thurs nov 21

Dedicate Your Work to God

Whatever you want God to bless, you give to him first. Dedicate it, consecrate it, hallow it, and then God will bless it.

As a pastor, I want you to succeed in life. Obviously I want you to succeed spiritually, but I also want you to succeed in your work. I want you to be a witness at your work. I want you to use your platform for the glory of God.

When you dedicate your business to Christ, he gets involved with decisions. He tells you what to do. He becomes the chairman of your board. He gets the glory.

"We are Christ's ambassadors, and God is using us to speak to you. We urge you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, "Be reconciled to God!'" (2 Corinthians 5:20 NLT)

Just as I'm the minister of Saddleback Church, you're a minister of a church -- at your workplace. Your job is to be an ambassador of Jesus to the people around you. The blessings that God pours out in your life - in your career, in your business, in your finances, in your family, in your health - they all come because of Jesus Christ.

"Let us give thanks to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! For in our union with Christ he has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world." (Ephesians 1:3 TEV)

I want you to take time to thank God for all that he has blessed you with, then, dedicate your job to him.

God gave us His all, and we should give God our all. There is no being who deserves our everything more than God does.
God gave us everything for us on the cross, it came with the sacrifice of His One and Only Son, when we didn't deserve it. We may never understand God's sacrifice for us, but I hope that we possess even a minuscule amount of knowledge to understand that all we do should be for God, and for Him ONLY. When we work at things with God in our hearts, we work at it more genuinely for a greater purpose. We become more humbled by being more conscious of the One we're serving, we're serving The Most High. Our intrinsic motivation to do our best and succeed should be for the purpose of God, and His Kingdom.
We should work to dedicate everything to God, giving God a little of what we owe Him, and a little of what God deserves. We will never be able to reciprocate what God did for us, however, we are still able to work with our hearts in the right place to give him our very best. God deserves nothing less.

33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:33-34

We were given a lot of things from God, like our bodies, minds, and senses. We were given these things to succeed in our life. Now, we should be giving things back to God. He wants us to involve all of our activities that we do with him, so he can receive the glory. He deserves all of this, as he blessed us with everything, even the death of his own son. So, we should remember all the things he gave and sacrificed for us and thank him for it. And to return the favour, we should dedicate all our work to him.

This devo relates to yesterday's but I feel is a bit more focused on dedication. What kind of dedication you may ask? Dedication to your work for God. I cannot stress enough how important it is to dedicate your work to God. Dedication to our jobs (in our case school) is the little thanks that we can give to God for all that He has done for us. Although it is nowhere near as amazing as what He has done, being diligent and working hard for the purpose to serve God pleases Him.

With that being said, EVERYTHING you do should be for God, and God alone. But a lot of the time we go to our lazy, selfish behaviors and not try our best and find the easy way out of things. This is a bad habit that I follow as well, and it is a habit I try to break! Our human nature causes us to be selfish and lazy, and therefore not give a solid effort in all things we do. But if we want to be successful, we have to work hard. I know I'm stating the obvious here but the harder you work for something, the better the outcome will be. Dedication pleases God, so we always need to try our very best!

Colossians 3:17
And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

                       

Its funny when devos relate directly to a problem you currently have in your spiritual life. I started working out for God, but now I dont think its a godly thing anymore... Dont judge cuz ik I'm a massive dork; I follow pilates videos for most of my workouts and recently I've become aware of the fact that I regularly scream at the fitness trainer on my computer screen. Pilate's girl: "come on, 10 more! Dont give up now!!" Me: "NO SHUTUP YOU SUCK". I never really enjoy working out which is normal I think, but if I was doing it for God I wouldn't be screaming in anger and feeling like horse crap when I'm doing it. I should humble myself and try to train myself to persevere and do it even when I dont want to. I mean i should do it with a godly heart instead of a get it over with mentality. Also, last week I skipped two days (I give myself one rest day a week) which means I'm slacking off which is also not good. If God only blesses work that is done for Him, and I'm doing this for myself or just to tell myself I'm doing it for God- then I'm wasting my time and all my work will be for nothing (I mean after a few months, obviously my body will change but I'm talking spiritual here).

There is so much that God has done and still does for us each and every day, from dying on the cross to save us from sin, to forgiving us and showing mercy when we are undeserving. We shouldn't dedicate our work to God out of a sense of debt, but rather out of sheer gratitude and love for Him. We are always God's ambassadors in all things we do because we are believers, because of this everything we do should be dedicated to God and should be done as if we were serving Him. Even small things such as doing homework, when we dedicate it to God and show our best effort and work then it becomes a form of worship.

This ties in with our past devos: do everything for God.
When we do things for God it should be at our best level of effort? We should give 100% to God all the time.
But it's not like that in people. We get tired and divert our attention to other things. That won't benefit anyone.
Because of this, we rush other things to get them over with so tht we can have whatever else we are more interested in. I guess things like devos and other "mandatory" things can apply.
It's a habit that must be changed
Stay strong in what you do and be dedicated into finishing with a good outcome. If you don't give all of your heart, your finished product will not be "finished" in God's eyes.

It's not important how many opportunities in life God gives you, It's what you choose to do with them that really matters.
~Audrey~

1 Timothy 1

1:7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
1:16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

Verse 7 is clear and concise, you can't teach the word of God if you don't know it yourself. Also, you have to bear good fruit or else you'd just be a hypocrite. Especially for missions, how could we evangelize without great knowledge of the bible and a healthy relationship with Jesus? We can't reach out to others unless we have that initial connection with God.
Prior to verse 16, Paul mentions that he was a blasphemer and a persecutor. However, he shares that God's mercy and grace poured out onto him allowing him to turn a complete 180 degrees in his life. "You use the weak to lead the strong." He gives us these struggles to only make us stronger and to bring us closer to Him. Thus, He makes those that struggle stronger than those that are deemed as "strong". And if we're not struggling, we're not leaving our comfort zones. Struggling will lead to striving, if our hearts are set for God. The process of sanctification is obviously extremely long and if we don't struggle, there would be nothing we would be fighting against. We struggle because we're imperfect. Like tithing, you have to give until it hurts. Because once we give up our struggles to God, He'll always respond. And as our plate overflows with struggles, God will provide a stronger and bigger plate for each and everyone of us. God works in mysterious ways as He displays how merciful and faithful He could be. That unlimited patience is not to be taken lightly. The unconditional love that God has for us is phenomenal, we can't even comprehend His love for us.

We dedicate our work to God to glorify Him by doing good works.

He has given us more than we need, blessed us with so many things, and though we are not deserving of it, sacrificed the Son in order to redeem us and give us reconciliation with Him. Then as a means of gratitude, but not an attempt to reciprocate what God has done for us, we glorify Him through praise, discipleship, evangelism, and with good works.

By dedicating our work to God, we are also giving it to Him. This means that with everything that we do, the glory is given to God. By giving it to Him, we are also allowing God to take over us in that field of our lives, not just in the physical work that we do, but also in terms of those who we interact with and are surrounded by.

Needless to say, our works should be good if we are dedicating them to God, who gave us salvation. But I think that rather than focusing on the actual works, the motivation and heart to glorify God through said works is what is really important and thus should be focused upon.