I have this dream of having a blog that’s active and continuously helpful to my audience, who in my dream is a lot larger than a blog’s audience can realistically become without selling Google ads or something like that. It’s a pretty great dream; I feel accomplished, others feel encouraged, and everybody is happy. Sadly, I have failed to meet my goal of “write at least one blog per week” about eighty-seven times at this point, and I think a more realistic goal would be, “write at least one blog per year.” That’s a good goal, because it’s accomplished by this very post. Great job, Steve! You’re doing it—you’re really doing it!
We all have lots to do, all the time. Blogging just seems like work sometimes. Other times, it seems like I can’t blog precisely because I have other work to do. I’m convinced that we are born with the necessity to be busy, like a “to-do list” app that comes pre-installed on your phone and can’t be deleted. Everyone is rushed and overwhelmed, and when they’re not, they’re thinking about the next time they will be. Yet, some things seem easy, even when they require a lot of work. Blogging is clearly not one of those things for me yet. It takes a lot effort to become good at a sport or game, but people put in the time without a second thought because it’s fun. They enjoy it. There’s some sort of affection for it.
It’s really interesting to me how love can turn things around so drastically. In Genesis 29, Jacob falls in love with Rachel, and agrees to work for her father for seven years in order to marry her. Then the father cons Jacob into another seven years of work. I’m sure that Jacob had a lot of blog material that would not be encouraging, to say the least, after that (see verse 25)! Yet he served willingly, and the reason was that he was in love with Rachel.
The story of Jacob and Rachel teaches us, thousands of years later, that love turns years into days and labor into joy. That’s not to say that there won’t be times when we have to push ourselves, and when our work or service makes us tired. If we all have a pre-installed “to-do list” app, we also have a battery that requires charging sometimes, regardless of how we feel about what we’re doing. But there’s something about love that motivates us when all other means of motivation have failed. Paul really was on to something when he said that love “always perseveres [and] never fails.“
“What if I hate what I do?” No worries, surprisingly enough. The great thing is that we don’t have to be in love with everything we do to have love motivate everything we do. Paul exhorts us to “work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.” What that means is that you don’t have to force yourself to love your job. You don’t have to pretend to love schoolwork. You simply have to adjust your angle; change your context; modify your mindset. If I can position my perspective correctly, I don’t have to love blogging—I just have to love Jesus, and let my motivation for Him power my work.
I realize that blogging isn’t the best example…but it’s the one I’m working with. What is it for you? If we can identify the things we don’t like doing, we can start to use our love for Jesus to power our labor for the world. That’s a good goal, and it can be accomplished this very moment with a simple decision to bring what you do under the umbrella of who you love!
(Not convinced? Check these out: 1 Corinthians 10:31, Ephesians 4:11-13—”for works of service”, Philippians 4:13)
