Uganda: HARD WORK!!! 26 Days.

I am surrounded by hard working people.  Charlie is seriously the hardest working person I have ever met.  Charlie’s work ethic and endurance is one of my favorite qualities about him.  There is something that makes me feel safe and cared for by the way he is willing to work so hard for our family.

Every family member in my immediate family and extended family and friends and community work and work hard.  Hard work is a gift and brings with it so many wonderful values.  Many of our friends and family, including ourselves, own their own businesses which means you can work even longer and harder. 

 Charlie is a builder.  He is a great builder, he builds many things and when he builds, he builds beautiful and sturdy buildings that are meant to last for years beyond our years on this earth.

I’ve been thinking about all this hard work and I have felt challenged in my own life.

What if we put as much time and effort and thought and energy into building relationships as we did building houses and businesses and careers and retirement? 

What if we studied the Word of God like we do a set of plans, or for a test, or a business plan, or a contract, or budget.  What if we looked at kingdom building like we do our building business and we built relationships that will last strong and beautiful beyond our time on this earth.

What if we worshiped as hard and as intentionally as we worked, or played, or ran, or roped, or hunted, or cleaned, or studied, or blogged.  

What would it look like to come into a worship service as prepared as we do for a job, or an event?

This hits a nerve with people that automatically think I’m talking about earning favor or earning salvation or earning anything with Jesus…what if the reward of working at relationship is the relationship.  What if it has nothing to do with getting to heaven or earning favor, but it is simply working at relationship because it’s beautiful and when you work at a relationship there is something beautiful being built. What if we worked at our relationship with Jesus because having a great relationship with Him is the reward that lasts forever?  What if we worked at marriage to have a great marriage and worked at parenting you have great kids?  What if all the effort we put into building relationships on this earth are the future investment that will pay off in heaven because we are going to have so many loved ones that we built a relationship with and we will all be worshipping and working for the one and only God.

We get so locked into our job, our earning a living, and I realize this is a very important part of life, and if we truly believe we are on this earth for only this time and God is the provider of all things and we have eternity to look forward to, why wouldn’t we be investing all we have (even our work), all our time, all our attention with our focus on there, not here.

What if we invested in our kids’ future in heaven as passionately as we do their education and sports?

What would it look like to pray and spend time with Jesus as passionately and as faithfully as we do our work, or even our favorite sport or entertainment pastime.

I’m all for sports and education and work and jobs and all that stuff, I’m all about it ALL, I have lived at a football field this Fall, so trust me.....I'm all about it!!!

BUT

 I pray oh I pray, we learn to put Kingdom building first and most, not because we think we will get something but because we desire to, and we will know SOMEONE and be known by HIM!!!

My prayer for our Knees Overseas today is that we work our hearts out!  I pray we work so hard we have callouses on our knees.  I pray we spend our time on our knees here and there at the feet of Jesus.  I pray we work at building relationships that will last for eternity all over this world.

I want to recognize Jesus when I meet Him face to face, but I better get familiar with what His feet look like first.  In scripture when God shows up  people just hit the floor, they can't even look up, let alone get up, so I'm thinking His feet are a good place to start.

You hear these old guys that talk about their "glory days" in sports, or these older folks talking about what it was like in "their day".....what if we have to sit and listen to the same stories a million times for a million years because we didn't invest our lives, our time, in the people we get to spend eternity with and we have nothing to contribute or share because all our stories and experiences burned up in the fire and it didn't make the cut.

1 Corinthians 3:10-15New Living Translation (NLT)

10 Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.

12 Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. 13 But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. 14 If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. 15 But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.