Listening to the Holy Spirit:
There is no greatness in sloth. Only those who diligently seek and find will feel pleasure in their labor from their Lord. Mountains of gold will not bring the contentedness of heart bought with honest labor in a place blessed by your God. It will be blessed, set aside and holy, because you bring My light and the attitude of He who has been saved from a great calamity. Your rescue allows flow of your gratitude, and the light shown from such a life brings light to even the darkest places. To not rejoice, is to not put effort into the meditation of your narrow escape down a narrow way, provided by My hand. The sloth thinks only of things present, unmotivated by what lies behind or ahead, but the diligent are thankful for the gift given, and are excited to follow Me into tomorrow. He who has a thankful heart brings health to his bones, and blessing to his home and labor. Do not be lazy in your meditation of your blessing, and let not the sloth hide My light in you.
Gen 39:5 (ESV) – From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field.
Colossians 2:6-7 (ESV) – Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Psalm 103:2 (ESV) – Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
Taking It to Work:
How many times have you said to yourself, “I want to be stronger in my spiritual walk; I want to grow”? We all desire it, but we have all experienced times in our lives when we let our time with God, which brings about a huge part of that growth, fall to the wayside. Our daily quiet times, or daily devotionals, end up not so daily. We may forget, get sidetracked, or just fall out of our routine, and before we know it, we realize we have to “get back into it”, again. What finally drives us back? Usually it’s one of two things. There are others, but in my experience, and in scripture, especially in psalms, there are two overarching reasons to start hitting your knees again. One excellent; one not so much.
When it comes to two best spiritual fuels, calamity and thankfulness are the two leaders for developing spiritual horsepower in our lives. When things go very wrong, like it or not, we do grow quickly, as we tend to resort to prayer very quickly and re-pulling close to God. The other way, the far better way, is being driven to your knees with deep gratitude, and with Thanksgiving coming up, this is a great time to start thinking again about how good God has been, but it will never happen unless we really take some time to count our blessings.
When things are going right, or even when they are going wrong, we tend to draw closer to God if we can switch our mind from all that we have to do, to deep gratitude for all that He is doing and has done in our lives. That mindset will draw us back out of our busyness, and back into His presence. And whenever we draw close to Him, we grow spiritually…but that is only consistent if we take the time to consistently stop to count those blessings,
Don’t wait for calamity to hit before you find your way back to His feet. There is a better reason for being there. Set some time aside, daily, to contemplate and thank God for all His provision and blessing in your lives, especially remembering the blessing of His rescue and adoption of us as His sons and daughters.
From that grateful heart, will flow the follow-on spiritual desire to read His Word, dedicate our time to meeting with Him in prayer, and gain the growth that surrounds a person that is truly walking with Him in that way.
Our work, family, health, salvation, and a thousand other things are gifts directly from the hand of our loving God. With a heart full of gratitude for those things, our head can’t help but to bow to Him, giving us great fertilizer for our future spiritual growth.
Try it. List the things that bring your life joy and peace. Let that spur you to spend time thanking Him on a daily basis. That time with the Lord will bring back the growth we all seek.
Start with your drive to work today, or the first 10 minutes at your desk, and let your gratitude, and His Word, work growth in you today.
