Postby dolfan » April 13th, 2010, 4:38 am
I liken this to the person who won't work but says he has a job.
"Where do you work?"
"Oh, at So-and So."
"You're awfully clean to be working there. Must be an administrator?"
"No, they've got me outside. It's hot. [It's cold.] My boss is a real pain. And, they're not paying me enough."
"So, what work do you do?"
"I'm a hill mover."
"What's that?"
"A hill mover moves hills."
"How?"
"Buddy, when it's hot out there, you'll see how."
"What do you use to do it and where are you going with it?"
"Well, people order the stuff that the hills are made of and they use them to make their own hills or other stuff. As much money as they make at that company, you'd think they'd pay me more. I've been there 2 years, man. I've got kids to feed. I'm looking for another job."
"Don't you have a job now?"
"You don't get it, man."
"I think I do. You have a job, but you don't make any work happen and you said you want more money but you haven't said how you're going to make more work happen."
Show me your work and I'll show you what job you've got. Show me your work, and I'll see what faith you've got.
I've said this to an employee: "You don't have a job. What you have is work to do. The work you actually do is the job you actually 'have'. You may outwork that job. If so, you're rare, and we'll either find something that you can work at that helps us and we'll pay you accordingly, or you'll discover that we don't have what you need and you'll work somewhere else that can. What we provide you is an opportunity to work. That's the 'job'. If you don't work up to the opportunity, you don't have anything -- not even an opportunity for very long."
Seems to me that faith is very much like that. Faith is God's opportunity for us to obey. We have it because He gives it to us. (Faith is the gift of God says Eph. 2:8.) Like opportunity -- we either seize upon it with obedience and work or we don't. It is the place with God in which we can actually do the will of God. No one can see that we "have" it unless we're doing it.
Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven. (David Lipscomb, On Civil Government, 72).