relationship with God in the course of serving him, time flies.

Maybe, there’s a little farmer in all of us.

Let’s look forward with excitement and anticipation to our Lord’s return.  Let’s be patient and purposeful while we wait.

Excitement and anticipation.

Patience and purpose.

We can wait upon the Lord.

Amen.

You Work In Vain

 Read Psalm 127

Why do we work?  This is not some rhetorical question used because Tom couldn’t find any other way to begin the message. 

Why do we work?  There’s a whole bunch of people in this country asking the same thing?  Why do we need to work?  Let’s just make everything free and we don’t’ have to work.

And then we read these words in this psalm: 

In vain you rise early                                                                                  

    and stay up late,

toiling for food to eat—

Two words that we don’t want to think about in any of our endeavors are in vain.  Without success, to no avail, fruitless, without purpose top the list of meanings for this short preposition.

The psalm says that you get up early to go to work.  You stay late just to get basics—just for your food, and it amounts to nothing of value.  It all seems to be for nothing.

Imagine being a supervisor and starting the morning meeting with “OK folks, let’s get ready for another long day that doesn’t really amount to much.”

We have been exploring the subject of rest and spent some time on the topic of the Sabbath and resting from our labors, but now let’s look at those labors.  Why do we work?

I read this excerpt from the psalm and think that the big bears have the right idea.  Let’s just go into a torpor or even hibernation.  Why work?

Why work?  Let’s start with God put man in the garden to work and take care of the garden.  So, considering that everything that God does or makes is good, work must be good.  Every good gift is from above, so work must be a good gift from God.

We are designed to work, not all of the time, but much of our time is to be given to work.  So, why do we work?

Is it out of obedience to God?  I guess that it could be, but if that was the case you could just pick up trash along the highways and byways of this land and be obedient.  It won’t put food on the table, but it’s work.

Paul wrote that if you don’t’ work, then you don’t eat.  That’s pretty straight forward.  So, we work in order to eat?  That’s pretty basic and brings us back to the psalm.  You work in vain early to late just to eat.

We are working to eat.  Nothing says crown of God’s creation like working to eat.  Is there not more to life than eating and drinking?

Paul wrote that the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.  It’s about being right with God and joy and peace and just living with God’s Spirit running the show.

So, there must be more to work than just getting our basic needs supplied.  There is existence and there is life.  We know life by living in the Kingdom of God.  Life comes by following Jesus.  Life involves work.

So why do we work?

Let’s look to God’s wisdom for a moment.  Let’s go to the proverbs.

A hard-working farmer has plenty to eat, but it is stupid to waste time on useless projects.  That’s from the Good News Translation of Proverbs 12:11.  It’s still meeting basic needs but with counsel against wasting our time on things that don’t matter.

Proverbs 12:24 says: Hard work will give you power; being lazy will make you a slave.  In this case work has to do with worldly relationships.  If you don’t work for yourself and your family you will belong to someone else. 

We know this from another proverb as well.  It follows that one about bringing up a child in the way he should go.  What does it say?

The rich rule over the poor,

    and the borrower is slave to the lender.

Ouch!  I use this proverb frequently whenever I discuss budgets and the godly use of money, but it comes back to work. 

Let’s continue in the Proverbs.  No matter how much a lazy person may want something, he will never get it. A hard worker will get everything he wants.  That’s 13:4 if you are keeping score. 

It seems that work gets you more than just food.  The worker—the hard worker—gets what he desires.  Think on that one for a while.  It’s wisdom for sure but what if that became the central theme in our lives.  What if it pushed God aside or at least bumped him down a few notches?

We need to understand our counsel within the full biblical witness.

Here is a really cool proverb.  Work and you will earn a living; if you sit around talking you will be poor.  It’s 14:23 and describes about one-third of my encounters with people who need help. 

So many people can’t pay their bills, can’t find a job, and have more time on their hands than they know what to do with.  There should be an oxymoron or two somewhere in that statement.

I have seen a wide range of reactions—from tears to anger so pronounced that veins were about ready to pop out of the person’s neck--when I ask someone who is out of work these questions.

How many hours a week do you want to work?

The most popular answer is, “I dunno.”

So, I respond, “How about 40?  That’s something of a traditional work week.”

Usually, the reply is, “Yeah, OK, that sounds good.  Unless I can get some overtime.”

So, I respond, “How much overtime?”

The answer is predictable, “I dunno.”

So, I continue with the three questions for one answer game.  “How about 20 hours overtime?”

“Yeah, OK, that sounds good.  Unless I can get more.”

“How much more.”

Don’t laugh.  “I dunno.”

“Let’s just say another 10 hours.  That makes a total of 40 hours regular time and 30 hours overtime.  That’s 70 hours a week.  Can you handle that?”

“Yes.”

The affirmative answer should not convey any degree of confidence or commitment.  Usually by this point, people are just getting upset that I haven’t thrown in the towel and opened the vault of money piled high for people who are out of work and have become exhausted by trying to figure out how much they might be willing to work in a week. 

It is at this point where people really don’t like me.  I say, “You need to spend 70 hours a week looking for a job.  Not sitting at home wishing someone would call you with a top-level executive job, getting off your butt, hitting the pavement, and finding a job.”

The most common response:  “Well, I don’t have time.”

The dichotomy of not having the time to find a job for which one hopes to work at enough be paid overtime seldom registers with those who find their way to my office.

