It started about 8 years ago. I began receiving mailed invitations to join AARP. As I finally grew accustomed to what that meant, I am now receiving information about preparing for retirement. Several years ago when Sharon’s dad retired from Jersey Bell someone asked him what he was going to do now that he was retired. “Well,” he answered, “for the first 6 months I am going to sit in my rocking chair.” “And after that?” he was asked. “Well,” Dad answered, “then I am going to start rocking.”

There is something about work that is anathema to our human nature, isn’t there? We look forward to vacation time only to discover that during vacation, time speeds up as we muse that vacations are never long enough. We not only look forward to vacations but to the ultimate vacation that we call retirement when we don’t have to work.

In fact our view of heaven is often a view of rest and repose when we shall “rest from our labors.” Yet I am not sure just how Scriptural this view is. It may be that we have a skewed view of work or maybe in heaven we will be more able to do what we want rather that what we have to do. There is a big difference between vocation and employment, or a job. Some of us love what we do in our jobs and others of us long for the day when we can quit simply because it is a job and nothing more. What a blessing it is to be employed at something we like to do, or to see God using our jobs for His glory when then is transformed into our vocation for His Kingdom.

Our Scripture lesson follows immediately on the heels of Paul’s great description of what our attitudes, as Christians ought to be—like that of Jesus. Paul then goes on to describe the work of Christ—that is, what Jesus did by taking on the form of a servant, humbling himself and becoming obedient unto death. In verse 12 we read, “Therefore,” (and all that is about to come is based on what Paul has already said about what Jesus has done) “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Isn’t it great that God never takes a vacation or goes into retirement? The Bible is clear that God’s nature is one of work: He is always at work, doing something, keeping Himself busy. When you see what is going on in our world today, the only conclusion is that God is one busy guy! But Paul zeros in on the fact that God is at work within us “to will and to act according to His good purpose.”

The God who is busy at work in the affairs of the world is also busy at work in our hearts and lives. That has some strong implications for us as Christians: there is no vacation from the Kingdom of God, Christianity has no stadium seating for spectators because Christianity is NOT a spectator sport but only has participants, there is no retirement from God’s work nor the work of God’s Kingdom. Nowhere in Scripture do you read that people “retired” from the work of God’s Kingdom. There’s no retirement from Christianity when you can turn it over to the younger people because “we’ve had our day.”

Bill Cagno was a USPS employee in Philadelphia and very active in his local church when he retired to Sea Isle City with his wife Mary to enjoy some “fun in the sun” and to relax and play golf. He told me that his attitude was this: “I’ve done my share of church work. It’s time now for the younger folks.” One morning he told the Lord, “If you want me, you’ve got to come to the beach to get me because that is where I’ll be.” That very afternoon the pastor of his church, in suit and tie and dress shoes found Bill in his beach chair and asked him to teach the adult SS class. Bill told me, “God came and got me that day and I have never regretted it. You can’t retire from God.”

The Bible says that God is at work within us so that God can use us in His Kingdom. That means that each and everyone of us who claim the name of Jesus has work to do in the Kingdom of God. How does God “work in us to will and to do His good pleasure?”

First God is at work in us through grace. We live as Christians in a continuous atmosphere of grace. We swim in an ocean of grace. The Apostle John says that we receive “grace upon grace.” From conception to death we are the benefactors of grace beginning with prevenient grace on to converting grace then to sanctifying grace and finally to glorifying grace. We are immersed in God’s grace. But like the air around us grace needs to be ‘breathed in’ to be effective. Grace is imparted to us by way of worship, prayer, fasting, communion, Scripture reading, meditation, Bible studies and small groups, and our own personal relationship with Jesus. All these help us to grow in grace and in knowledge and understanding so that we become God’s co-laborers in the world. And so God is at work in us through and by His grace.

Along with grace God works in us through gifts. In Matthew 7:11 Jesus said that it was God the Father’s desire to give us good gifts. Some of these gifts come to us naturally and we call them natural abilities. The very fact that we breathe and our temperatures are 98.6 means that we have certain aptitudes, skills, temperaments and talents that God can sanctify for use in his Kingdom.

Then there are the gifts that come to us by way of our new birth experience. At conversion the Holy Spirit give us two essentials for Christian living—fruit and gifts. The fruit found in Galatians 5 is what we are. The spiritual gifts are what we do. The fruit is the character of Christ by which we become Christ-like. The spiritual gifts enable us to build up the body of Christ to maturity and to be salt and light in our world for Him. When we combine the creation gifts with the re-creation gifts we become unique, unrepeatable people. It is God’s part to give us the gifts both the natural gifts at creation and the spiritual gifts when we accept Christ as Savior and Lord. It is then our part to offer them back to God for His use when and where He so chooses.

God works in us through His grace and through the natural and spiritual gifts. God also works in us through giving. In Luke 12:48 Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one what has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” God is always at work in us for the purposes of our stewardship and service. Unfortunately the ‘me generation’ has infiltrated the church and Christian circles. Now this is really nothing new, because the church has always struggle with self-centered attitudes of her people. In our own day we have often co-mingled consumerism with spiritual principles resulting in Christians always desiring to get blessed through receiving. We Christians often fail to realized that we also get blessed by giving, ie by being a blessing to someone else. The Bible teaches that it is in giving that we receive. God works in us through giving because He knows and has designed it this way, that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Act 20:35)

Does all this mean that we quit our jobs and to go to East Jabip to serve the Lord? Not necessarily because God first desires to use us where He has planted us. So often we Christians think that we have to be a Billy Graham or a Charles Stanley or a Rick Warren or even a missionary or pastor to be really used by God. We have this idea that God can only use super-Christians and since we are not then God cannot use us at all. Wrong! Read the Bible. It is filled with story after story of how God used ordinary, everyday people for extraordinary service because it is by His Spirit, not by our might nor by our power. Remember God calls us to be faithful, not to be successful—as the world defines success. When we are faithful, then we are successful. I would rather be successful in God’s eyes, than to be successful according to the world.

God is a God who is at work in us “to do and to will His good pleasure.” He isn’t an absentee God, but a very present God who, the Bible tells us, helps us in our infirmities and who works in us. And because of that no one is on the sidelines, no one is unimportant, no one is “put out to pasture,” no one is given second class status in God’s Kingdom and economy. Our God uses every part of His creation to glorify Christ and to serve Jesus. From the magnificent galaxies to the minute amoebas, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaim His handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1) It was just 3 weeks ago that we were reminded that Jesus told the Pharisees that if the people were silent, “the rocks would burst forth in praise.”

The challenge before us is not to find out if God wishes to use us, but rather to find out how He wants to use us and then set about the task of offering ourselves to Him each day for the rest of our lives. What we can offer Jesus may seem very simple, ordinary and common, but this is the kind of holiness that God is searching for in the lives and hearts of His people.

God wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing to others. Remember His promise: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.”

Thank You for Taking The Time to Read This Message.
May God Use These Words to Help You and Strengthen You.