Good Morning,
Last night I spent two hours on a message for today and then I
must have pressed the wrong key and all of my work disappeared into the
abyss of computer-land. I started to just skip this day, but the major
part of what God was ministering to me had to do with diligence. Wow!
Well, here is where we all can pick up our pace and put more wood on the
fire,right? In order to have effective changes in our lives, we have
to make a shift by renewing or changing our minds, then the rest of the
man follows. Yet, if we make a shift and then don't continue to work
at it, we will stop. Listen to this Word. "For God
is not unrighteous to forget or overlook your labor and the love
which you have shown for His name's sake in ministering to the needs of
the saints (His own consecrated people), as you still do. But we do [strongly and earnestly] desire for each of
you to show the same
diligence and sincerity [all the way through] in realizing and
enjoying the full assurance and development of [your] hope until the
end, In order that you may not grow disinterested
and become [spiritual] sluggards, but imitators, behaving as do
those who through faith (by their leaning of the entire personality on
God in Christ in absolute
trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) and by
practice of patient endurance and waiting are [now] inheriting the
promises." Now in order to grow more
interested in what God is doing through you, you must be diligent and
labor toward the goal. Labor means toil;
toil means to work hard; it is expenditure of physical or mental effort.
Christians, work is not a taboo word in
our faith. We have to apply pressure within ourselves
to shift for
change. Diligence means to dispatch
eagerness, earnestness, forwardness, and haste; persevering application;
devoted and painstaking application to accomplish an undertaking. When we apply diligence to the labor God's grace will
be upon us. He will enable you with His ability over and upon your
inability. In other words, we can do what we could not do, with God's
grace to accomplish it.
Listen to the benefits that those who are diligent will have
and at the same time what will happen to spiritual sluggards or those
who are slack. "He becomes poor who works with a
slack and idle hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. The
hand of the diligent will rule, but the slothful will be forced
to labor. The slothful man does not catch his game or roast it once he
kills it, but the diligent man gets precious possessions. The
thoughts of the [steadily] diligent tend only to plenteousness,
but everyone who is impatient and hasty hastens only to want." (Prov. 12:24 & 27; Prov.
21:5) Slothful, slack and sluggish is to be lazy,
idle; it is apathy and inactivity; slowness and tardiness; disinclined to
activity or exertion; lacking in vigor; and slow to respond. We
can not afford to become disinterested in the calling of God on our
lives as well as in our daily living. We must stay spiritually, mentally
and physically fit in order to be the most effective in our walk with
God. As Christians we must be diligent in our labors and in our
relationship with God and to His people, and to whatever God has caused
our hands to be put to. God will not forget or overlook it! Now the
choice is ours, we get to choose whether we will be sluggards or the
diligent ones. Come on let's imitate the Father in our lives!
"Determined"
Love,
Pastor D.
Daughters of Z 