Tested by Fire

I finally figured out how writing a book and knitting a sweater are alike. Both of them take more time than writing articles and knitting mitts. What does this have to do with anything? I struggle with long-term projects. Everyone says to break those bigger tasks into smaller chunks, but in my mind, they are still big tasks. I tend to pick little ones, like mitts.

I’m also pragmatic and results-orientated, and have trouble being happy with what seems useless effort, or even partial progress. I don’t like wasting time or doing things in small bits. Only recently have I been content to spend fifteen minutes a day in the garden rather than weeding and working in three hour chunks once a week. Yet, that might be because my body can’t take the three hour chunks!

This morning I’m thinking about the garden, and other ‘big’ chores that I tend to avoid unless I have a big chunk of time to do it. I’m also thinking about how frustrated I get with slowness and doing things in stages. That is not like God. In fact, if God were like that, He would have been fed up with me a long time ago. I’m a ‘long-term project’ that takes a lot of patience!

A passage in 1 Corinthians 3 has always intrigued me. It is about doing things that last. It begins by establishing the fact that only God’s people can do the work of God. Verses 9-10 say, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.”

Paul, who wrote this epistle, says that we who are God’s projects are also His workers. This is a gift of grace, not something earned by the work that we do for Him. However, our work is important. Paul tells us to pay attention to how we do it.

He explains the foundation thing: “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

In the mind of God, He is more interested in the foundation upon which things are done and the materials used, not the speed. He wants Christ to be the center of all that I do. That is, my activities should be Christ-motivated, Christ-empowered, and Christ-honoring. Everything I do needs to have Christ at the bottom of it. That is a given. Without Jesus, as He says in John 15:5, I can do nothing. It doesn’t matter if I’m tackling a big, long-term project, or doing some little thing that can be finished in one swipe. God is looking for quality and eternal value.

Yet Christians can work for the Lord and be spinning our wheels. Paul describes our output and what could happen to it: “Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

My eternity is not affected by being a sloppy, ineffective worker. Nevertheless, God is going to test my efforts as a Christian on that Day, a reference to the Judgment Seat of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:10). Some of what I have done will be indestructible like gold, silver and precious stones. Other activities will not have what it takes to pass the test of fire.

If I honestly evaluate my work, and I’m not talking about mitts and pulling weeds, can I say that it is built on the proper foundation and with the right materials? Or do I do my kingdom deeds with the same attitude as those other long-term projects, like weeding?

This is convicting. God does not want me to be “obeying” Him with a pragmatic and results-orientated attitude that is never happy with what seems useless effort or partial progress. I must obey in faith, never thinking that a short prayer here and a brief witness there is a waste of time, or that things done in small bits have no value to Him.

I have no idea what fire will do to most of my activities, but I do know that God rewards faith and faithfulness and those long-term projects that never seem to produce results, and that I so often avoid, could easily fall into those categories.