{"id":65,"date":"2012-05-03T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=65"},"modified":"2022-09-16T19:30:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T19:30:47","slug":"a-labor-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/03\/a-labor-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"A Labor of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
A Labor of Love
\nCopyright by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reservedIt is not unusual to hear believers exhorting one another to serve God. In our Evangelical subculture there is never a shortage of voices telling us to work for our Creator and Lord. In some churches today an outsider might come away with the impression that working for God is the highest good possible for human beings and the essence of true faith, but such an impression is at best incomplete for there is a higher calling for the Christian.<\/p>\n

An appropriate caveat must be made before we travel further along this line of thought. Serving Jesus Christ with right motivation is truly a wonderful thing and an incredible privilege. It is also a mandate from our Father. One of the reasons we were created was to act as servants of the most high God. We are not living in His will if we are forever idle, \u201cunprofitable\u201d workers in the spiritual and physical vineyards God has left us to tend until His Son returns. That said we must still address an imbalance in much of the contemporary church between doing and being. Yes, believers have a high calling to do the work of the Lord, however the cart should not be put before the proverbial horse. Our highest calling is not working for God but knowing Him.<\/p>\n

At times teachers and preachers in the Western church seem to have missed the meaning of the story of Mary and Martha. When Mary did nothing but sit at the feet of Jesus we are told she was being more obedient to God than her apparently virtuous, hard working sister. His approval of a woman who simply sat before Him, drinking in both His presence and His wisdom, is instructive. Perhaps Martha was sincerely trying to serve Jesus in her busyness. She certainly felt she was being more \u201cspiritual\u201d then her sister in doing so. But when she tried pressing the point with her Lord and criticized her sister she received a rebuke, albeit a light and loving one. Jesus was more concerned about Martha knowing Him than her working for Him.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s greatest purpose in creating the human race was to give us the opportunity to be in intimate contact with Him. Relationship is bound up in the very nature of God. Within the Godhead the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist in perfect relationship with one another. When we were created we were designed to live in deep communion with the One who created us. Deep calls to deep between our Lord and ourselves because we were made for Him, to be with Him in the deepest, most profound way possible. As it has been written \u201cto know God, and enjoy Him forever\u201d, is our highest calling as Christians. It is the primary reason we exist and it is the fount of our greatest joy.<\/p>\n

When we come to know and love Jesus Christ we then naturally want to do His will on Earth. All true servanthood flows out of a pre-existing love relationship with the One who loved us first. Such love is the right motivation for any labor we do in His name (and in work so motivated we truly can then come to know our Lord better) but the authenticity and effectiveness of our work in the Kingdom is proportional to how close our communion is with its King. When that communion is paramount the labor we are truly called to in this life becomes a labor of love.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Labor of Love Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reservedIt is not unusual to hear believers exhorting one another to serve God. In our Evangelical subculture there is never a shortage of voices telling us to work for our Creator and Lord. In some churches today an outsider might come away with the impression… <\/p>\n

Read more A Labor of Love<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-13","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":782,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/27\/surrender-resistance-and-the-timid-heart\/","url_meta":{"origin":65,"position":0},"title":"Surrender, Resistance and the Timid Heart","date":"January 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Most if not all believers have at one time or another experienced an inner resistance to the pursuit of sanctification. This resistance is more pronounced in some Christians than in others and it is sometimes proportional to the degree of rejection they have\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":695,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/15\/self-discipline-and-the-legitimacy-of-pleasure\/","url_meta":{"origin":65,"position":1},"title":"Self-Discipline and the Legitimacy of pleasure","date":"July 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Discipline enables us to enter into and be abandoned to legitimate pleasure at the appropriate time. Lack of discipline leads to wrong forms of pleasure being indulged in at the wrong time. 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By this they primarily mean that real Christianity is not about human beings reaching up to God through ritual and effort, but rather about God reaching down to human\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":89,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/15\/correction-and-motive\/","url_meta":{"origin":65,"position":4},"title":"Correction and Motive","date":"May 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Correction and Motive by Shea OakleyIt is easy to hate another\u2019s sin only because it makes us feel uncomfortable by reminding us of our own moral failures. Often the result is that we either do not want to be around the person in question or we feel an almost compulsive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/12\/07\/doctrinolatry\/","url_meta":{"origin":65,"position":5},"title":"Doctrinolatry?","date":"December 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Perfect love casts out fear, not perfect doctrine. Today there are some prominent evangelicals who appear to give the impression that having a watertight, systematic theology is the most important task of every true believer. 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