Cursed Work!?

Have you ever gone through on of those periods in your life where it seems like all you do is work? I have been going through that for a while now. I am averaging 70+ hours a week between my two (and three and four) jobs.The thing that concerns me is that it is about to get worse.  I am transitioning out of professional ministry and will need to hustle ever harder just to pay the bills. I guess this paragraph serves as my lame excuse for not blogging as much as I used to…

Needless to say, I am exhausted right now. When I get worn out like this, I usually start thinking really evil thoughts about at Adam and Eve. After all, if they hadn’t sinned, there would be no curse and I wouldn’t have to work. Before sin, Adam and Eve just hung out in the garden and did nothing, right? That is what I used to think but I am beginning to realize how wrong I am about this.

Recently I read Genesis again and saw some interesting things. I saw that Adam had work to do even before the curse. In 2:15 the Bible tells us that God “took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it.” Apparently even the Garden of Eden needed tending. I always pictured trees in perfect rows and nicely manicured (by God) grass. Maybe one of those cool mazes made out of hedges like you see in movies about England… But I guess Adam had to mow, pull weeds, and blaze trails himself. Whatever work it was, it wasn’t just sitting around picking and apple here and there when he got hungry.

Then God created all the animals and “brought them to Adam to see what he would call them” (2:19). How many hours of work would it take to name every kind of bird and animal in existance? Maybe he only had to come up with “dog” and not each breed of dog but that was still a lot of naming. And he was still responsible to keep that Garden straight. Can’t just let the place get overgrown while you spend a year or so coming up with names for animals. Adam was the first multi-tasker.

Even after creating Eve to help Adam with his loneliness problem (helper (2:18b) refers to the man being lonely (2:18a), not to his need for someone to do the dishes) God gave them jobs to do. In 1:28 (yes, I know chapter 1 comes before chapter 2 but God is addressing both of them so it must have happened after the stuff addressed to Adam alone) God says to them, “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion…” While the first part of this sounds like a fun job, any parent will tell you that it involves at least 18 years of hard, stressful work to multiply. And subduing the earth and having dominion over it doesn’t sound like something I can do from the couch with the remote control…

All of these jobs were before the curse on the ground (3:17-19). My point is that while the curse made work harder, we were always meant to work. We were created to feel satisfaction from a job well done. We need to get rid of this idea that the ideal was to sit around naked in the garden and pick only as much fruit as it took to satiate our momentary hunger. We need to embrace our work and do it all as unto the Lord. We also need to understand that jobs like gardening, parenting, studying animals, and harnessing the power of this wonderful world God created are all holy callings. Yes, He calls some to preach but he also calls many more to do many different jobs. They are all holy unto the Lord. Do your work with passion. Do it to serve God, not your boss. Do your job with a thankful heart no matter how thankless your job is. You will not find fulfillment in avoiding work, but in embracing it. by “you” in the previous sentances, I mean “me.” I need to learn these things to keep myself from falling into the abyss of depression and burnout. I want to fully embrace my work but could I embrace just a litlle less of it fully? There is such a thing as balance after all, right?

Living death

As I read through Acts chapters 20 & 21 I am struck by the determination of Paul. Over a period of a couple months or more Paul is trying to get to Jerusalem. Every step of the way he is warned that he will be put in chains and suffer when he gets there. But Paul responds repeatedly that he is not only willing to suffer but to die for the Lord.

What strikes me is that Paul is not making one grand gesture. It is one thing to stand up in the moment and sacrifice your life. It is another to get up day after day and move toward certain pain, suffering, and death. I think It is much easier to die for Jesus than it is to live for Him. If we are really ready to die for Him, why is it so hard to get up day after day and endure the hardships of life?

