Building One Another  

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. I Thessalonians 5:11

We are Sent to Work!

Dear Friend,

Many people think the lyrics, “It’s off to work we go,” are sung in "Heigh-Ho, Heigh-ho" in the 1937 Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The words actually are, “It’s off to home we go,” but it really doesn’t make any difference. You can’t miss the uplifting joy of fruitful work that runs through the song.

Sometimes people say that “work” was given as a punishment with the Fall of Adam as described in Genesis 3, however, we read in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” and in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

Work was given to us before the Fall!

Your work really does matter to God!

Whatever your work may be – raising children, working online or in an office, helping a neighbor, cleaning a bathroom, coping with an illness, working through a grief, teaching a class, sending a text – your work matters because YOU matter to God. So work with all of the excellence you are capable of, trusting the God who loves you to work through you.

Think of yourself as a modern-day Bezalel, filled with God’s Spirit and gifted for what you are called to do: “I have filled Bezalel with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship.” Exodus 31:3

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10 We are sent to work!

Joy to you – Stan

© Copyright 2023 E. Stanley Ott

Scripture from the ESV

1. To what work are you sent - from the small to the large - from the invisible to others to the obvious to everyone?
2. Why do you - and why does your work matter to God?
3. Knowing God sends you to work - from the simple chores at home to tasks outside the home - how does the knowledge of God's sending affect what you do and how you do it?

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash