When was the last time you did “good work”? Was it in grade school where you also got the 😃 after the words, “good work”? Has it been a while since you last did anything deemed good work? Perhaps the work that you do is routine; neither bad nor good. We have to ask ourselves why haven’t we been doing “good work”?

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. (Titus 1:15-16 ESV)

Titus is a first century pastor on the Island of Crete. He was there leading the group of churches that were forming as a result of Paul’s mission on the island. They were both under the impression that “all Cretans were liars…” a statement made famous by Epimenides, a philosopher from 600BC that created this logical paradox because Epimenides was also a Cretan and therefore, by his statement, a liar. Now if this statement is true, then the statement he makes false, which boils down to the simple fact that people are simply unreliable. The gossip was that the people of Crete were like people in America in the 21st century: unreliable. This is the paradox Paul wants Christians not to embody. If we know God because we are saved by Jesus Christ, then we need to do work worthy of our salvation. We should not be unreliable because that is not for the saved, but for the liars. Our salvation is truth, we need to embody the truth of God in everything we do.

Do all people matter to you? Better question, do any people matter to you? Of course some people matter to you, but we don’t often live like they matter. If they did matter, wouldn’t we pray more for them? Then why don’t we pray for them on a regular basis?

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people….” (1 Timothy 2:1 ESV)

Here’s a difficult statement to swallow: all people matter enough to be prayed for. The Bible is talking genuine, get into a quiet place, type of prayer.

This is the genuine type of prayer that reveals whether or not you are filled with love for God’s people. Paul, who wrote this, believes that Christ followers should be praying for all people genuinely, when they don’t have to, when they have other things to do, when it is a lot easier praying for other things and for yourself.

This passage continues to say that we should pay particular concern in our prayers for those who seem unworthy of our prayers, they too, warrant our attention and genuine prayers.

All of that being said, we need to pray that the love and grace of Jesus Christ fill all people. All people need the love of God and we need to pray they choose to accept that love. We need to pray that their lives be filled with that love.

We need to pray that they embody that love. We need to pray with that love.

Your greatest work of faith for me and you is to genuinely pray for all people– the people you interact with; the people you pass by on the street; the people whose views you disagree with; ALL people in and around your life and then some.

Let’s walk with Jesus with an posture of prayer, ready to pray for everyone.

Sometimes I just say things that gets me into trouble. When I think about what I said and why I said them, I have no rational reason for saying those things except that I’m an idiot and that wasted time by saying it. Has this ever happened to you?

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. (Colossians 4:5-6 ESV)

The Apostle Paul has two words of advice for us regarding what we say and when we say it. First, make best use of your time. Second, be gracious and respond accordingly.

These two nuggets of advice are not overtly profound, nor are they unique. We have heard these things before, but have we ever connected the two ideas together so we would understand that if the point of conversation is to bring the best out of an individual, then we must make the best of the time that we have with them? The truth of the matter is: our words matter and how we say them matters and when we say them matters.

Every conversation should be held with the intention to bring out the best in the person you are conversing with. The reason being that it is an opportunity for somebody who may not have a relationship with Jesus may have an opportunity to get to know him and therefore be changed by it. You have heard stories about how people’s conversations with them changed their lives; well it’s time to start changing people’s lives by speaking with them as the last opportunity to bring out a better version of them.

We are given the circles of influence and the opportunity for conversation for the purposes of God. Let us treat each opportunity as such and speak graciously and intelligently to people.

You know people who are busy by themselves? Like there are more fires to put out that you started than there is time in the world and things to do. Maybe that’s you. You aren’t busy taking care of things, you are busy doing things.

Call it procrastinating, or poor planning, or bad time management, it doesn’t matter what you call it, simply put it is distracted and it makes you a busybody.

Nothing is accomplished except you are doing things. At least if you are legitimately busy taking care of things the list of things goes down. But when you are a busybody, you are just chasing your own tail in a circle.

