For
God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how
you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers, as you still do. Our great desire
is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make
certain that what you hope for will come true.
Then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you
will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God's promises
because of their faith and endurance. -- Hebrews 6: 10-12 (NLT)
This walk is a long tough slog sometimes -- let's be honest. We live in a thankless world that conditions us to demand to see the results of our work immediately. It conditions us to demand appreciation for our sacrifices. It conditions us to become despondent in despair if we feel our own needs as being unmet somehow. Of course we are not to live and think this way anymore but God understands that we are inescapably human and our flesh will often times get the better of us. I had one of those weeks last week. You know the type I speak of if you truly labor in the Lord. I do not mean that you work for a church. I do not mean that you organize a ministry. Both of those should be noble undertakings as well but I mean labor in the Lord. I mean that you are burdened with the things of God. Maybe you wake up and you are burdened that there are so many people who are unsaved and heading toward an eternity in hell. Maybe you go through the day trying to remind people in church of the importance of doctrine and belief because it pains you to see so many crawling into heaven. Perhaps you spend your evenings watching for false teachings so you can warn people or spend the night interceding for the body of Christ.
So I woke up today and needed a Word and God led me to the above key verses. To be honest, I do not recall these verses before and that is part of the beauty of God's Word. You can read and re-read. You can write devotionals every day for five years and still God will show you something new every time. There is so much meat in these verses for those who may feel the nagging urge from the enemy to feel discouraged in our labor of love. It all starts with a simple statement we need to always remember -- God is not unjust! Hallelujah! In a world that is unjust at nearly every turn we do not serve an unjust God. It matters not what area we are discussing; God is just. I write a lot about the false teachings and false prophets. God's justice is promised:
"What sorrow awaits
the leaders of my people--the shepherds of my sheep--for they have destroyed and
scattered the very ones they were expected to care for," says the Lord . Therefore, this is what the Lord , the God of
It is important that when discouragement starts to set in that we remember who we serve. We serve a God who is just in everything He does. The Bible says we will all have to give account for every idle word we have spoken.
Next in the key verses we see that God is promising us that He will not forget how hard we have worked for Him! We live in a world where people quickly forget what has been done for them. A world that suffers from attention deficit disorder when it comes to the things they should appreciate. It is most definitely a "what have you done for me lately" world in which we live. Not surprisingly, God is the opposite of the worldly system. This should give us encouragement to plod on through the tough times. We have no need to rest on our laurels. We have no need to dwell upon our successes. God will remember them. Remember who we serve:
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who
live on earth-- he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. --
psalm 33: 13-15 (NIV)
He sees all. He watches all. He considers everything that we do. Our God is not a part time God. He is not an absentee landlord. He is intimately involved and concerned about everything that we do. He will not forget how hard you work for Him.
