A key phrase in today’s business world is the phrase “value added.” It simply means the value that an action, process, or employee adds to the overall value and success of any business operation. We have come to expect “value” in everything we purchase. No one wants a car that doesn’t run, a house which offers no protection from the elements, or a chair we can’t sit in. If we possess anything that has little value attached to it, we simply repair it (if it’s repairable) or replace it with something of actual value.

The same is true in the spiritual world. God has little use for a Christian who does not add “value” to His kingdom (cf. Matthew 25:14-30; John 15:1-6). In our Lord’s teaching of judgment, all who were condemned had lost their usefulness. For example, the fishermen cast the useless fish away (Matthew 13:47-50). The one talent man was called an “unprofitable servant” (Matthew 25:30). The foolish virgins were shut out of the marriage festivities because they didn’t serve the purpose for which they were selected (Matthew 25:1-13). The fig tree was cut down because it bore no fruit (Luke 13:6-9; cf. John 15:2; John 15:6).

It’s easy for us as Christians to be lifted up with pride when God blesses us so richly. When this happens, we are likely to forget the basic reason for our existence as Christians (Deuteronomy 6:10-12; Isaiah 43:7; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Revelation 4:11). The inspired writer Paul expressed it this way in Romans 15:5-6:

“Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.“

The bottom line is this: God expects us to be of value to His cause. We are to be fellow workers with God in fields that stand ready to be harvested (1 Corinthians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 6:1; Matthew 9:37-38; John 4:35).

The individual or church which has no usefulness is thoroughly condemned in God’s word (2 Timothy 4:10; Revelation 2:1-5; Revelation 3:1-6; Revelation 3:14-19). This is why Paul urges us to engage in self-examination so we can determine whether or not we are useful in God’s kingdom (2 Corinthians 13:5; cf. 2 Timothy 2:20-21).

Today, let’s ask ourselves the following soul-searching questions:

· Are we adding value to God’s kingdom? (John 15:8; Matthew 5:16; Philippians 1:11).

· Are we setting the kind of example before others that we should? (1 Corinthians 11:1).

· Are we busy preaching and teaching the gospel message to the lost? (Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15-16).

Our eternal destiny hinges on the answers we give.

After spending many years as a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner, Arthur Brisbane was offered six months of paid vacation time by his boss, William Randolph Hearst. Mr. Brisbane refused to accept the offer and gave two reasons. He said, “If I quit writing my newspaper column for six months, it might affect the circulation of the newspaper. The second reason is that it might not affect the circulation of the newspaper.”

Arthur’s answer was profound. Keep his answer in mind while we ask ourselves, “If I dropped out of sight for six months and did absolutely nothing for the Lord or the church, would I be missed?” Would the Lord’s work suffer, or would there be no difference whatsoever? If I stopped showing up, what wouldn’t be accomplished?

As members of the Lord’s church, we each have a responsibility in doing the Lord’s work and building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16; I Corinthians 14:26; II Corinthians 12:19; Ephesians 4:12). We cannot hire someone else to fulfill our responsibility to the Lord (Galatians 6:4-5; Romans 2:6; I Corinthians 3:8). We are individually accountable to God for what we do with the time He has blessed us with. Paul said, as he wrote to the Ephesians, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

Let’s resolve that we will become more involved in the Lord’s work, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24). God has so richly blessed us with time, talent, vision, and financial means. Let’s be willing to put these gifts to work for the Lord and His cause, “while it is yet day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4).

A theater manager was interviewing for a new usher position and asked the candidate, “What would you do if a fire broke out during a show?”  The young candidate confidently answered, “I’d be fine.  I’d get out of there really fast!”

Are we like that young man sometimes?  We’re comfortably safe as a Christian.  We know God.  We know he loves us. We know our sins are forgiven.  We’re safe from hell.  We got out of danger real fast so everything is okay right?  Are we forgetting something, or someone?

In Ezekiel 33, the man of God was given a charge.  He was to be a watchman.  His job was not to escape danger, but to warn others of the danger coming.

If the people heard the warning and listened, great!

If they heard the warning and failed to listen, terrible!

If the watchman failed to warn them and they were destroyed, even worse!  The people are destroyed and the watchman would be guilty of their blood.

It’s not enough to get out safely.  We have a similar charge from Jesus in Mathew 28 to warn others of the danger and to bring them to obedience.  Paul emphasizes this in I Corinthians 9:16 when he says, “woe is to me, if I preach not the Gospel.”

Don’t be discouraged if the crowd doesn’t heed the warnings.  Not everyone will listen.  But we have to do our part as the watchmen to sound the alarm.  How’s yours sounding?

