And whatsoever ye do, do [it] heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Col 3:23
I am going to do a little ranting from my soapbox. It is one of my pet peeves, and I have had to deal with this issue in a recent situation, and it really galls me. Giving mediocre service to God. People in recent years seem to be quite content to do a task at work, on the job, in a sloppy, half-baked manner. Sometimes because it is a tedious task, and then daring to present the results to their boss, even though they were capable of doing it better, more thoroughly, much neater, if only they had put a little more time and effort into the project. Just hurry up and get it done and throw it into the boss’s In basket. Even if they had some extra time to work on it before the deadline. And especially if the boss is a tyrant. The employee figures their boss is so bad, he deserves to get a sloppy mess thrown on his desk.
But most galling of all is to see people who claim to be God’s children, followers of the Living Word of Yeshua, involved in a public activity that is supposed to be an act of ministry, in some cases even an act of worship, to the Heavenly Father, in a group setting, in assisting others to prepare their spirits to be in a worshipful mode towards the Most High God. Yet they do not give their best effort, and they are acutely aware that it is not their best effort, for they have done better on other occasions. But they are content to give a very poor effort and go through empty motions. Just because they said they would be there, knowing they have not given proper heartfelt practice and effort after a long absence of practice ahead of time to their presence there, where their position is to act as corporate worship leaders, to assist the congregation into the presence of God through corporate worship. And they dare to come and stumble through, rather than cancel their presence until they could come together and give time and effort to practice and give a quality performance, which is not really to show themselves off, but to lead in worship with their very bodies and souls as a living sacrifice to God. Yet really the majority of the group is not embarrassed, for they have come to live in the comfort zone of mediocrity, not requiring much effort, before they rush on with the rest of their extremely busy lives out there in the world. In this case it was a Messianic dance, or “body worship” group that I was a part of (until recently) and sometimes performed with, dancing some very ancient steps that probably even Jewish people in King David’s time were doing in holy convocations.
Sometimes I have been in employment situations where after awhile I began to literally hate and dread coming to work. The quality of my work began to show it, in that I was not doing the excellent quality of work I was doing before, and I became sloppy and careless, and it showed. My attitude sucked. I am a person who generally takes personal pride in my work and insures that it is of the highest quality and appearance possible. I am embarrassed when it is not, and I usually know if it is less than quality work. When my work starts to become affected like that, and I have tried everything I know to make the situation better, and still my work quality goes downhill, and my attitude gets worse and worse, then I begin to figure that it is time I start looking for a different job and leave there.
And whatsoever ye do, do [it] heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Col 3:23
The word “heartily” used here in the Greek is “ek psyche”, which means out of the very breath of life, or, the soul, to do something with all of one’s being. That is no little effort. It means to do something with all one’s body, mind and soul. One’s very heart, if you will, where some consider it to be the seat of emotions. With all one’s might. In other words, God wants our very best, no matter what we do, or where we are! Do it unto Him, the Creator of the Universe, as a servant performs a service for his master. We are called to be servants of the Most High God in this world. In this case we should consider it as done for the Heavenly Father, even if we are in an earthly position of submission to another for our duties to perform. If we are doing less than our best at something, or we know it is something that our Heavenly Father would not approve of, we should seriously consider moving on somewhere else, or doing something different, or quitting that situation entirely if we cannot improve it or change it, if humanly possible. Would we feel content to dump a pile of smelly garbage at the feet of the Most High God when we had jewels of great value to place there??? We should not. We should feel embarrassed. No, I am not saying that our works can earn us our way into Heaven, because they cannot, lest any man should boast, the Scriptures say. God gives each of us special gifts and abilities meant to be used in His service for the building up of the body of Christ and to point the blind to His Holy Light, Jesus. We are not to use those gifts and abilities carelessly, or neglect them. We are here on a mission, and we should do only our best to fulfill that mission, and settle for nothing less. The King of Kings expects nothing less of us, whether we be an humble sanitation worker or cabbie driver or ruler of the land. We should desire to hear the King of Kings say to us at the end of our mortal life, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
amen!
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