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“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”
Matthew 7:21 NKJV
As I was spending time with the Lord this verse stood out to me. We so often define ourselves by what we do that it’s easy to take this verse as a command to “work” for the Lord. How many times have you found yourself burned out from ministry? How often have you volunteered for something and later had a heavy heart about it? All of us live in a world that tells us we have to do more to be worthy and acceptable. But if you read further in the chapter we see that it was not their labor that made them acceptable. I believe God is telling us to love like He loves and we can only do that if the first and foremost effort of our lives is to deepen our relationship with Him.
It is through time spent that we build the space for love to grow and that takes time, effort and commitment to truly get to know one another. God is longing for that relationship with each of us. I often see people who focus on “doing something “ with their gifts or so wrapped up in their “ministry” that they burn out due to frantic efforts He never asked for.
It is just my two cents but I believe that we can often skip over the single most important part of this faith journey and that is loving Jesus. When you love someone you are enraptured with the details of who they are, how they feel about things, what gives them joy and what hurts their hearts. It is like breath to your lungs to see them smile. I truly believe that if we never accomplished anything but truly loving God and allowing that love to flow to others we will hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.”