Am I doing enough?

When evaluating my life, the usual measure I use is performance; hours worked, numbers of people contacted, calls made. When the church's statistics in giving and attendance are trending up I rest more easily that I have done well in my work. The need to achieve often drives me to stay on task even at the expense of spending quality time with those I love. In recent months, the necessity of pulling away from my pastoral work for days at a time to travel to Pennsylvania and care for my critically ill Dad even causes me to feel false guilt, to worry about "doing enough real work." Whether my need to do more, to work harder, comes from training or from my personality, I cannot say, but I do know that I am strongly performance oriented. I tend to admire a hard-driving entrepreneur far more than a creative artist, to value producing measurable results more than time to appreciate the beauty around me.

God's Word commends diligence. I believe a strong work ethic is taught consistently in both the Old and New Testaments. Proverbs reminds us that "Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!" (Proverbs 14:23, NLT) As Christians, we told that each one is to "settle down and work to earn their own living." (2 Thessalonians 3:12, NLT) The object of our work is not just to build a bigger store of stuff, either. "Get an honest job so that you can help others who can’t work." (Ephesians 4:28, The Message)

But, as with all of God's good gifts, sin has corrupted our understanding of the meaning and purpose of our work. God commands us to work so that we are able to provide for our needs, so we know the joy of sharing in His creativity and work to impose order on chaos. If we begin to worship our work, if we make an idol of success and turn the work of our hands into the measure of our worth as a person, we will quickly turn into a malformed person, the caricature of this being the lonely executive who can lead a vast company to profitability while his wife lives a lonely life of neglect and his children grow up with a stranger who isn't even present when he is home.

In His amazing goodness, God knew that the drive to work needed a counterpart, so He gave us the gift of rest! In the Old Testament, the people of God were commanded to cease from all their labors one day of the week. The Sabbath commandment was rigorous and forbade practically all work. Most Christians through the history of the Church have continued the practice of setting aside commerce for the Lord's Day, making the day a special time to worship. The discipline of "Sabbath" rest is being lost to us in this age where it is possible for many of us to work at home, to remain 'on the job' even when we are away from our office or workshop. The Lord wants us to understand that we are more than what we do, our value derives from our 'being' as much as our 'doing.' So, invite the Spirit to aid you in the application of the 'Sabbathing principle' to your life. Make it happen!

Nurture the soul. Practice the discipline of rest and worship. Make time to focus on the people around you. Put to death the lie that you can be your own god, that you can exert god-like control over your life, your world, your situation. Rehearse the promise of God's provision - "God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:19, NIV) and from that promise put this command into practice in your life- "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." (1 Peter 5:7, NLT) When work and worship, diligence and rest, are properly balanced in the disciple's life, then he will experience what Jesus said was the birthright of every disciple - "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10, KJV)