I admit that many times I get worn down and don’t want to go on. Things get hard and I start whining and complaining. I start pouting and asking why God doesn’t love me enough to make the world exactly the way I want it to be. I pray that someday I can develope the attitude of Paul who could get up day after day and say, “not only will I face the hardship of today, I will do tomorrow and the next day. If nothing ever changes, I will go on serving Jesus until the day I die.” Another way to say it would be that I will give up my life every single day until I give up my life: Or as Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily and follow Me…”

Keep Plowing

Last week I had the privelige of being invited to speak at a spiritual retreat at a school for troubled teens in the Dominican Republic. There are about 40 high school students there who have been sent by their parents to go through a Bible based, boot camp type school to deal with a wide variety of issues. For a week, they suspended classes and I was the speaker every morning and evening.

Most of these students are very much hardened to the world and to the Lord. It was a challenge to say the least. I was astonished when the two oldest boys, who had been in the program for years and were the leading “atheists” on campus each went to counselors after the service the first night and said, “I am tired of fighting God. It is too hard to not believe.” The next night one of them got up and read an essay he had written about stepping out to trust God. It sent shock waves through the students. By the end of the week, a third to half of the students had given their lives to the Lord. I ended up spending four days doing back to back counseling with students. There was no hype, it was just an awesome, spontaneous move of God!

One day I got to speak to just the staff. I stressed to them that, by no means was I under the illusion that what was going on had anything to do with me. I was just some guy passing through and getting to do some harvesting. None of it would have been possible if they had not been there day after day, month after month, year after year planting and watering the seeds of God’s word and love. Some of these people had gone round and round with these young men for up to four years, then suddenly, everything broke loose. I would describe myself as a migrant farm working coming through for the harvest season. The teachers, counselors, and house parents are the farmers. They have loved, prayed, and shed tears over the students. They have sacrificed by living in the Dominican Republic (a beautiful place but without the comforts of home like reliable electricity and water). They are the true heroes!

The problem is that there aren’t too many of us who want to be the planter or the waterers. It is great fun to be the harvester. It was an incredible experience. But it isn’t always so much fun being the one to love on kids who reject you and your Lord. I run a youth center and after school program that doesn’t always seem to be bearing fruit. But I am called to plow up the ground. I may never be the harvester in these kids’ lives. I may never even get to see the harvest. Am I still willing to plow and plant and water? Many times I get frustrated and want to quit. But there is no harvest without the guys doing the dirty work all year long. So keep plowing and thank God for the times you get to swoop in and harvest where someone else has been faithful to prepare the ground for you!

With All YOUR Strength

Why do I sometimes burn out and tire of doing good? Why do I sometimes get so offended and hurt if I am not recognized or thanked? Could it be that I don’t really understand why and how I should serve YOU? Am I trying to work off my guilt and sin by doing God stuff? That is a certain recipe for burnout since I seem to keep blowing it faster than I can accomplish good deeds, Am I trying earn something from YOU? Again, a losing cause since I can’t even work off my sin, I will never be able to get into positive ground on the big scoreboard. Am I just trying to impress others? That is a little easier but still exhausting and un-fulfilling. Or am I just trying to fulfill my own ambition by doing something great? That is a never ending cycle since there seems to be no end to my selfish ambition.

My service must come first from none of the motivations above but from a heart of gratitude for what YOU have already done for me. YOU already love me. YOU already died for me. YOU did it all before I ever thought of doing anything for YOU. I live my life now in response to YOUR love. Every time I lose sight of this, I fall into one of those other motivations and start burning out and getting frustrated.

My service must also come through YOU. Paul says, “For this I toil, struggling with all YOUR energy that YOU work powerfully in me” (Colosians 1:29). I can’t accomplish anything in my own strength. Yes, I must put my shoulder to the wheel but ultimately, I can do nothing to change the world or any one person in it. I must struggle with all YOUR energy. That means I work in faith knowing that YOUR power will energize my pitiful little efforts.

Lord, please deliver me from selfish motivations today. Help me walk today in an attitude of gratitude where every act is praise to YOU whether recognized by anyone or not. And help me rely completely of YOUR strength.