“Get to work!” Have you ever had someone say this to you? Maybe you were goofing off at school, taking a break at your job or supposed to be doing a chore at home. We all need to be working sometime unless you’re a baby. But wait, babies work at rolling over, crawling, walking, and learning new motor and cognitive skills. So, we all work at some time.

I have several scriptures I read each morning and noticed recently that several of them mentioned “work”. So, God says, “Do a blog post on work.” “OK God.”

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”. Think about that; we are a masterpiece of God, His handiwork! He worked on us before we were born fashioning us with certain gifts and abilities then made us a new creation when we accepted Jesus. And the old song says, “He’s still working on me to make me what I need to be.” (The Hemphills 1980). The reason God worked on and made us was for us to do “good works”; that’s what our gifts, talents and abilities are for. (If you’ve never taken a Spiritual Gifts Assessment, click this link to take an online survey and discover your gifts.) God has already prepared these jobs, missions, or assignments for us to do, given us the tools, and He’s there to help us do them. Let’s get to work!

Philippians 2:13 – “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” As I said earlier, God is with you and in you by the Holy Spirit as you work for Him to do these “good works”. Because you’re using your special gifts, you will have the desire to do them, you’ll enjoy your work and you’ll be successful at it. And though, sometimes, you’ll feel weary on the job, God is providing you the power and wisdom to complete the task. And when you do, it makes Him happy. Let’s get to work!

Romans 8:28 – “And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” Beware, there will be times on the job that it will seem things aren’t going according to the plan. The devil may throw, as we might say, a monkey wrench into the plan. You might pray, “God, what’s going on here? I don’t think this is how this is supposed to work.” To which He will reply, “Just hold on, I know what I’m doing. I’m working on a couple of things here so we can move on with this.” So, if we love Him and believe He called us to this work, we also believe it will end up good for us or for those we’re helping. Let’s keep working!

And finally, Ephesians 3:20 says: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”. We may have an idea of the work we’ve been called to do but our vision is very dim, (1 Corinthians 13:12). We may have asked God to do something in our lives and can “see” the expected outcome, but God sees so much more. He will be pleased with our accomplishment of the current task, but He always has more for us. He will never say, “OK, you’ve completed the work, you’re done, see ya later.” No, He always has something greater for us to do which will take us from, “glory to glory”. (2 Corinthians 3:18). Remember, with His power at work within us, there is nothing we can’t do. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26). Jesus said this, do we believe Him?

So, God’s family members, we’ve got work to do.  We have our assignments. If you don’t know yours, ask God. We’re all members of the Body of Christ and each one of us has the gifts, talents, and abilities to do the work of God for the church. We ARE the Church! Let’s get to work!