July 1st – Scheduling Works

Listening to the Holy Spirit:

When do I not walk with you? In worship you seek My presence, in also My Word, but then you raise your head to the work of the day and My presence is forgotten. Without thought of your true identity in Me, and your greater calling, swiftly you run as if to a game of time and skill. Eagerly you enter in, forgetting the light you bear and the Name you carry to the world. The days of man are given real; strong in the senses are the realities of life. In this also, emotion and the weight of the day and its tasks, multiplying as demands. But in this also, there is to be your faith – the integration of My promises of new life, and My commands that bear the fruit of My Spirit to others. The days of your busyness will pass as the wind; they rise up and calm before even the sun sets. The test of this earth is but a blink, and your life and toil, like the passing of the shadow of the sparrow, forgotten quickly, except for the eternal worth of the light spread in My love and generosity flowing through you as you spend your short days. Forget not that your breath is given to bless others, and to draw close through My Spirit to the Father. Your life is full. Do not let that fullness become a stumbling block to the great fruit in good works prepared long ago. Be not blind of your work to God, while you accomplish the work of your days.

John 15:16 (ESV) – You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide…

Eph 2:10 (ESV) – For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Matt 22:36-39 (ESV) – “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Taking It to Work:

“Where did the time go?” How often have you heard that expression? Whether we are in amazement that the year is half over already, or that our workday whipped by in a blink, it seems that time can easily get away from us.

The busyness of life can do that to us. We can engage so deeply and completely in the tasks of the day, that the hours fly by, and before we know it, it’s time to set the alarm to do it again. What suffers living a life like that, is that if it is not scheduled, it can be forgotten in the blur of the day.

Guess what? The important things to our mission here on earth are generally not things you put on the schedule. Remembering Ephesians 2:10, where Paul tells us we were saved by Christ so we can get accomplished good works that were planned from the beginning of time.

What kind of works? Well, little things (smile), like loving God with all our heart, soul and mind, and loving our neighbor like we love ourselves. We are also called to bear fruit, and there is some overlap there, but in everyday speak, that’s making time for deepening your relationship with Jesus, getting into His Word, and in the work world, outside of doing excellent work, developing relationships with coworkers and customers that shine His light into their lives, so in the final analysis, you were one of the people in their lives that made a difference, maybe even an eternal one.

All that, the stuff that really matters in God’s eyes, that unfortunatly rarely makes our schedule, unless were intentional in putting it there, as His Word works in us, today.