Work Willingly As If For The Lord

Have you ever found yourself thinking; why am I even doing this? It isn’t appreciated. The work never gets noticed.

I have had those thoughts many times. They usually come after a period where I am being diligent to perform the tasks well, even going above and beyond what was expected. Day in, day out, grinding away to get the assignment completed. Then a little nudge comes along in my mind; why are you doing this? Look around you, nobody else is working this hard!

Before long, I found myself agreeing with the thoughts and getting angry because of them.

That is a dangerous place to be. Not one word has been spoken by a person to you, yet you get upset at people over what is taking place in your mind. They are not privy to those conversations you had with yourself so generating an outburst of anger toward the person you think is wrong tends to result in a confrontation that is very lopsided and will lead to breaking down your relationship with that person.

I began to seek the Lord about these weird conversations I seemed to be having. The more I wrestled with the thoughts, the more difficult it seemed to be to rid myself of them. The Lord began to show me some things that I believe may help you.

First, our soul consists of our mind, will, and emotions. The enemy of our soul is Satan. The Lord took me back to the book of Genesis and showed me where Satan used the body of the serpent to beguile, (he lied and deceived), Eve into eating the fruit they were told not to eat. That led to Adam losing his authority and giving it over to Satan. But notice the punishment that fell upon the serpent. All animals and birds were to eat from the trees. Suddenly the serpent’s ability to do so was taken away from him. He was defeated physically. He was forced to crawl on his belly and eat the dust of the ground. Basically, he was de-fanged and de-feeted and now had to eat dead creatures to survive.

Fast forward to the work performed by Jesus on the cross. Though Satan provoked men to kill Jesus physically, in the spirit realm, Jesus defeated Satan and took back the authority that had been stolen from Adam.

Now the only weapon Satan has against us is to attack our thoughts and convince us to defeat ourselves. So, all those weird thoughts causing me to doubt anyone cared about the work I was doing came from Satan.

The solution the Lord provided was found in Colossians 3:18-25.

¹⁸ Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.

¹⁹ Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.

²⁰ Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. ²¹ Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.

²² Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. ²³ Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. ²⁴ Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. ²⁵ But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites.

The verse He wanted me to really focus on was verse 23. By making my effort pleasing to the Lord and doing everything as if it was for Him, I could just laugh at the negative thoughts Satan tried to put in my head. Because verse 24 tells me that He will give me an inheritance as my reward and what He gives me, Satan cannot stop.

Do everything as if you are working for Jesus. His pay is always better and always on time!