A CALL TO INITIATIVE

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare.

Proverbs 20:13            

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As I look at my life and the man I have become, I always have to go back and thank my parents for instilling so much in me. For although we become the people we choose to be and we are often not exact replications of those who raised us, we are often most like those we grew up with, those entrusted by God to mold and shape us into being the people He wants us to be.

Yes, I owe my parents a deep debt of gratitude for all that they did for me but for the purpose of this devotion, I want to focus on the spirit of hard work and initiative I learned from watching Dad and Mom during those formative years.

My parents each worked very hard to provide for myself and my four siblings.

Dad was truck parts salesperson in my early years of life but then caught a break when a plastic bottle cap factory opened up in the town where he had married my mother, the town where his parents (my grandparents) lived. Dad would receive special training and then work until retirement as a mold machinist, repairing the molds used to create the bottle caps we screw on and off of things.  

Mom was a LPN and worked with the elderly at a local nursing home for thirty years. It takes a very special person to do what she did day-in and day-out as it was hard work to have to do things for those in need that they could not do for themselves. This included having to move people from place to place (they referred to it as transferring in the trade) which was very physically demanding. Mom did it all out of love and often ended up being the surrogate family for many of those in the nursing home who rarely received visits from their loved ones.

My siblings and I have all went onto careers of our own and although we have went on different paths, the common denominator has been hard work, carrying on the legacy of our parents.

God’s word speaks to us on this matter of being industrious with the time God grants. Look at these words of Solomon:

Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare. Proverbs 20:13

Now, before we get too far into this proverb, let’s establish this right away: The Lord wants us to sleep.

Sleep is a gift to us from God, a necessity if we want to remain healthy and available for His service. Deprive yourself of sleep and you will find yourself less than 100 percent when it comes to functioning at your best, whether at your worldly work or in carrying out the will and way of the Lord. We simply need to rest and as He did in everything else in life, God showed us the way when He rested on the seventh day of the first week of creating everything.

Frankly, if God can take a break and rest then we can too and we need to. We need to be at top efficiency as we serve Him and others.

Now that we have that established, let me say that sleeping excessively is what Solomon is getting at when he writes the proverb at the heart of this devotion. One who opts for laziness, one who chooses to just lie around and not be productive, will reap what they sow. They will be poor for they refuse to go out and earn anything. They take something that God intended for good, sleep, and turn it into a negative.

Friends, the life of living for the Lord is not one of inactivity. Not even close. Yes, we are to take time to rest but in between resting, we are to be about our Father’s business. Look at the Great Commission Jesus gave us as our call to initiative and you will discover nothing but action words.

Go.

Make…disciples of all nations.

Baptize…in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Teach…all to obey what Christ commanded.

Jesus didn’t say lie around and be lethargic. He said to get up and get going, to get to work toward furthering His kingdom on earth. The Christian life at its core is a selfless, sacrificial, proactive labor of love for people, ever seeking to bring souls to their salvation through Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Everything else in life is secondary to this primary calling.  

When we exercise this to its fullest, we find ourselves spiritually fed and filled with spiritual food to spare and share with others.

When we fail to answer the call of initiative from Christ, we fall into a state of spiritual slothfulness. We fail to use our talents (which include our time) to make a kingdom difference for Jesus and in doing so fall into the category of the wicked, lazy, worthless servant Christ talked about in His Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).

No one should ever want to be classified in that category.

The message for us today is pretty clear. As Christians, we are called to initiative, to carry on the legacy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His life of selfless working for the cause of others. There’s no room for laziness. Only room for productiveness in bringing others to answer their own calls to initiative in first receiving Jesus as Savior and then joining His labor force in the ripe harvest fields full of souls needing saved.

I pray you are counted in that labor force along with me today.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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