"You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:34-35 ESV)
Somehow in my thinking and I think in other believers' thinking we have a hard time seeing the connection between grace and hard work. You see I know without a doubt that I brought nothing and still bring nothing to the table as far as my right standing before God goes. I trust completely in everything He has done. I can't add a thing to it. I received it and I do still receive that wonderful message that Jesus paid it all. Now that is called justification. We understand that, not perfectly but we do have a grasp of it. I think we also know something about the next theological term sanctification, but it is here that the disconnect in our thinking happens. We know in the Bible that everything done in the flesh does not honor God. We know that the Holy Spirit must be the main source of our energy that we work with for it to be God-glorifying. I have had a hard time with this, because I think, 'well how do I know if the work I am doing is generated by my flesh or the Holy Spirit?'. Is there a certain feeling or certain prayer that I feel or pray? How do I know? What I have found as the pattern in the Paul is that he continually expressed to God his need for His power and help, and he sought to do the things that he knew were God's desire. If there is a certain feeling we must have to know for certain we are being led by the Holy Spirit I have not found it explained in the NT. And we know from reading the NT that Paul prayed all kinds of different prayers. So what is key? We must continually ask for God to help us, and we must get to doing the things we see in His Word that are pleasing to Him. This does not just mean going to the church building on Sunday and Wednesday and having Bible studies, and going witnessing. These are awesome things to do and are essential, but Paul was also a tent-maker. Undoubtably God didn't think that Paul was wasting his time making tents while he could have been doing what we tend to think of a spiritual. The fact is tent-making, grass cutting, dish-washing, baby-changing, and all the other seemingly monotonous jobs turn into the living worship when we do them with our hearts turned toward God in thanksgiving. Some of my most favorite memories as a baby christian in high school was cutting grass. I can remember for the first time ever I was enjoying cutting grass. I was working hard for my parents and God singing every worship song I had heard lately. And there in the middle of the summer in Creola sweating and stinking behind an old push-mower I spent some of the most precious times in my life with Jesus. So it is not what you do, but how and who you look to while you are doing it, whatever it may be. Go work hard for the glory of the precious Savior that bought you.
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