Striving Out of His Work

Striving Out of His Work

Colossians 1:29

“To this end I also labor, striving according to his working which works in me mightily.”

It’s one thing for me to preach about the end of all striving, to highlight the fact that those who “do not work” are justified before God, to glory in the fact that Christ already did the work so I don’t have to, but then Paul drops a bomb and talks about his striving.  What do we do with the striving of the Apostle who taught us not to strive?  The answer is that we are blessed to work, and we get to work hard, we get to strive in the kingdom of God.  Heaven is a glorious party, but that doesn’t mean that we will get nothing done in heaven.  I actually believe that we will be growing the kingdom forever into eternity because the Bible tells me so.  Isaiah 9:7 says, “of the INCREASE of His government and peace there will be no end.”  That means that stuff is going to get done in heaven, and that stuff can get done in heaven on earth, and even that we can work really hard to get that stuff done.  There are only a couple of stipulations.  We must work from God, and from life.  Death does not belong in heaven, and thus neither do dead works.

Identifying Dead Works
The book of Hebrews talks about one of the foundations of Christianity, the, “repentance from dead works.” (See Hebrews 6:1) The author goes on to encourage us saying, “For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies, for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:13-14)  The church today does a good job of identifying sin with the law and striving to be cleansed from those sinful works.  However, most of us remain in bondage to dead works that often masquerade as righteousness.  Striving that we want to do away with is the dead kind constructed by the law.  The law says to us, “Here are all the requirements you need to follow, you need to be all of these things, get to work.”  Unfortunately for the law it could not produce righteousness and thus salvation came through Jesus Christ, not through the law.  When Jesus died on the cross, he nailed with himself the, “handwriting of requirements.” (See Colossians 2:14)  The law says, “Here is who you need to be,” grace says, “Here is who you are!” The source of dead works is a lack of understanding with regards to who we are.

The beautiful truth that Paul expresses in talking of his striving is that he only strives out of what he has seen God do in him.  Paul had no standard of operation besides what God had birthed in Him.  Paul knew who he was in grace, and he lived as that man, striving with all the strength God had planted inside of him.  One of the largest problems in the Christian Church at present is that we live from an amorphous idea of the perfect Christian.  This Christian excels at all things, and strives to exhibit absolutely every attribute of Jesus Christ.  The problem with this is that you and I are a part of the body of Christ, not the whole thing.  Now this does not undermine our Christlikeness or deny the fact that we will do greater things than Christ did.  However, it does acknowledge that God is not working his fullness in every person, he is working it in his bride!  That means all of us!  So much dead living comes from trying to be what someone else is.  This fundamentally comes from the lack of apostolic governance in the church.  An apostle is a person with a holistic vision of the church.  This person recognizes the manifold nature of the bride, and is eager to empower each other Child of God into their destiny.  Unfortunately, many of our church leaders are not apostles, but evangelists, teachers or pastors.  Thus, these evangelists, for example, get up before the entire body and tell them how important it is that they get X number of people saved.   Or teachers get up in front of an entire body and demand detailed study  from everyone.  Unfortunately, many of the people they are talking to would be outside of God’s design for their lives if they actually followed such advice.

This is a trap that I myself am just being freed from.  As I grew in my faith I read many works from men such as Dwight Moody, powerful evangelists.  These men would write in their books about their ministries and the statistics of conversions under their ministries.  They would then encourage the reader/listener/me to match such statistics.  The problem with this is that I do not have an evangelistic gifting.  Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t have a call to share the gospel, but it does mean that I am not created to seek unbelievers and usher them into belief.  The reason I know this is that I absolutely do not come alive in evangelistic situations.  I have very often tried to do street ministry in ways that I saw others doing it, but could not help walking in anxiousness and discomfort while doing it.  I always counted this as my own cowardice and heaped shame and guilt on myself because of it.  The reality though is that I was not created for this work.  God created me for life, and I do not feel alive when doing that kind of evangelism.  Other people would despise a teaching or counseling situation, but absolutely love seeking conversions.  You can watch these people come alive when they evangelize.  Now that doesn’t mean that I may not have opportunities to talk to strangers about Christ, or minister healing to a guy at the grocery store or that the evangelist may not have an opportunity to teach.  It does mean though that there are works that naturally flow out of who we are.  Anything that we are trying to walk in that does not belong to us is a dead work.  The heart of grace is not not working, but not working at things that God has not given us. 

Striving From Who We Are

Paul knew who he was.  He says in speaking of his conversion, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.” (Galatians 1:15-17)  From the very beginning Paul knew that he owned a special calling to the Gentiles.  I believe it was the plan of God for Paul and that calling to avoid coming under other Apostles for a season.  It is very likely that had Paul immediately come to see Peter and James he would have been discouraged from his ministry to the Gentiles.  In order to become who God had destined Paul to be, Paul needed to know who that was, he needed to own himself.  He had to know the work that God had done in him.  Peter was a superstar in the early church, he had been with Jesus, Jesus had singled him out as leader, the guy practically and literally walked on water.  It can be very easy to see such influential and powerful people and desire to see them in ourselves.  Thus rather than Paul living as Paul, he could have been sucked into living as Peter.  Thankfully this did not happen.

Instead, when Paul presented himself to Peter and the other Apostles after three years of ministry this is what occurred, “But on the contrary, when they saw that the gospel for the uncircumcised had been committed to me, as the gospel for the circumcised was to Peter (for he who worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in me toward the Gentiles), and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”  (Galatians 2:7-9)  Paul had started striving in what God had worked on his life, and by this time it was so evident that the other apostles could clearly recognize it coming out of him.  In essence, Paul learned to strive in order to have what God worked in Him manifest itself in action.  God has finished His work in you.  There is eternal glory planted in every single person.  Our invitation is to walk with our Father, the One who made us, to allow Him to show us and instruct us on that glory he has planted.  Then, once we see who we are, to joyfully and passionately pursue that person.  Joseph, when he was a young man was shown by God who he would become.  He saw the glory of the future that was planted in Him, even when it was contrary to his present existence.  If you read the story of Joseph (Genesis 39-48) you will see a man who is faithful to himself even in the midst of trying life circumstances. 

The glory of godly striving is that it sets us on a path of striving in freedom.  The path of godly striving celebrates and loves the self.  It owns the greatness of who we were created to be.  Godly striving chases all fear and anxiety away.  It needs not to be what someone else is, or what someone else wants it to be.  Paul wrote,  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” (1 Corinthians 3:6)  This striving trusts God, and the work he has done.  It is striving from rest.  God taught me several years ago that He was the only place where rest and adventure existed together.  That is godly striving.  It is an adventure.  It is not hard.  It is not even work.  It is the joy of finding out how glorious you are.  Godly striving is hearing our Abba tell us how beautiful we are and excitedly primping ourselves to draw that beauty out to its full potential.  What fun!