Sometimes the task seems impossible.  We look at the outcome we want, and we deem it too big to achieve.  So, we give up or at the very least we don’t try too hard. 

We can we do this sometimes when we look at people around us who have achieved what we think is success.  We see what they accomplished and think to ourselves, “I can’t do that. I’m not that strong. I’m not that good.”

This can seem especially daunting when we don’t have all the information.  If you compress it all down, we get to read the equivalent of a few weeks out of Joseph’s whole life.  And it looks amazing to us what this young man achieved and how he overcame his adversities and seemingly always making the right choice with a smile on his face.  Looking at it like that makes him seem heroic and superhuman.  He ate an elephant.  I can’t eat an elephant.

But, of course, we can.

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.

Don’t be discouraged by the size of the goal.  Be motivated to break it down to smaller bites.  Joseph was a human being.  He did not wake up one morning to see his success through his trials as a single act that gained him victory. He worked for years at making today’s choices for tomorrow’s victory.  Some days he woke up just like us without a smile, not wanting to make the right choice.  Some days it was hard.  But he took a bite.  The next day he took another.  The next day he took another until the elephant was gone. 

Being Godly and attaining the promised reward can look elephantine.  That’s because it kind of is to be totally honest.  But don’t shy away from the task. Don’t give up on the goal. Start taking bites.

The story is told of a thrifty man who one day decided to save money on donkey feed. Every day, he would add increasing amounts of sawdust into the donkey’s feed. Because the process was gradual, the donkey did not notice any difference as he cleaned up his manger. The man’s plan was working well, until the donkey suddenly died because of living on 100% sawdust.

Similarly, spiritual food that contains the pure Word of God, once mixed with worldly sawdust, will eventually lead to spiritual death (II Peter 2). It’s sad to see some members of the church act as though they cannot understand why so many spiritually malnourished Christians die [abandon the Lord’s church] even after being members of the church for many years.

The Psalmist tells us that God’s word is “lamp” to the feet and a “light” to our path (Psalm 119:105; cf. Proverbs 6:23). However, how can members of the Lord’s body make application of that “light” in their everyday living, if they remain ignorant of that light? (Hebrews 5:12-14). What is the use of chiding weak Christians about their little faith, if spiritually strong Christians do not teach them enough of the pure Word for them to be able to develop strong faith?

All of the church pep-rallies, sermons, and lectures about Christian duty, won’t do much good for weak-in-the-faith Christians, until they are taught the pure word of God.  These things can make us feel full, but there isn’t any nutritional value.

If there is any sawdust in our spiritual diet, we need to get rid of it, and start feeding on the pure “milk” of the Word, increasing to the “strong meat” of the Word, so we can grow into spiritually mature workers for the Lord and His church.

Just before Israel entered the promised land the tribes of Reuben and Gad asked to settle in the land east of the Jordan.  Reuben and Gad had a lot of livestock and the land of Jazer and Gilead were great for raising it.  So, they wanted to stay where they were instead of crossing over with the rest of the nation.

In Numbers 32 we find Moses’ response, “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?”

We often find ourselves where we are comfortable and at ease.  It’s easy for us to look around and see that we pretty well have it made.  We have a great deal of freedom to worship and teach as we please.  We find a great deal of comfort in our current situation.  Generally speaking, we find comfort in the work of others.  Someone else takes care of the heavy lifting and we are happy to sit where we are; not going backwards, but not moving forward.  We’re all guilty of it from time to time, including myself- more often than I’d like to admit.  But we must answer Moses’ question, “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?”

A spiritual war is raging around and within us.  We can’t sit by and watch others fight while we sit in safety.  Many saints have fought bravely up to this moment.  We must be among them.  We must take up arms, the word of God, and fight on. 

Sitting out only discourages those who fight.  Not fighting with our brothers and sisters is just as bad as taking up arms against them.

Be active.  Be involved.  Fight. Let’s not let our brethren go to war while we sit.  

These last two weeks have been an adventure for me.  I have been performing an internal audit of our manufacturing process and all of its associated documents.  If you haven’t experienced an internal audit at work, congrats.  I can’t seem to escape them.  But that s a good thing when you remember what I do for a living.  I spend all my time ensuring that processes and products are what they are supposed to be.  Is the process and product conforming to the design and desired outputs.

Does this sound like something better left for the workplace or something we should be doing for our own lives?  Paul had some thoughts on this when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth.

2 Corinthians 13:5. “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”

We need to take the time look at ourselves.  How am I thinking? How am I speaking?  How am I behaving?  Does it meet the standard?  Do I meet the standard?  Where do I excel?  Where do I lack? 

