randomz-tephiee

Read, re-read and read it again until you can visualise it

So during my devotional today I was reading over the notes I had taken during a sermon at last year’s Youth Service. To be precise the sermon was on the 31st October 2010 and was shared by my Pastor’s son. He was sharing the Word of God from Matthew 20:1-16 about The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.

As I was reading the above passage, I tried to implement the skills learnt from yesterday’s Personal Leadership Lecture, which was trying to visualise and putting yourself into the context of what passage or verse you’re reading from the Bible. So with this in mind as I was reading Matthew 20:1-16, God gave me this revelation: Jesus is looking for and “collecting” people to do ‘the work’ because the vineyard, harvest is ripe and ready. But the question God posed in my heart was: are His people ready? Are His people ready to do the work? Because Jesus is looking. He is looking for people today, right now to respond to His greater call. His call to be bigger than you can imagine. His call to be a blessing for others. His call to be the voice for the unheard. His call to be the hand for the unable. Are you ready?

Also, when He has found those who want to do the work, so say for example those already in the ministry or who have followed Christ for some time now and are starting to grumble with complaints just like those in the passage about pay. To us today it may not always necessarily mean pay, money or wages but something like recognition from our leaders or from the ‘big guns’ for all the hard work we’ve done. Well what God is teaching me here is that Jesus, as he said in this passage, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?’ (v. 13) Here God is saying that I have told you from the beginning that this is what will happen, this is how much I will pay you, do you want it or not? And that is translated into our lives today by: the work ahead is tough Steph, there will be a lot of hard work, plenty of sacrifices. Will you still do it anyways?

Here I learnt that as I have agreed to do the work, I will learn to accept everything that comes with it even when at times I think I want to grumble because I know the greater picture and the greater reward, which is also in the same verse, verse 13 that God will fulfil His promises to us. Like Jesus promised to the workers in this passage of payment of 1 denarius per day, it is the same to us. Whatever God promised us He will give and reward us He will surely fulfil it not because of our effort but because of His grace this abounds much in us. I understand that we often complain because of the unfair payment between the workers but look at it from the perspective that this passage isn’t talking just about the workers’ effort but the workers’ obedience to God’s call and that God does fulfill every promise and keeps to His word. And that is what I learnt most from reviewing this Scripture, that God’s reward for me is not based on my effort but based on foremost God’s grace that is translated in my response to God’s calls.

posted by tephiee @ 6:10 PM