For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. (2 Thessalonians 3:11 ESV)

The Apostle Paul compares busybodies to idle people or lazy people. You are a busybody and meddler if you got so much going on in your life that it starts to ooze into the lives of the people around you.

There is a difference between busy people who have things to take care of and busybodies that cause things to be dealt with. When we are busy we can stay focused on what matters most and manage the tasks in our lives.

However, when we are lazy and lose sight of the work we are called to do, we begin meddling where we don’t belong and as such we miss out on doing what we know is best because we are dealing with the circumstances that we meddled in.

We want to be busy with work in our lives. It keeps us grounded in faith, able to see why God is working and how God is working.

When we deviate from busy doing work by doing busywork, we miss out on God’s power in our lives. Let’s not be busybodies.

Do you believe in destiny? I do. I’m not talking about the type of destiny that foretells of your wearing a purple shirt. I am talking about a destiny or purpose in life that keeps us moving toward somewhere we are not. Destiny is the culmination of choices we make in every single circumstance to purposefully get somewhere.

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 ESV)

The Apostle Paul believed in destiny. He knew that people who are following Christ as their Savior would make decisions in the circumstances of their lives reflecting their mindset of salvation. Therefore, their destiny is to living with Jesus by making decisions to be with Christ. His argument is simple: God destined us to live with Him be choosing to allow his perfect and only son to die for our lives. Destiny is a set of choices in our circumstances reflecting what we believe and where we want to be. Not only am I saying that we control our own destiny, I am saying God chooses a destination for us, and we need to choose that destination to be with Him. God destined all of us for life, but not all of us will choose it and that is the sad part. We are better than the wrath inflicted in our lives, why should we choose it? God knows that and destines his son to give us life, we should receive it and live toward new life by choosing Jesus.

Have you ever wondered if you really are saved by God’s grace for a purpose? I have. Sometimes it’s just difficult to experience God in our lives so we begin to wonder whether or not the first experience you had with God is even real. …because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. (1 Thessalonians 1:5 ESV) The Apostle Paul tells the church in Thessalonica that purpose of salvation is evidenced by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was not good enough for the Apostle Paul to just talk about how Jesus saves, but in his life he could point to how Jesus was saving him and the reason for that salvation were the people witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting in their lives through the name of Jesus. As a result there was no denying their own salvation because they witnessed and tasted the power of Jesus unfold in their lives. Some of us are lacking in belief about our “chosenness” because we fail to witness the power of the Holy Spirit manifest in our lives, but I bet if we would look past our noses we would see the power of the Holy Spirit unfold in the lives of the people around us. That the power of God flows into their lives thus giving them purpose in salvation because God is using us as instruments to conduct His business. What we need to appreciate and thank God for is that our lives and our actions are the instruments of God’s provision and the power of the Holy Spirit. I mean just ask yourself why or how you had the courage or insight to do the good that you do to people around you. The good news of Jesus is that God loved us so much that He sacrificed His One and Only Son to save our lives, that in turn we would be able to love people undeserving like us to receive that love in their lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why we were chosen by grace.

The golden rule is good, it dictates a reciprocity in the way an individual goes about his or her business. God’s law, goes beyond the golden rule in that it tells individuals they must do better than they should expect to receive in return, even to the point of death because in doing so God can be glorified through it; and thus can be considered God’s Royal Law. It is what moved Jesus to die horrifically on the cross for undeserved people like you and me.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. (James 4:11 ESV)

James, the half-brother of Jesus, and devout  follower of Christ, tells us that we must go beyond ordinary relationships with people. It is easy to rule out other people based on what they did or how they acted. It is very easy to see yourself as better than them.

In fact, what James is saying is that anybody can discount other people based on some criteria of deserving or another. Let me give you some examples of what this looks like: Tattoos, some people are outcast and judged horribly because of their tattooes; fashion, or lack thereof– people dressed in ripped jeans or some other clothing not cool in the moment.

The law given to the people of Israel through Moses or any other religious tradition or rule we have derived our judgments from makes it easy for any of us to open the Bible into the old testament and discount people based on whatever random criterion we find.

