Several years ago after “talent day” at Faith Academy, a couple of moms told Deborah and I how impressed they were with one of our son’s piano playing. According to them, he was light-years ahead of their kids. One mom wished that her daughter had been “blessed with a musical gift like our boys.”
Gift? Yeah, right. My sons were gifted with a mother who made them practice piano an hour everyday before they could go to the tennis courts or pick up a paint brush, drum stick, guitar, or any other recreational hobby. That kind of gifting is also called discipline. Even genuine spiritual gifts require hard work. I have a “gift of teaching.” Does that mean that I don’t have to read and study? Does that mean that I don’t have to constantly develop better communication skills? On the contrary, the gift is actually the cause of all the hard work.
One recent visitor commented after a few days in our apartment that I was “sure working hard.” He was right. I do work hard. I’ve worked very hard for the twenty-two years I’ve lived in Manila. Why have I had to work so hard? Because God has poured out so much grace here, there’s always a lot to do. If not for God’s grace, I’d have nothing to do.
I learned hard work from my dad. He was from the “old school,” believing that able-bodied teenagers should work a job. I’ll never forget the first summer job he lined up for my brother and me. We spent the whole hot Mississippi summer literally working as ditch diggers. We worked for minimum wage, putting in underground phone cables while our friends were out water-skiing. The next summer, my dad lined up an “indoor” job for me—loading and unloading boxcars in an un-airconditioned warehouse. I longed to get outside and feel the cool 95º Mississippi summer air. Inside, it was usually over 100! Hard work indeed.
I fear many in ministry have an unhealthy confusion about grace and hard work. These concepts are not mutually exclusive. They are both essential to success in ministry, to church growth, and to making disciples. Grace and hard work are also key ingredients to success in marriage and child training.
Here’s how Paul reconciled hard work and the grace of God:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 1 Corinthians 15:10
Paul’s response to the grace of God in his life was to work “harder than them all,” not just to hang around as if God’s grace is a divine excuse for man’s sloth. Jesus was not too gracious with the one-talent guy who failed to produce any fruit. He went right to the heart of this lack of productivity: LAZINESS.
His master replied, “You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?” Matthew 25:26
As usual with Jesus, harvest was the real issue. Today, the harvest is plentiful, but the WORKERS are few. Why? Maybe because so many people have an aversion to hard work. They’d rather sit around, do nothing, and call it grace.
I close with one of my all-time favorite promises from Proverbs: Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor (Proverbs 12:24).
May God grant us the grace to have diligent hands in all we do.
This article was first published in the January/February 2006 issue of Ministry Digest.
