A youth ministry initiative by RBC Ministries
where you can find devotionals and resources for youth.
A youth ministry initiative by RBC Ministries
where you can find devotionals and resources for youth.
June 22, 2009
Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted (v.1).
READ: Psalm 127:1-2
I’m not into Christian T-shirts, but I recently saw one I’d like to own. Walking downtown in our city, I passed an elderly man with this caption across his chest:
Step back and let Jesus do what He do.
Bad grammar aside, that’s a pretty good thought. All the evil and sadness and poverty and darkness in our world ought to compel us to haul ourselves off our comfy couches and do something about it. As one writer put it, “Jesus rose from the dead; and we’ve got work to do.”
However, the psalmist, along with the steady theme of the whole of Scripture, cautions us against ever thinking that we are the central cause or effect in any of our efforts. God’s engagement with the world is not swinging on a thin thread, barely hanging on in anxious hope for us humans to show up.
All our exertion and skill and expertise fall fallow without God’s intervention. “Unless the Lord protects a city,” the psalmist writes, “guarding it with sentries will do no good” (127:1). In fact, “it is useless for [us] to work so hard from early morning until late at night” (v.2) because frantic activity ignores the truth that we are dependent on God’s kindness and mercy.
Oblivious to this truth, we toil and worry and sweat. We plan and manipulate and fret. We seldom rest. We rarely pray. And as a result, we find ourselves in the foolish place of living as though we are God.
This is no argument for a flaccid life, for living drowsy or inert. Rather, this is a call to be engaged with God’s redemptive work in the world—remembering always that it is His work in the world.
Tyler Wigg Stevenson put it well: “The world is not mine to save, but I can serve the mission of the God who has already done so.” —Winn Collier
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Filed under Devotional, Our Daily Journey and tagged with Christian Living, daily devotional, Faith, Giving, God's Sovereignty, injustice, obedience, oppressed people, serving others, sharing Christ, the poor.
are you consoling yourself or covering your guilt?
Hi Passerby,
The amazing truth is that God’s power and work does both. It consoles us not in the manner of an empty promise or a deluded sense of positive thinking. But God is really working in and around us—this is a fact which if anyone would put their faith in it would most certainly experience its realness.
And as we uncover our guilt before God, God works to “cover” our guilt. For we read in 1 John1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Amazing, isn’t it?