When I say that finding a job is your job until you are hired, you might think that I had said terrible things about the family lineage.

From PoMo Poverty

There is real value in work.  There is real value in having a job.  There is real value in having a work ethic so that laziness and lethargy have no home.

But is it really about the work?  Why do we work?  Here’s another proverb.

Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.

You even got this one—Proverbs 16:3—in the King James Version.  It’s about wanting God’s blessing upon our work.  Let’s jump to the New Testament, specifically Colossians 3:23-24.

 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

So are we working to eat?  Sure.

Are we working because we were made to?  Sure.

Are we working so we won’t be enslaved to creditors?  Sure.

But most of all we are working for the Lord.  Regardless of our job or profession or vocation, we are called to work for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, should we prosper in our work?   Is wealth  a sin?  Can I have more than I need to meet my basic needs?

God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, told his Chosen People that he had plans to prosper them.  What does prosper mean? 

·        Succeed, mostly in material terms but also in health and fitness.

·        Flourish

·        Thrive

·        Achieve financial success

·        Blossom

·        Progress

The list goes on.  Prosper goes well beyond meeting basic needs.  So many preachers rant against prosperity these days.  Some make it central.  So what is it?

Consider yet another proverb.  It’s 13:22 if you want to check it later.

A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children,

    but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.

Think about what that says in the witness of everything we know from God’s word.  The first part of the inheritance that we should leave our children and their children is the gospel.  Nothing else in the world will be of much value without Christ Jesus.

We understand the words of our Lord.  What good is it to gain the whole world, yet lose our soul?

But we should have something for our children and their children.  That means that not only do we meet our needs, but we leave something for our descendants. 

It seems that we work for God and are blessed to leave something of our labors for our surviving family members. 

But we who are right with God are also blessed to be a blessing.  The fruit of our labor should bless God, our families, and still be enough to bless those who have less.

So why do we work?

God made us to work.  We work to eat.  We work to bless God.  We work to bless our families.  We work to bless others.  But…

Unless the Lord builds the house,

    the builders labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

    the guards stand watch in vain.

Unless we are working where God has sent us, it’s just for eating enough to work the next day.

So, if we work to get rich, God is not in it.  We get the money and that’s it. 

If we are working for God and are blessed with riches, that’s another story.

So, why do we work?

If it is for our own gratification, to get the stuff that our hearts and minds crave, to acquire the best things in the kingdom of the world; that’s all that you will get.  That stuff wears out.  That stuff does not survive the grave.  You can’t take it with you.

You can leave it for you family, but will it be a blessing to them.  The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.  You can’t trick God when it comes to work and wealth. 

But if you are working for God in everything you do, you have treasure in heaven.  If you also have treasure on earth, we know to put it to work.

Meet your needs.

Bless your family.

Bless those who have less.

But all of these things without God’s blessing are efforts without purpose.  The tangible things that we manifest in the world out of selfish motives don’t produce treasure in heaven.

When we seek first God and his kingdom and his righteousness, then we have more than enough in this world and treasure in the age to come.

Why do we work?  God has not only made us to work but given purpose to our work.  Everything that we do is for the glory of God, or it has no purpose.

God sent us into the world to subdue it.  That is to take what he gave us charge over—stewardship is the good church word—and make something good of it.  We work with our hands, our minds, and our hearts to put a smile on God’s face by our labors.  We bring all that is entrusted to us and make it work for us so as to please God.

We work not just because God made us to work, not just to put a roof over our heads and food on the tables, not just to leave something for our kids and grandkids, not just to bless those who have less, but because God told us to do purposeful things.

Which brings us back to rest.  I have said and written many times:  There is no Sabbath to take in a life without purpose. 

We are to work at purposeful things and then rest from them.  Things that do not align with God’s good will for us cheat us out of purposeful production and rest. 

It’s not enough just to grind away each week for a paycheck when your heart knows there is little purpose to what you do.  So, do you quit your job?

Not until you find one that aligns with God’s purpose or you can bring God’s purpose into your current state of employment.  Change jobs or change the job that you have into something that serves the Lord.

Because if you are not working at purposeful things, you will feel guilty in your rest.  “I didn’t do anything of value all week, and now I am resting from it.  What gives?”

It’s an unbalanced equation.

Your purposeful work will provide for your needs, give you status in this world, store up treasure in heaven, take care of your family to include your descendants, bless those whom the Lord has led you to bless, and make you better prepared to rest.

There is no Sabbath to take in a life without purpose.

Find employment that aligns with God’s purpose or bring God’s purpose to your employment.  Either way, your ability to work and rest hangs in the balance.

The Lord is neither constrained nor restrained to either bless you now or in the age to come.  Seeking his kingdom and his righteousness in everything that we do blesses us now and in the age to come.

Who here wants to do anything in vain?

The Lord gives rest to those he loves.  How do we enjoy this rest?  By working at purposeful things then taking a Sabbath rest.

There is no Sabbath to take in a life without purpose.

You need rest.  Working for God makes you ready to receive the rest that he has in store for you.  Work at what you do as working for the Lord, not for men or riches or because you love the things of the world.

Work for the Lord’s good purposes and you will be ready for his wonderful rest.

If you can’t, ask yourself if your work is aligned with God’s purposes or is it solely of the world.  God made you to work at purposeful things and take rest.  The world doesn’t care if you rest or not.

Work for the Lord’s good purposes and you will be ready for his wonderful rest.

Amen.