Nancy Taylor Tate
Did you ever hear the expression, “When it rains, it pours”? Sometimes it seems like that, as urgent matters press in on us from all directions. Yet even in those moments, as we pause and look to the Lord, we can receive grace and wisdom for the tasks at hand.
The parable in Matthew 25:14–30 tells of two servants being rewarded. Though what they had been entrusted with varied, each had been faithful to invest what they had. Therefore, they both were found faithful. The Lord was displeased only with a third servant who had done nothing with his allotment.
What pleases the heart of God is not so much the task we do, but that we do it faithfully as unto the Lord. I love this story about Martin Luther: As he was working in his garden, someone came by and asked, “If the Lord was returning tomorrow, what would you do today?” He answered, “Hoe my garden.”
As newborn babes in Christ, we have been predestined to be conformed into the image and likeness of Christ (1 Peter 2:2; Romans 8:29). As we learn to fulfill our responsibilities in a way that pleases Him, there is an inward working of the Lord that takes place as we die to self and choose to do what is right, the best we can, as unto the Lord.
As we make room for quiet moments with the Lord, we find the strength to make the right choices. As we make those right choices, we are changed till it becomes not just my choice, but my nature, to do that which is right, faithfully, the very best I can, as unto the Lord.
In the midst of the many pulls of life, may we remember to look up and receive God’s grace and strength! The testimony of “Praying Hyde” became very real to me a number of years ago; he said that after the Lord caused him to understand 2 Timothy 1:8 and what it meant to live “according to the power of God,” he seldom was tired, though at times he had little sleep.
Oh, to learn to live according to the power of God! To allow that power to work inside us, giving us strength! God gives His enabling grace for all those things He has called us to do. When I lack that grace, I look at what I’m doing to see if I have allowed more to be pushed onto my plate than what God desires.
In Him we live and move and have our being! (Acts 17:28) May we find His strength today, and each and every day, as the Lord works deep within our hearts, enabling us to become partakers of His divine nature, that Christ might be seen in and through our lives (2 Peter 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 1:10).
May we, too, hear these words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”