by Kevin Burton
Both my wife and my mother will ask me occasionally, “What’s on your agenda?” It’s a good question that I am looking at differently today.
Pastor Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life ministry, touched on that subject in a recent message. He used one of my memory verses to get there, Ecclesiastes 9:10. But he gave it a twist or two I hadn’t considered.
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going” (Ecc. 9:10 NKJV).
“Whatever your hand finds to do” refers to works that are possible. There are many things that our heart finds to do that we will never do,” Begg writes. “It is good for it to be in our heart; but if we would be eminently useful, we must not be content with forming schemes in our heart and talking of them; we must practically carry out “whatever your hand finds to do.”
“One good deed is worth more than a thousand brilliant theories. Let us not wait for large opportunities or for a different kind of work, but just do the things we ‘find to do’ day by day.”
Now there is a message I need. I have a pen pal in Michigan, and I once told her that if I only wrote about the things I actually did, as opposed to that plus my grand plans, my letters would be quite a bit shorter.
If I accomplished even 10 or 15 percent of what I dreamed and schemed of, I might have made a real contribution in life.
I have also heard this idea portrayed as “start where you are, do what you can.” I could add to that as Begg does, “do it now.”
“We have no other time in which to live. The past is gone; the future has not arrived; we will never have any time but now. So do not wait until your experience has ripened into maturity before you attempt to serve God,” Begg writes. “Endeavor now to bring forth fruit. Serve God now, but be careful about the way in which you perform what you find to do—do it with your might.”
“Do it promptly; do not fritter away your life in thinking of what you intend to do tomorrow as if that could repay today’s laziness. No one ever served God by doing things tomorrow. If we honor Christ and are blessed, it is by the things that we do today.”
“Whatever you do for Christ, throw your whole soul into it. Do not give Christ a little halfhearted labor, done as a matter of course every now and then; but when you serve Him, do it with heart and soul and strength.”
As you use all your strength Begg writes, remember where your true strength comes from.
“But where is the power of a Christian? It is not in himself, for he is perfect weakness. His power lies in the Lord of Hosts. Let us then seek His help; let us proceed with prayer and faith, and when we have done what our ‘hand finds to do,’ let us wait upon the Lord for His blessing. What we do in this way will be well done and will not fail in its effect.”
Begg never gets to the last part of the verse, “for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.”
The grave part is a serious downer, but it’s a much-needed reality check. This life doesn’t last forever. Your days and your opportunity to make an impact for Jesus, are numbered.
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