As much as I love performing external assessments on other labs’ systems and processes, I have a harder time doing it for my own activities.  I have trouble not making excuses or rationalizing why something is okay when it isn’t truly okay.  But we need to take an honest look at ourselves and see where we are, objectively.  

There are three ways to look at why internal audits are needed.

1.     The standard (God’s word) requires it.

2.  You want to find all your problems and fix them before the external auditor (Jesus) does.

3.     You want to improve and be better.

The first two options are great places to begin but we really want to mature to the third.  If you do it just to be obedient (option 1) or to avoid punishment (option 2), good, it’s a place to start.  But I hope we can mature to the point where we do it because we realize that examining ourselves and fixing what needs fixing gets us closer to God.

Take the time to take stock.  Is Jesus Christ in us?

Some of you may know that I have a side job performing assessments for calibration and testing labs.  I get invited to dig into a laboratory’s Quality Management System, documents, records, and even the competency of their staff to see if they meet all the requirements of being accredited in the work they perform.  I enjoy the work and it helps keep the real geek in me contained to a few days every other month or so.

There’s a common phrase I use when I hold an opening meeting with an assessment client. I tell them, “If you hear me say the words ‘I don’t like’ please feel free to reply with ‘I don’t care’.”  When assessing a lab and its staff I have to eventually give my recommendation on whether or not this lab will achieve/maintain its accreditation or lose it.  Losing the accreditation can be disastrous for a lab.  Their customers require it, without it they lose the customer. It’s no small responsibility.  Livelihoods are sometimes on the line.  

This is why it is important that my opinion doesn’t count.  You see, there are published standards the labs must adhere to.  I could list a bunch of them, and the list would be very long.  But nowhere in that list will you find “How a Lab Should Look According to Steve Proctor’s Opinion”.  

Do we remember this in our daily lives?  That our opinions don’t count for much?  There’s a standard written on how God wants our lives to be governed.  And he certainly didn’t ask my opinion on it.  He simply laid out the standard and expects us to conform to it.  When it comes to spiritual matters do we try to insert our opinions on the way it should be, or do we simply trust the standard God gives us?  Do we try to inflict our opinions on someone else rather than God’s standard? The Pharisees were famous for this very thing.  They had the standard and decorated it with all their opinions. Doing so they would alienate the very people the law was written for.  Do we do the same?

Be on the watch for the danger of our opinions.  They’re dangerous. They’ve led many astray and tend to make false teachers out of good Christians.

Romans 6:17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,

Cars come with the best stuff now.  Heated seats, and puncture-proof tires. If you’ve ever driven with ordinary tires, and a nail goes through them you lose all the air in the tire, tire goes flat and stops working properly.  But if a nail goes through a puncture-proof tire, a sealant compound begins to run inside the tire that plugs the hole so that the air cannot escape.

The heart of a child of God is like the puncture-proof tire. An ordinary heart may be filled with love, but when someone does something to puncture that heart, all the love suddenly runs out — with hatred, anger, and hard feelings taking its place.

However, a puncture-proof heart is different; it is filled with the spiritual teachings of Christ (Ephesians 5:18, Romans 15:14, I Corinthians 1:5, Colossians 1:9, II Peter 1:2-3…).  When someone, by their words or actions, punctures that heart, immediately the hole is plugged up tight and love stays in.

Regarding those who puncture the heart, the Scriptures tell us in Romans 12:20-21, “Therefore, if your enemy hungers, feed him; If he thirsts, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”

Let’s all have puncture-proof hearts!

Things can get busy, can’t they? Every day we seem to pile more and more responsibility on ourselves. One more project. One more obligation. One more thing to do. Often these things come with problems or extenuating circumstances that extend the amount of time and energy needed to complete or maintain the obligation. It’s easy to get overloaded and overloaded equals stressed. All too often it leads to something falling by the wayside.

Take time to relax and regenerate your energy. Even Jesus would take time away from his work to re-center, relax, and rest. After being swarmed by crowds looking for his attention and traveling almost constantly, he was aware he needed to stop for a moment and recreate. He would go away from everyone to a garden or mountain and pray and rest. As a human being he knew he was more effective when he wasn’t burnt out.

Not a bad idea huh? Stop being so busy and start being more effective. Know your limits and respect them. Over-worked is not effective or healthy. At some point in our juggling, we’ll take on too much and balls will start hitting the floor.

Follow Jesus’ example. Work hard. Relax just as intently. And remember, the Lord’s recipe for relaxing involved prayer.