Always Give Yourselves Fully

1 Corinthians 15:58 says,
"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

Today Pastor Bobby challenged the summer interns with this very idea. It was both encouraging and convicting as I began to realize the depth of meaning found here. As disciples of Christ we are not given the option of not giving ourselves FULLY to the work of Christ. Always doesn't mean sometimes or when you feel like it and fully doesn't mean 50%, 80%, or even 99.9% it is 100% all the time! What a thought that is to think that if each of us as followers of Christ were living to fully give our lives to the Lord's work how radically different our world would look.

As summer approaches or for some has arrived I pray that we would seek to take every opportunity to serve the Lord and do His work wherever that might be. I pray that our summers wouldn't be wasted with mundane daily tasks, boring ourselves to death on the computer, or entertaining ourselves to death with video games, movies or music but rather that we would redeem this time for the Lord. No matter where God puts us, whether it be working in a church or working at the neighbor's house pulling weeds, He has created us as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 as His workmanship to do good works for Him. May that be our goal this summer and always! May we seek time alone with Him in prayer, in His Word and meditating on His truths to sharpen and encourage us.

We cannot do this in our own strength, in fact we cannot do anything good apart from Him. We must continually depend on him for all we need. When the days get hard and we feel like we can't serve Him with our whole hearts we must lean on Him, when we are exhausted and feel like we can't put in that extra hour of ministry we need to depend on Him, and when that opportunity to do the Lord's work arises and we have something we'd rather do we must die to ourselves and serve Him!

May we as Christians, followers of Christ, shine like lights in this world and how better then giving ourselves fully to HIS work wherever and whatever that may be.