THE BUSINESS OF CHRIST

Haggai 1:1-2:23; Revelation 11:1-19; Psalm 139:1-24; Proverbs 30:15-16

“’Be strong, all you people still left in the land. And now get to work, for I am with you,’ says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. ‘My Spirit remains among you, just as I promised when you came out of Egypt. So do not be afraid.’”

“Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting in heaven: ‘The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.’ The twenty-four elders sitting on their thrones before God fell with their faces to the ground and worshiped him. And they said, ‘We give thanks to you, Lord God, the Almighty, the one who is and who always was, for now you have assumed your great power and have begun to reign.”

“O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! I can never escape from your Spirit!
 I can never get away from your presence!
 If I go up to heaven, you are there;
 if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.”

“The leech has two suckers that cry out, ‘More, more!’ There are three things that are never satisfied—no, four that never say, ‘Enough!’: the grave, the barren womb, the thirsty desert, the blazing fire.”

Alleluia! The Lord reigns!

“The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.”

“My Spirit remains among you, …. So do not be afraid.”

“You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!”

It is easy (sometimes, even tempting) to forget Jesus actually is in control and knows and lives with us. That’s His business. However, we have made such a mess of things, and there are so many dangers and disasters in the world, we tend to fall back on the idea of every man for himself. Of course, the Lord’s sovereignty in no way negates this exercise of our free will; it was the Creator Himself who gave us our ability to disobey Him. We can try to get by without His wisdom and power. We should remember, though, that when we first attempted it in Eden and bollixed things up so badly, we opened a Pandora’s Box that has stayed stubbornly open ever since. You’d think we’d learn, but we don’t. Among other things, our willful independence has caused us to lose our focus on the saving graces of the Spirit. Generally speaking, we end up working too hard at life as a result. We get frustrated when life does not conform itself to our desires, instead of remembering that the Almighty has given us the capacity and creativity to roll with the punches and adapt ourselves to life.

Jesus Christ died to give us a reason for eternal optimism, and to free us to work for Him. When we forget or reject that, it leaves us with a pit in the middle of our stomach, searching for something to fill the void besides the hunk of anxiety that is already there. So we tend toward one of two extremes: isolation; or overwork. The former is obviously a dead end. We were created for fellowship, and when we deny ourselves that opportunity, we not only deprive ourselves, but also others, of the blessings of shared ministry. Loneliness is a disease we do well to eliminate from our lives completely, as it tends to feed on itself, and us.

Overwork, on the other hand, is a much more accepted and socially acceptable strategy for dealing with spiritual emptiness. I’m not suggesting for a second a strict adherence to the old “let go and let God” cliché. That is far too passive an approach to the real adventure that is a life of faith. If we are not actively putting ourselves at risk for Christ, we really aren’t giving Him much to work with. Nevertheless, before we work ourselves into a tizzy, it is equally important to establish a fundamental base of operations. No team of explorers climbs a mountain without first building a base camp to return to, a rallying point if things get rough. Spiritually, we are foolish to rush into busyness without first taking time to establish and remind ourselves of our deep and abiding faith in Christ. It will at least give us a lot more hope in the long run.

More important, though, if we are ever going to be truly, transcendently victorious, we must first have a relationship with the Holy Spirit that inspires, if not compels, us to engage first in His business, to act in the best interests of the Kingdom. This may mean sacrificing ourselves. When we reverse the order, however, and rush to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of misguided action without first assuring ourselves of the Spirit’s guidance, even when motivated by some well-meaning sense of responsibility or charity, all we usually end up doing is using up ourselves. Worse, in an eternal sense, our sacrifice is wasted because it is not properly directed; it does not lead anyone any further than to admiration of our own human effort and courage. As admirable as that may be, when the focus stays on us, we offer nothing to the Lord.

This is the danger of acting without a base camp in Christ. We lose sight of the Creator and His purposes in our very zeal. As I was writing this, I initially mistyped the word “busyness” in the bold sentence above as “business.” Now, I am not so sure that was a mistake. I am sure the sentence works either way. We have a lot of business to attend to, and we take a lot of self-image from our jobs. Nevertheless, we are also foolish to rush into any business without first taking time to be certain that it is, in fact, the Lord’s business we are about.