We seem to be convinced that the more time we spend, the better our services for the Lord will be. So, we rush around like a whirlwind blissfully unaware that we are victims of our own undisciplined and disorganized lives. Many of us, in fact, spend far too much time already in religious activity. We are always too busy and yet, actually accomplish very little (Verwer).
Tozer says, “Working for Christ has today been accepted as the ultimate test of godliness among all but a few evangelical Christians. Christ has become a project to be promoted or a cause to be served instead of a Lord to be obeyed... The result is an army of men who will run without being sent and speak without being commanded.”.
Our Lord’s motto for every disciple is ‘TO EACH HIS WORK’ (Mark 13:34), and so ample and complex is that work that it is called ministering service (Matt. 23:11), household service (Rom. 14:4), responsible service (John 18:36), worshipping service (Rom. 12:1), succoring service (Heb. 3:5), priestly service (Phil. 2:17), and as here, bond service. God calls a soul to work the moment He calls it to life.
OUR WORK
When our Lord has laid down His Divine task, He entrusted it, not to angels, not to kingdoms, nor to apostles only, but to you and me. It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, leaves his house and gives authority to His servants. Authority for what?-- “to each his work”. Millions of souls have to be saved and myriads to be sanctified. There are countless truths, popular and unpopular are to be sown throughout the world and whole continents must receive the light. Each of us is a designed cog or fly wheel in this mighty mechanism of God. Before our creation in Christ--it may have been in the eternal ages-God chose us for it: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).
OUR SHARE
Christ reveals an individual allotment. Not, to each some work, or to each a work, but, “to each his work”. This is exquisite revelation. Each can give a glory to God which is no other being in the universe can. Each can do a work for God which from eternity has been allotted to him or her alone. How this enables and dignifies the saved soul! God has allotted the toil of the whole church so as to rest in wise distribution upon each.
OUR TASK
The size of the task is not stated. It may be a great work, or a small work. The supreme point is that it is my work and as such, I can do it. I ought to do it, and at the judgment seat I will be asked to do it (Luke 19:15, 2 Cor. 5:10). Christ would have us do a small work which He commanded rather than a large work which He did not. For all planned work is necessary to building, and planned work only. A man’s character is what he is in the dark. A man’s work is what he does in the dark. If I do what God tells me and how He tells me, I am doing the most important thing possible to my soul and a soul’s utmost is always magnificent (Mark 14:8-9). We are weaving our own glory-robes (Rom. 19:8, 2 Cor. 5:3). “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each according as his work is (Rev. 22:12).
OUR VINEYARD
The work waits. (Matt 20:3).
(1) It is possible to find it. Our Lord would hold no soul responsible for a work unless with the work was granted the power to discover it. But He alone can tell us what it is. His foundations were laid in eternity. His plans for the superstructure were drawn up in eternity also. In eternity each task He allotted by name; “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6).
(2) It is possible to do it. Christ has not planned work outside our abilities or beyond our opportunities. He knows what He made us for and what we can do best and He has planned that we should do that. He made us in nature with a view to what we should become in grace. He chose our cradle and He will chose our grave. He chooses all the Christian work we are to do between.
(3) It is possible to know that we are doing it. How? God will open the way by circumstances. He will satisfy our conscience that it is right work. He will convince our judgment that it is the right work for us. He will confirm it by the approval of mature Christian friends and He will establish it with definite blessing. Then,
(4) having found it, we must persist in it until He tells us to stop or change it. One kind of firefly, in the tropics, glows only so long as it flies, the moment it rests, it darkens. Wesley’s motto was “All at it, and always at it” is the secret of the luminous life (Matt. 5:16).
OUR MASTER
“To each [Christ gave] his work”, therefore, I am doing it for Him. “Our conversation”, says Tertullian of the early Christian, “is that of men who are conscious that the Lord hears them”. When the world put its ear to our work, it should hear in it, like the ocean in the shell, all the great Eternity to which we hasten. “The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). How this transmutes the daily toil and the household drudgery into the golden labor of a better world! For years before he died, Mr. Moody said, “my prayer has been that God will let me die when the spirit of revival dies out of my heart”.
OUR INCREASE
Are we shirking our allotted task? The shirking of the man who prays and the praying of the man who shirks is equally an abomination to God. So soon we shall have to lay all work down. “We must work the works of Him that sent us, while it is day. The night cometh, when no man can work.” (John 9:4). Task every faculty, strain every power, break new ground, put no limit to your toil save that which God put when He made you. Let it be said of each of us, “I know that thy last works are more than the first” (Rev. 2:19). Let us fling open every compartment of our being to the indraught of God. Let us fling ourselves into the mid-current of His all gracious, all-glorious purposes. “He that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS, and I will give him the morning star (Rev. 2:36).
