In His Word, God commands us to serve one another. However, there will inevitably be difficult people in life, who make this mandate challenging.

Thankfully, a biblical definition of service can help us obey the Lord’s instruction, no matter who the recipient may be. And the reason is that God is actually the One whom we serve.

When we have this motivation underlying everything we do, it will impact the quality of our work and keep us from becoming discouraged. Then, whatever our task–whether we lead a country, teach children, or do something that seems unattractive–if our goal is to glorify God, we will do our best in His strength. And we trust Him to use us for His purposes, even if our labor should appear fruitless to us or to others.

When I was a child, I had to wake up before daylight to deliver newspapers. Even in rain or snow, I still had to complete the job. This was hard for me to do. Then the Lord impressed upon my heart that I was not merely bringing papers to people in my town; I was serving Jesus. As I understood this truth more, waking up and working was purposeful and doable. Truthfully, I still did not always feel like facing the work, but feelings were no longer relevant. I was serving my Maker.

Whomever God calls us to serve, and whatever He tells us to do, we can obey with joyful hearts when it’s done for Jesus. If this is our motivation, we won’t need worldly approval or evidence of impact. We need to know only that God is pleased and promises to reward those who serve Him (Heb. 11:6).

For the past week, I have been having the same conversation each morning with a spider on my front porch. Like a parent to a teenager with a messy room, my reiterated words don’t seem to be making much of a difference. But I’m not asking my eight-legged friend to clean her room; I’m asking her to move it. 

 Every morning on my way to the car I walk through a nearly invisible strand of her web. The problem (besides having to brush the spider web off of myself) is that it is a vital piece of her web. It is the strand of webbing that serves as an anchor for her well-crafted house. On the days that I remember to look for it, I manage to duck under it before hurrying through the walkway. But though this solves my sticky situation, it does not solve hers. For if I haven’t caused her residence to collapse by walking through it, I have demolished her dwelling by driving away with its support beam. She has anchored her brilliant masterwork to the car am I about to remove from the driveway. 

I have tried to be patient. I feel really bad as I drive away knowing that I have entirely destroyed her night’s work before I have even taken a sip of my morning coffee. I have reminded her that anchoring her web to an object that moves is futile (and no doubt incredibly frustrating to the architect). Yet so it goes each day. I drive away, and she finds herself needing to rebuild once again. 

When Jesus spoke of well-built houses, it is interesting that he made it a point to point out the obvious. Build a house on shifting sands and it, too, will shift until it is completely destroyed. The illustration is as clear as it is true; a house is only as good as its foundation. 

You would think that the poor, persistent spider on my front porch would have learned her lesson by now. But in fact she has only slightly altered her house plans each time—attaching her web to the mirror on my car or the windshield wiper instead of the driver’s door. I can only hope one day she will learn. But then, Jesus’s obvious words confront me, and I find myself wondering:  Have I learned? 

 When I build my life around pursuits that suddenly shift, do I pick up and redraw the plans, taking into account all that shifted? Or do I simply pick myself up, cut my losses, and start once again? When my longing for a beautiful house gives me a mortgage I can’t afford, when my hope for the next best thing is ever being replaced by the next best thing, when I have built my life upon the satisfaction of a successful career or great kids or a solid marriage and suddenly life shifts with blow of uncertainty, what have I learned? 

It is a lesson easier illustrated than understood. For more often it seems I am like the spider, intent on making my dream house work, willing to alter my plans only slightly, concerning myself with the busywork of building. It is easy to be so determined in the life we are constructing that a shifting foundation is viewed merely as a temporary set back, when in fact we are building our lives upon that which is temporary—health, careers, cars in the driveway.        

 Thankfully, the God described by Christianity is not only more patient than I have been with my spider, but also more compelling than I have been in encouraging those God longs to see in the security of a well-built home. With long-suffering love for us, God picks us up when our dream houses have crumbled and shows us that we were meant to dream of unshakable fortresses. Christ stands at ground zero and gives us the grace and the strength to rebuild. 

 We are building well, he says, when we hear his words and put them into practice. For to build on the enduring words of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit is to build lives that model their Creator, trusting that God is the holder of the best plans for the house. God’s words are like God’s character, lighting our way, standing forever, moving us to that place of refuge. The Father “does not change like the shifting shadows,” writes James. He is, as David praised, and Hannah prayed, and saints continue to discover somewhere in the process of rebuilding, the Rock of Ages. 

 Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Morning  “Art thou become like unto us?”  Isaiah 14:10

 What must be the apostate professor’s doom when his naked soul appears before

God? How will he bear that voice, “Depart, ye cursed; thou hast rejected me, and

I reject thee; thou hast played the harlot, and departed from me: I also have

banished thee forever from my presence, and will not have mercy upon thee.” What

will be this wretch’s shame at the last great day when, before assembled

multitudes, the apostate shall be unmasked? See the profane, and sinners who

never professed religion, lifting themselves up from their beds of fire to point

at him. “There he is,” says one, “will he preach the gospel in hell?” “There he

is,” says another, “he rebuked me for cursing, and was a hypocrite

 himself!” “Aha!” says another, “here comes a psalm-singing Methodist–one who

was always at his meeting; he is the man who boasted of his being sure of

everlasting life; and here he is!” No greater eagerness will ever be seen among

Satanic tormentors, than in that day when devils drag the hypocrite’s soul down

to perdition. Bunyan pictures this with massive but awful grandeur of poetry

when he speaks of the back-way to hell. Seven devils bound the wretch with nine

cords, and dragged him from the road to heaven, in which he had professed to

walk, and thrust him through the back-door into hell. Mind that back-way to

hell, professors! “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith.” Look

 well to your state; see whether you be in Christ or not. It is the easiest

thing in the world to give a lenient verdict when oneself is to be tried; but O,

be just and true here. Be just to all, but be rigorous to yourself. Remember if

it be not a rock on which you build, when the house shall fall, great will be

the fall of it. O may the Lord give you sincerity, constancy, and firmness; and

in no day, however evil, may you be led to turn aside.

 

Evening   “Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”   2 Peter 1:4

 Vanish forever all thought of indulging the flesh if you would live in the power

of your risen Lord. It were ill that a man who is alive in Christ should dwell

in the corruption of sin. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” said the

angel to Magdalene. Should the living dwell in the sepulchre? Should divine life

be immured in the charnel house of fleshly lust? How can we partake of the cup

of the Lord and yet drink the cup of Belial? Surely, believer, from open lusts

and sins you are delivered: have you also escaped from the more secret and

delusive lime-twigs of the Satanic fowler? Have you come forth from the lust of

pride? Have you escaped from slothfulness? Have you clean escaped

 from carnal security? Are you seeking day by day to live above worldliness, the

pride of life, and the ensnaring vice of avarice? Remember, it is for this that

you have been enriched with the treasures of God. If you be indeed the chosen of

God, and beloved by him, do not suffer all the lavish treasure of grace to be

wasted upon you. Follow after holiness; it is the Christian’s crown and glory.

An unholy church! it is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is

an abomination, hell’s laughter, heaven’s abhorrence. The worst evils which have

ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. O

Christian, the vows of God are upon you. You are God’s priest:

 act as such. You are God’s king: reign over your lusts. You are God’s chosen:

do not associate with Belial. Heaven is your portion: live like a heavenly

spirit, so shall you prove that you have true faith in Jesus, for there cannot

be faith in the heart unless there be holiness in the life.

  “Lord, I desire to live as one

 Who bears a blood-bought name,

 As one who fears but grieving thee,

 And knows no other shame.”

 

But the dove found no place to set her foot.   Genesis 8:9 

 Reader, can you find rest apart from the ark, Christ Jesus? Then consider that your religion may be in vain. Are you satisfied with anything short of a conscious knowledge of your union and interest in Christ? Then woe to you. If you profess to be a Christian while finding full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, your profession is probably false. If your soul can stretch herself at rest and find the bed long enough and the blanket broad enough to cover it in the chambers of sin, then you are a hypocrite and far away from any proper thoughts of Christ or awareness of His preciousness.

But if, on the other hand, you feel that if you could indulge in sin without punishment, that would be a punishment itself, and that if you could have the whole world and live in it forever, it would be quite enough misery not to be separated from it, for your God—your God—is what your soul longs for, then be of good courage, you are a child of God. With all your sins and imperfections, take this for your comfort: If your soul has no rest in sin, you are not as the sinner is! If you are still crying after and craving after something better, Christ has not forgotten you, for you have not quite forgotten Him.

The believer cannot do without his Lord; words are inadequate to express his thoughts of Him. We cannot live on the sands of the wilderness—we want the manna that drops from heaven; the pitchers of self-confidence cannot produce for us a drop of moisture, but we drink of the rock that follows us, and that rock is Christ. When you feed on Him, your soul can sing, “He who satisfies me with good so that my youth is renewed like the eagle’s”;1 but if you don’t have Him, your wine cellar and well-stocked pantry can give you no sort of satisfaction: Learn to lament over them in the words of wisdom, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

1Psalm 103:5

Family Reading Plan     Isaiah 57   Matthew 5