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?

What Are YOU Waiting For?

It is funny to read in 2 Peter that people were already questioning YOUR return to earth way back then. They were saying, “where is the promise of HIS coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were before from the beginning of creation…” (3:4). If the first generation of the church was asking what was taking so long, how much more those of us waiting 2,000 years later! The interesting thing is that YOU answered the question all the way back then. We spend so much time trying to prove that such and such prophesy has to be fulfilled before YOU can return but in this passage, YOU told us what YOU are waiting for.

Peter writes that (YOU are) not slow in keeping (YOUR) promises as some count slowness, but (are) patient toward (us). Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (9). YOUR patience and mercy are holding YOU back from returning before more people have the chance to know YOU. It is not about prophesy and history. It is all about YOUR wanting to see less people spend their eternity apart from YOU.

That means that if I want to move things along, I need to lead more people toward YOU. There is nothing I can do about the mark of the beast or the antichrist. But I can help bring about the culmination of history by partnering with YOU to help people know YOU.

Effective and Fruitful

For many years I have taught that there are two reasons for our existence. More specifically, there is a reason for our existence and a reason that we continue to live on this earth. We exist to know and love YOU, LORD. But we are still here on earth to lead others toward knowing YOU. If the only purpose was to know YOU, why don’t we immediately go to be with YOU when we get saved? Why leave us here? As I was reading 2 Pet 1:8 today, I saw these two parts or purposes clearly. Peter tells us, “If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter is saying that there is still a reason for us to be here once we know YOU. While we are still here, we are expected to be effective and fruitful.

So what kind of fruit are we to bear? Is Peter talking about spiritual fruit? No, he just listed the qualities we normally associate with spiritual fruit (Vv. 5-7) and told us that those qualities are to keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful. So this fruit must be leading more people toward YOU. Once we come to know YOU, it is no longer just about YOU and us. It is about YOU, us, and everyone else.

Of course to lead others toward knowing YOU, we must develop the qualities that Peter listed. We need faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love (Vv. 5-7). If we focus on knowing You. Your Holy Spirit will produce these qualities in us. And the natural outgrowth of knowing You and growing in these qualities is bearing fruit, leading others toward YOU. Lord, I want to fulfill both my purposes. I want to be effective and fruitful.