I want to encourage you that it pays to make a lot of sacrifices in order to live on purpose. You might not see the immediate benefits of your good work today. But it’s compounding to a great tomorrow that you’ll be shocked if God reveals it to you.
Your possessions, both material and immaterial, can become a god to you when you decide to exalt them above the God who gave them to you. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that you have what you have today because you received it. No gift in Christ is for sale. Instead, it’s to help you accomplish your divine mandate and also to help others.
Proverbs 12:1 says that it’s only a stupid person that hates correction. Yes, it’s sometimes uncomfortable to get rebuked. But if you’ll look at how God will use those situations to refine your character, you’ll unimaginably experience spiritual transformation.
“Where are you sowing now?” This question isn’t about who sees or doesn’t see your work. It’s personal. Are you sowing in the Spirit by engaging in spiritual activities that’ll build you up in Christ — such as prayer, Word study, Christian book reading and fasting? Or are you sowing in the flesh by using your body as an instrument of unrighteousness?
Have you ever seen an ant walking in a closed bottle before? It’s so little, and no matter how much effort it puts in, it can never get out of the bottle by itself. In the same way, God is mightier than you. The Holy Spirit in you is greater than you, although you can’t see it. So when you walk in the Spirit, you’re actually submitting yourself to live and do everything in the confines of the Holy Spirit.
Are you disqualifying yourself from embracing God’s call upon your life? Do you see the bad situations in your life today as a hindrance to God’s glorious future for you? It’s time to put excuses aside.
Seedtime and harvest will never cease as long as this earth remains. While you may not always be conscious of what you sow, you’ve got to pay attention to it. Aside from using money and services to sow, there are other things that can be used as seed. Take a look.
The world’s system is like ancient Babylon, where the children of God are forced to submit to systems and structures that battle for our time with the Lord and our convictions in the Word. Standing on your grounds to live by faith doesn’t happen by luck. It’s by intentionality.
When you don’t understand why God tells you to do something, it’s not the time to complain to Him. You only have to do it as you trust Him. See, God isn’t only your heavenly Father. He’s also your leader. That means there are things He knows that you don’t know, and just because you don’t know something doesn’t give you the audacity to disobey Him.
Your work will be revealed by fire on the second coming of Christ. Whether you build it on the foundation of Christ or with gold, silver, hay, wood or straw, God’s fire will reveal it. So if you do God’s work shabbily, men will not see it, but God will see it. There’s nothing hidden before God. Even the motives of your heart are plain before Him.
We all know that there are some people in this world doing marvellous things, and yet they aren’t born again. So does it mean Jesus is lying? No. What Jesus meant when he said, “Without him, we can do nothing,” is that when God weighs people’s works, those that are relevant before Him are those Jesus is involved in. This is why effective kingdom productivity heavily depends on your intimate fellowship with Jesus, and ministers can attest to this truth.
As long as we live in a wicked world (1 John 5:19), there’ll be persecutions against our faith. And when the persecution becomes as fierce as people hating us and blood-brothers delivering up (total neglect to take care of our needs, so to say) siblings to get killed, we should endure till the end.
