Hidden results of our commitment

After discovering my computer Bible program had scrambled my daily devotional readings, I’m finally reading the same day as on the calendar. A line from Spurgeon’s evening selection for this day catches my attention. He says, “If you seek humility, try hard work; if you would know your nothingness, attempt some great thing for Jesus.”

The Apostle Paul prompted this remark. Paul considered himself as nothing, yet in obedience he accomplished much for God. He wrote these words,

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3:8–10)

It wasn’t just that Paul preached to the Gentiles and was a foundational factor in the early church. It wasn’t just that he made the wisdom of God known or that God used him to write a major portion of the New Testament. God also used this man, “the very least of all the saints” to be part of a revelation by which the rulers in heavenly places, a.k.a. the spirit world, would see His wisdom through the church.

Some days I get discouraged that I am a poor example of a Christian. Some days I get discouraged that the church, the people who love and follow Jesus Christ, are not doing their job. We all seem so inept, so caught up in doing our own thing, or waffling at obedience, or just oblivious to the plan of God. Then I read a verse like this — He uses the church to display His wisdom!

What God is doing in the spiritual realm is invisible. I cannot see it when His wisdom is somehow revealed through us weak and lowly saints. I cannot see it when the light goes on for someone in the spirit world and their jaw drops. While I tend to want to walk by sight rather than by faith, extraordinary verses like this grab my imagination and toss it in the air.

The spiritual world where God also rules is a world of truth vs. lies, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, and Satan vs. all that is holy. God has His legions of angels, but the Bible says at least a third of them fell when Satan was booted from heaven. That means there are legions of demonic forces also, and all of them in the heavenly places know nothing about the wisdom of God — except . . . God is using the church to show them how wise He is.

God, sometimes You take my mind to the top floor. You and your realm are so much greater than my ordinary thoughts and humdrum days. I agree that hard work humbles — merely the hard work of trying to grasp the wonder of You is humbling. Yet these verses also show that hard work attempted in Your name and aided by Your power has cosmic implications, whether I can see them or not.

Forgive me for being so slothful and forgive me for wondering if we have any value.