To Encourage You

Colossians 1:29 “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

Have you ever heard the term “Let go and let God?”  I’m not sure who coined that phrase, or what he or she originally meant by it, but one thing it can’t mean is that we foist everything on God and thus we do nothing in this life.  We aren’t to have  an attitude of “Don’t worry about it. God will take care of it.”  So, if that’s what the phrase was originally meant to convey, we should reject it out of hand.  True, the Christian is never to worry about anything for God has promised that He will meet our every need. However, nowhere does the Bible give any indication that we are therefore just to set back and do nothing. The Bible nowhere promises to bless spiritual – or physical – laziness.  In fact, the Bible condemns slothfulness from cover to cover. That includes slothfulness in ministry. In the verse above,

Paul talks about how God’s energy is powerfully working in him. Yet, at the same time, he talks about his own very personal and real toiling and struggling.  In other words, although Paul acknowledges that any energy that he had and any powerful work of God that he was involved in had indeed come from God, he also acknowledged that this process involved Paul giving everything he had to that work.  Paul worked hard at ministry. He traveled huge distances by land and sea. He toiled in prayer for long periods of time. He preached constantly, and in that preaching he labored hour after hour to understand God’s Word and God’s will. He studied the Scriptures. He prayed over them. He taught with earnestness. He “labored night and day” (1 Thessalonians 2:9).  In many of his writings Paul talks about striving, and suffering, and enduring, all for the sake of the gospel.

So, what does this mean for you and me. Well, for one thing, we should not expect the Christian life to be an easy life.  The Bible warns us that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).  That conflict may come in the form of personal attacks from other people who are opposed to Christ, or it may come in other troubles in life whose source is the dark spiritual forces of the enemy of our soul. You see, “we wrestle . . . against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).  And wrestling is hard.  It involves struggle, sweat, and great expenditures of energy.  God would have us to understand that He expects us to struggle, sweat, and expend energy in everything we do for His glory. He expects us to work and work very hard in our service to Him.  We are told that “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:8-11).  In other words, in everything we do in our service to Christ, we are to do it with great seriousness and great effort.  Elsewhere we are told that “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10), and “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24). 

It is through obedience to these commands that God’s power works through us.  We should never teach a Sunday School class for which we’ve not thoroughly prepared through the hard work of prayer and diligent study.  We should never serve another person with half-heartedness, cutting corners, or “just getting it over with” so we can say that we’ve done something out of some sense of obligation.  No matter what we do, we are to do it with everything we have, for God has clearly told us that that is exactly what He expects of us.  Yet wonderfully, it is as we do this, as we use the abilities and resources that God alone has given to us, that He works powerfully in and through us to bring glory to Himself.  And isn’t that exactly what you want if we know Him?  

May God help us to serve the Lord with diligence, “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works” in us.  He gave His all for us. How very much He deserves our all in grateful response.