Be Involved, For God & Community

Word-of-the-Day: ‘(23) Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, (24) since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.’ (Colossians 3:23-24)

We often see organizations and the government, and the individuals composing these entities working in ways that only help themselves.  Often a ‘non-profit’ organization promotes itself as helping a target community in need, such as veterans or those afflicted with a disease or illness, but find out the leadership of these charitable organizations have only pennies going to the cause and large percentages of the donations going to the leaders.  Government also seems to have its ‘grifters’, where our elected officials during election time speak what we want them to do in representing us, then upon election change their votes to who contributes the most to their re-election campaign fund.

The commonality is the focus on ‘self’ and not ‘community’.  It is not always profitable to be community-minded, but it is often more rewarding.  Fortunately, those who are close to me who work for charitable organizations are community-minded and thus are blessing with the rewards of helping individuals in need, without financial enrichment or fame for themselves but the knowledge they are truly making a difference in meeting the needs of those who are in need.

The context of Colossians 3:23-24 is in the Christian household and the Christian ethic for each member.  As with ‘community’, the family needs each individual to play their part, and God’s plan for the family assigns responsibilities to each member to have it properly function.  Paul wrote it in the ‘micro’, or the focus of the family unit.  However, it also works in the terms of the ‘macro’ or larger community; a church, a company, and even a nation.

For an individual, a family, or an organization to prosper and properly operate, everyone must adhere to doing their part without selfishness or greed.  A father or mother needs to be willing to share their time, talents and treasures to each other and especially the children; a selfish member withholding these hinders the family from unity, and brings division into it. 

The knowledge that a parent has must be shared with the children, else the children will be handicapped with ignorance as they approach adulthood.  The biggest issue today is the parent, or parents, who can’t be bothered with child-raising and instead allow the child unfettered access to the internet or to video games, and fail to teach the child anything about work ethic, or worse, anything related to knowledge and Faith in Christ.

We also see this in the church today; the focus on self outweighs the needs of serving the Lord.  The long-standing belief is 80% of the work in church is done by 20% of the people; I personally believe it is more ‘95% of the work is done by 5%’, the same 5% who are willing end up volunteering over and over while the majority sit, watch, and are entertained.

The younger generations who have been ignored by their parents are taking this lesson into their adulthood; church attendance is dropping overall and churches are attempting to keep people through promoting improper but popular doctrines that teaching ungodly principles to attract the people. 

The principle, however, should be to focus on God first, not to sit on the sidelines, but to serve and please Him by obeying His Word, and not worry about pleasing either self or others.  We should not be focusing on our happiness but how we please God; the family is best served through teaching the children lessons that they may not want to hear or do but need in order to be productive adults and prayerfully Faithful Christians.

All the work we do for the Lord is to worship Him and to promote His ways and all point to the Great Commission Jesus gave us before His Ascension.  Talking to your children about Godly principles, or finding an opportunity to serve your church or community, not for ‘self’ but for the betterment of ‘community’ and the promotion of Christ, are all necessary efforts in the body of Christ.  Any effort helps the cause of Jesus, and giving your self over the needs of your family, your church and your community is the best thing you can do for yourself, Spiritually and mentality.