Matty (Headwind)

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. ( Psalm 90:12, 17 )

Do you understand the world and your place in it? What is the point of life?

Is the point of life to be successful at life? What is success? Who decides if we are successful or not? Do we decide? or is it decided by other people or organizations?

Maybe that’s too vague.

Success is used as the measure of success. But what is it? Is it meeting the needs of our family? Is it doing well at work? Is it having the acclaim of a community? If we let the world tell us what success is, then we only have the world to measure ourselves against to tell if we have been successful. We all know what that leads to: keeping up with the Jones’. What happens when the Jones’ are more successful than we are? Does that mean that we’re not successful any more? We were successful but now we’re not? What if we thought our success was due to our standing in an organization, but now we are no longer with that organization? Are we not successful now?

I have been contemplating the last line of the passage that I chose for today: “establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” What if we were to measure success by how we carry out the task that God has given us? Do we even know what the task that God has given us is? How do we find out?

It is possible to deduce, by means of a living experiment, what God has established for us to do. We can use a process of elimination: learning from our mistakes, but we have to have a context of the work ethic described for Christians in the New Testament.

Let’s lay out the experimental procedure for deducing what God has established for our hands to do:

1. Commitment

The first step is commitment. We have to make the choice to be committed to do whatever it is that God has established for us, even if we don’t know what it is yet. This is what you might call a leap of faith.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  ( Romans 12:1 )

2. Hard Work

We have to be willing to work at whatever it is that God has established for us, not shirking our responsibilities or being lazy.

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. ( 2 Thessalonians 3:10 )

3. Glorify God

We have to do everything we do to glorify God, and this may be as simple as mentioning to someone who you care enough to go the extra mile because you want to honor the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. ( 1 Corinthians 10:31 )

4. Study

We should be diligent students of the Bible. This means read it. Don’t read what other people say about the Bible. The best kind of Bible are the ones that are plain text, like the ones that the Gideons put in Hotel rooms. They don’t have any footnotes or study guides. These are merely a distraction and they are as often wrong and unhelpful as they are insightful and helpful.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. ( 2 Timothy 2:15 )

5. Be Faithful

We should be faithful members of a local church which operates according the New Testament guidelines. These kind of churches are becoming harder to find, there are so many cool and progressive churches now that you may have to really search.

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.  ( Hebrews 10:25 )

6. Care for Others

We should be caring for the vulnerable in our community. To fathers: you can’t be making fatherless. Which is to say, if you have children you should be providing for them at the very least, but you should be participating in their lives. I don’t see how a man who has children who he doesn’t see or provide for can have any kind of testimony as a Christian. Caring for someone else’s children is not an excuse for abandoning the ones you made.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.  ( James 1:27 )

7. Giving

Whatever we earn we should be returning a portion to God as an offering to the church where we are faithfully serving.

Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. ( 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 )

Does that seem like a lot?

Is that onerous?

Consider what the world does when it is trying to prove a point: science is so determined to shore up its rationale of godless existence that it will spend billions of dollars building Superconducting SuperColliders, or sending billion dollar telescopes into space. Think about how many people it takes to run NASA, or the science laboratories at CERN. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have devoted their lives to advancing a cause that wants them to believe that they will cease to exist when they die.

If we already know that we are going to go to heaven when we die, because we have faith in Jesus Christ, then we should have peace in our heart and not worry about worldly success. We should be measuring our success on whether or not we are meeting God’s minimum expectations for our lives.

Here is the conclusion of the matter:

If we commit to fulfill God’s minimum expectations, and He promised to meet our needs, then whatever work meets our needs and allows us to fulfill his expectations is the work he established for our hands.

It’s very simple really.