As Unto the Lord...

An excellent devotional this morning....it really speaks as to my own heart for serving the Lord.  But not only "serving the Lord" in the sense of being a missionary or working at a church, but in everything that we do, our jobs, our interactions with family and friends. Surprisingly one of my favorite verses is not included in the devo below, and it really should be!


Colossians 3:23-24 says,
"And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,  knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ"
 
My mom really ingrained this verse into my life as I was growing up.  Everything was done "as unto the Lord", she would always remind me of this, whether I was doing my chores, homework or when I started working.  She has never stopped reminding me of this verse actually, even now, at 36 years old she still reminds me of this verse when my focus is removed from the Lord and put on myself.

We need to remember that in everything that we do, we are do it as unto the Lord because it is Jesus that we are serving.  This really can transform your life.  It takes you from dwelling on yourself and others, and puts your focus where it belongs - on Jesus Christ.  

Are you bitter and upset and feeling cheated because you spend all day cleaning and cooking and your spouse never says thank you?  Are you doing all that for your spouse?  Do it as unto the Lord. 

Are you frustrated because your boss is not noticing the good job you are doing?  Are you only doing a good job for recognition?  Is it really all about you?  Do it as unto the Lord, do it in a way that will bring praise and glory to Him. 

When you do things as unto the Lord you do them the best that you can because you are doing them for the Creator of the universe.  The One who has given you salvation.  The One who knows your name.  Who loves you.  Of course we should want to do our best for HIM!

We get disappointed, bitter, hurt and can feel cheated and unappreciated when our focus is off.  When we are doing things for man or ourselves and not for the Lord.  Man will disappoint.  God will not.  When we remove the focus and goal of our work from man to God we can never be disappointed.  So what if that person didn't thank you for the work you are doing, you are not doing it for them anyway, you are doing it for the Lord.  Remove the expectations off of man and put them on God.  Do your best, do it as an offering and sacrifice to the Lord.  Do it to point to Him not to yourself.  Your world will be transformed once this has sunk in and you really believe and live a life as unto Him.

Can you really do homework, housework, your job, and how you interact with people "as unto the Lord"?  YES.  Our actions can be a sacrifice and an offering to the Lord.  We can worship Him in how we do our jobs, in how we interact with others.  And we can bring glory and point to HIM, when we are doing these things as UNTO Him, FOR Him.

I challenge you to take a moment and think about why you are doing what you are doing...are you doing it to impress someone else?  Are you doing it to earn favor with another person?  Are you doing it to get yourself noticed and recognized?  Where is your focus?  

Here is the devo from Piper that I read this morning...I  hope it will also bless you as it did me and it will challenge your way of thinking....


What Does It Mean to Serve God?
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). What does that mean?

• It means to do what he says in a way that makes him look supremely valuable in himself.
• It means to submit to him in a way that makes him look thrilling.

There are ways to submit to God that only make him look threatening, not thrilling. There are ways to do what he says that only call attention to the fact that he is an authority not a treasure.

That kind of service is not the service God commands.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that God has told us not to serve him as though he needed anything.

“He is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25).

“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Both these texts put all the emphasis on God’s giving to us when we serve.

So the kind of service that makes God look valuable and thrilling is the kind that serves God by constantly receiving from God. The key text to describe this is 1 Peter 4:11 —

“Whoever serves, [let it be] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

God is seen as glorious when all our serving is moment-by-moment receiving from God’s supply.

We receive this supply by faith. That is, we trust moment-by-moment that what we need, in serving him, he will supply (“life, breath, and everything”). This is the opposite of being anxious. Such serving is happy. And it makes God look no less authoritative, but infinitely more desirable. This is the glory he means to have. The giver gets the glory.

Therefore, “serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2).
-John Piper

Psalm 135 and the Pleasure of God in All He Does

The psalm begins by calling us to praise the Lord: Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Then, starting in verse 3 the psalmist gives us reasons for why we should feel praise rising in our hearts toward God. It says, for example (verse 3), "Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good." The list of reasons for praise goes on until it comes to verse 6, and this is the verse I want to focus on:

Whatever the Lord pleases he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

Psalm 115:3 says the same thing:

Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.

Always Free, Never Constrained

This verse teaches that whenever God acts, he acts in a way that pleases him. God is never constrained to do a thing that he despises. He is never backed into a corner where his only recourse is to do something he hates to do. He does whatever he pleases. And therefore, in some sense, he has pleasure in all that he does.

These texts and many others should lead us to bow before God and praise his sovereign freedom — that in some sense at least he always acts in freedom, according to his own "good pleasure," following the dictates of his own delights.

God never becomes the victim of circumstance. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. He is not mocked. He is not trapped or cornered or coerced.

A Fragrant Offering

Even at the one point in history where he did what in one sense was the hardest thing for God to do, "not spare his own Son" (Romans 8:32), God was free and doing what pleased him. Paul says that the self-sacrifice of Jesus in death was "a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). The greatest sin and the greatest death and the hardest act of God was pleasing to the Father.

And on his way to Calvary Jesus himself had legions at his disposal. ""No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord"" — of his own good pleasure, for the joy that is set before him. At the one point in the history of the universe where Jesus looked trapped, he was totally in charge doing precisely what he pleased — dying to justify the ungodly like you and me.

So let us stand in awe and wonder. And let us tremble that not only our praises of God's sovereignty but also our salvation through the death of Christ for us, hang on this: "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases."

- John Piper

Food for your soul...

GREAT devo on reading your bible everyday by John Piper

"Don’t rest on past reading. Read your Bible more and more every year. Read it whether you feel like reading it or not. And pray without ceasing that the joy return and pleasures increase.

Three reasons this is not legalism:

1. You are confessing your lack of desire as sin, and pleading as a helpless child for the desire you long to have. Legalists don’t cry like that. They strut.

2. You are reading out of desperation for the effects of this heavenly medicine. Bible-reading is not a cure for a bad conscience; it’s chemo for your cancer. Legalists feel better because the box is checked. Saints feel better when their blindness lifts, and they see Jesus in the word. Let’s get real. We are desperately sick with worldliness, and only the Holy Spirit, by the word of God, can cure this terminal disease.

3. It is not legalism because only justified people can see the preciousness and power of the Word of God. Legalists trudge with their Bibles on the path toward justification. Saints sit down in the shade of the cross and plead for the blood-bought pleasures.

So lets give heed to Mr. Ryle and never grow weary of the slow, steady, growth that comes from the daily, disciplined, increasing, love affair with reading the Bible.

"Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced.

"Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading." (J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion, 136)