Do everything we do for God!

I feel like I hear some version of this statement (1 Corinthians 10:31 and Colossians 3:17) all the time, calling us to do everything we do for God. It hit me today that I have not processed (or don’t remember) the context of this call before. I feel that what we generally hear is: we should work hard at our jobs or school work no matter how much we dislike it. This is not even close to the reality of the call He gives us.

In Corinthians, Paul says this at the end of explaining that we should be willing to sacrifice our freedoms in Christ for anyone that might be negatively affected by what we are doing. Do you understand what this means? This means that if you are doing ANYTHING that could cause a fellow Christian to be tempted or their walk with God to be damaged you should cease. It doesn’t matter if it is ok for you to do it or how badly you want to do it, the call from God is to sacrifice your rights for their benefit. Imagine if we lived this out; how earth shattering would this be. It is painful to think how much suffering we have caused by separating verses 23-30 from verse 31.

In Colossians, Paul kind of gives us a road map to the things we need in order to fulfill this calling. He tells us to put on holy and beloved compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Oh it gets bigger, he adds…forgive as God has forgiven us! If you don’t see that as the bombshell it is then you need to hear again how God has forgiven you. You, who dead in your sin, were an enemy of God. Yet, despite that fact, God came to die for YOU! Let that sink in. If you were the only one, EVER, to receive the gift of grace bought by His death and resurrection, Jesus would have still come and suffered a horrible beating, a crown of thorns jammed into his head and died a death by one of the most horrendous forms of capital punishment ever invented, JUST FOR YOU. This was the most amazing act of love and forgiveness ever! I don’t know about you but I can tell you I have not done well at being, even sometimes, that forgiving. He then adds, ‘top this all with love’, by which He means, ‘Love as I have loved you.’ Talk about a tall order, right? Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us feeling awful for how terribly we have been at putting on ALL of these things. He proceeds to share with us things that will help us grow. He tells us that we need to let the Peace of God rule our hearts. How? He continues, by having His word dwell in us, teaching each other, be honest with each other when we mess up, help others when they mess up, and sing God’s praises together with thankfulness. Then comes His call for us to do everything in the Name of Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but I know I have times where I let my desires to do something (that is not a sin) make me forget to consider the challenge or consequences it might have for others. We live in a world that constantly tells us that our rights are the most important thing. This is one of the biggest idols of our time. I also know that forgiveness has not always come easy for me. Of course, the biggest one we as humans struggle with the most is hate. We are obsessed with categorizing people and ranking sins; which leads us invariably to hate for this category or group of people, often because they are (according to our measure) the worst of sinners. God HAS NEVER called us to judge the world, instead His call is to love, be patient, show kindness and compassion, be humble (remembering we were once just as much the enemy of God as the person we are judging/hating), and most of all love sacrificially, forgiving as He has forgiven and share the good news…leaving the judging, salvation and sanctification of ‘those’ people to God. Anything other path is a rejection of who God is.

So let us blow the world’s mind by loving them in the way only the children of God can with all the strength that God gives us. Show GRACE and let God CHANGE.