Garry continued his series from 2 Pet 1:5-10 today, looking at how we can be personally productive. James 2:14-18 reminds us that faith and works have to go together and Paul is encouraged by the Thessalonians because of ‘your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope.’ (1 Thess 1:3) Our faith motivates us to work, but the most important works we can be involved in as Christians are prayer and worship.

Work can refer to any kind of business, employment or work, which can involve manual work, artistic work, industry or even thinking! There are all different kinds of work, and we must not look down on any kind simply because it is different. We are all called to work in some form or other; labour, on the other hand, is usually associated with intense work which leaves us exhausted at the end of it. In all our work and labour, however, faith and love have to be the motivators.

God also requires us to persevere or endure, not swerving from the tasks God gives us to do, having an eternal perspective, not one limited by time. As we are involved in prayer, we engage with God and feel His heart, seeing what He is doing and joining in. Prayer needs to fuel all our work in order to make it effective. Rockets such as Saturn V require power to enable them to escape earth’s gravitational pull and are obviously very fast, but work is currently being done on ion engines, which would be slower initially but which could keep on accelerating.

ion engine

In the same way, we need to keep persevering in prayer, for prayer lubricates all the work we are doing. Prayer can be like labour, wrestling with God (as Daniel did when the angel had to battle spiritual forces to bring the answer to prayer.)

We need to set time aside to be with God, not allowing this time to be squeezed out or just squeezing it in where we can. Prayer needs to be our natural habitat so that God is always only a breath away, not merely a nodding acquaintance. The challenge before us is to learn to work, labour and endure in prayer.