But if we do that, then what causes us not to be discounted in the same way?

Moreover, doesn’t that make God look stupid for saying He is love except when people do x, y, and z? Of course it does. Yet, this is how we do.

We forget that rules and laws were written for the purpose of fulfilling the Royal Law (to love God with all your heart, mind and soul; and to love your neighbor as yourself).

Discounting other people based on some misaligned criteria as you randomly choose and pick like a flavor of ice cream discount the purpose of God giving us law– to create a society to love Him and other people like He does.

As people redeemed by Jesus, the Son of God, we must not discount the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice for us. It was so that we can live under the Royal Law by loving people who don’t deserve it or warrant a second glance from anybody. We love like this because the King of the universe loves us in this way.

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25 ESV)

Judges 19-21 are probably the of the most disturbing passages in the Bible. It starts with a man getting partying with his father-in-law for a week straight. Then as the man leaves and is headed back home with his wife, he is shunned from a town and the men of that town try to rape him. However, instead of being raped himself, his wife is raped all night long by the people of that town. She becomes unresponsive and dies in the morning. Her husband then cuts her up and sends twelve pieces of her body through the entire country as a symbolic gesture of the wrong that his wife endured. Then there is a war with the city that committed the atrocity. Soon thereafter a genocide of the people. Finally, there is oatha being made and stealing of daughters and so forth to make right what went wrong by doing wrong.

Read it in detail if you are interested in a crazy story, but take this away with you: that is the story of our lives if there is no King over us. We get drunk, get raped, kill, and do more evil than intended because we all believe that we deserve ours and ours first because we believe we matter more. You can take any perspective in the story but everybody is a villain except the victim, who is dead. When we have a king in our lives, and his name is Jesus, we cease to subject ourselves to this type of asinine self righteousness that acts on what we subjectively believe is right. Rather we defer to what our King believes is right.

We need a king to govern our lives. We need a king to save us from killing ourselves, and dishonoring our members. We need a king to lead us safely through. This King is Jesus who even rescues us so we don’t die at dawn. Jesus rescues us from correcting our wrongs with more wrong. Jesus loves us without regret and remorse because he is the great King whose perspective is eternal, unchanging, and righteous.

What if we all picked a day to do something that is uncharacteristically us, like stopping to help somebody when we are crazy busy, or going out of our way to be polite, or even protecting somebody from a verbal outlash? What if that day is today and every day going forward? What would happen to the people around us?

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (2 Corinthians 5:13-15 ESV)

I want us to meditate on this idea that Paul writes about: try living your life for more than yourselves, and for a greater purpose than whatever this world offers. Be controlled by love, go out of your way, not selfishly or out of guilt, but because Jesus did something crazier so that he could teach you and me. I know there are plenty of things I need to change about my own day to day lifestyle if I want to live this way, I pray that we can change our lives in faith, so that we can live with the God who is raises from the grave.

If everyday is the same and that sameness makes you feel like you are wasting away, then you may say, “what a day?!”

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16 ESV)

The Apostle Paul writes in his affliction. He is suffering, the people at his church are suffering, and in this suffering there is no end in sight and no relief too soon. Everyday they wake up in constant pain or impending pain. The Apostle himself knows all too well that the scars and bruises tattooed on his body testify to a hopelessness bound in suffering. Yet he says, “do not lose heart.” He says, “do not lose heart” because he knows that the suffering and the hurt pale in comparison to what Jesus is manifesting through the weight of pain being suffered. The question is: when will see it all be worth it? The answer to that is: we don’t ever see it, but we hope to see it one day. What good is that when you are suffering beyond belief now? The good is that we keep going because relief is not here yet. So we move on, forward and onward. We strive to continue because there is hope that the Spirit of God in us will push forward to manifesting the glory of God through us. We are renewed everyday to continue our walk, and our talk so God can keep using us in the midst of hopelessness around us. So don’t lose heart.