Holding back

Do you ever find yourself holding back? What about when it comes to an area in your life where you could be blessed....do you ever hold back then?

As I sat down earlier this evening to read my study for women's group tomorrow, I found myself blessed and filled up by the contents of Ruth. Yet it forced me to stop and really evaluate myself and the way I have been doing things. Take this study for instance - every week when I read through my study book and the Bible I gain so much from it. In fact, it is usually spilling out of me which is why I have to come immediately here to share it. Yet week after week when the initial blessing I receive from the word "wears off", I go right back to choosing laziness. I could be reading every night taking it in a little at a time and really letting it wash over me, spill into my day and my week. But instead I put it off, sometimes cramming it all in the night before. Do you think I am able to really soak that all in the same way I would had I spread it out over the week? I doubt it. I am holding myself back from receiving the full blessing I could be getting out of this study.

Every time I skip my devotional time, don't go to church, don't participate in one of my small groups, I miss the chance to be blessed. What about those times I feel the urge to call someone I haven't talked to in awhile just to check on them but brush it off? When that tug to help out a stranger who looks like they are struggling nags at me but I just assume some one else will do it? Or when that overwhelming urge to stop whatever I am doing to pray over someone hits but I don't act on it because I am intimidated or embarrassed? In these instances I am not only missing out on the blessings God wants to pour out on me, but also holding back the other person from receiving a blessing from God through me.

I don't want to miss any piece of what God has to give me. And I certainly don't want to get in the way of another person's opportunity to be blessed. My prayer today is that I give God every thing I have, every piece of my life. That I never hold back. I am so thankful that He never holds back when it comes to loving me and showing me grace and mercy. He gave his all, gave the life of his son so that we could know him and receive his blessings. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) What a gift!

The importance of hard work

In the past few months God has been hitting me time and time again with the message of hard work and why it is so important. Yet again tonight in my newest study, this topic came up. As I am diving deep into the book of Ruth, the author of my study is picking apart the relevance of basically every verse in this book. Today we looked at her work ethic. Boy was that convicting! This young woman who has not only lost her husband but has been completely uprooted from her family and her home to go to a land where she is deemed an outcast, still lifts her chin up and does what she is called to do. Not just for herself but for the sake of her widowed mother in law as well. She really sets an example of how to conduct ourselves during times of hardship.

So as I am reading verse after verse in various parts of the Bible about how much God values hard work it got me thinking. It made me realize how far off from God's plan we really are. From the beginning of time, man was created to work. Adam himself was made to work in the garden. This was even before Adam and Eve sinned which tells us that God sees work not as a punishment, but as a blessing.

Now I don't know about you, but I often think of work as anything but a blessing. It is a pain, it means sacrifice, it means doing what I am supposed to over what I want to. Where is the blessing in that? But the more I try and look at it from God's point of view, the more I see what he means. The sheer willingness to work hard opens the door for God to provide for us. Look at Ruth. She was willing to get up at dawn to find a field where she could glean the leftovers all day. This is hard, roll-up your sleeves, sweat producing work. And it isn't prideful. Those leftovers were intentionally untouched for the purpose of allowing the poor to retrieve them. Despite all of that, she did it. And God blessed her by putting Boaz in her path who later turned things around for both Ruth and Naomi.

Hard work also keeps us from being idle. You have heard the saying, "Idle hands are the devil's playground." How true is that? I know that as a kid the dumbest things I did came from having too much time on my hands. Of course this applies to adulthood as well. When we are idle we are usually filling our time with things other than that of the Lord. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. - 1 Timothy 5:13.

I know that in my life this is an area that I continually feel called to change. I don't work outside the house but I still have a job. Taking care of my husband, my kids and my home is my work. And big work it is! I should be pouring myself into it each day and I hate to have to admit that more times than not I am just doing what I need to do to get by. The bare minimum. Oh what shame I feel in admitting that. But there is also freedom in the truth. I know that I am not alone in this. As you read this you may be thinking that you could write this same thing. But you want to know the good news? This doesn't have to be your truth. You have a choice and so do I. The choice as I see it is to keep living day to day, fighting all the good things God has in store for me and as a result feeling both guilty and unfulfilled OR to change the way I look at my life and my purpose. To see the blessing in serving my family and working hard in my home.  To know that God only wants what is best for me and that he is just waiting to bless me in even greater ways when I choose to be obedient. When I look at it that way, the choice seems like a no-brainer!

I am going to end this by doing something I rarely do here. But as I type this I feel like someone will read it who will understand, who will feel like I do and want to make a change. So I ask, if that is you, will you pray for me? Pray that I make the choice to be obedient to God's calling in my life to work hard and to find the blessing in that work. And in return I will be praying for you. I may not know you by name but God does so I will lift you up all the same. God Bless!