Do you ever feel like things are conspiring against you?
When I look back at many of the things I’ve done to improve my live shows, few have come easily.
The launch of Anton’s Antics website back in 2012 was significantly delayed for reasons outside my control; The printing of a sticker story in time for Christmas one year was held up and cost us sales; Even recently the addition of share buttons on my blog have been faulty and problematic to fix. (Sorry!) None of this helps your brand. It’s time wasting, frustrating and costs money you don’t have. When these kind of unexpected problems arise, do you ever hear yourself say, ‘the Devil must be really against my work!’ I've often had people say this to me and thought it myself.
I don’t want to deny spiritual warfare. There is God and there is an evil one. But lately I’ve been reminded that there is another way of looking at things. It’s very pedestrian, but really important:
WORK IS HARD
Listen to what Solomon wrote from all his observations of the labours of people ‘under the sun’ in Ecclesiastes 3:10:
“I have seen the busy-ness, that God has placed on the sons of Adam to answer it”
Ok it’s a very rough translation I’ve made but note that it is actually God who has put the busyness of work on mankind and that he has handed man over to be ‘busy’ answering it. In chapter 1:13 of the same book, Solomon sums up the busyness more negatively as ‘evil busyness’ or ‘evil burden’. This evil busyness was bestowed on man by God’s curse at the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).
‘cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (ESV)
I watched an episode of Grand Designs recently where a Scottish couple faced unnecessary delays on their project because an insurance company wouldn’t pay out on a claim. What a nightmare! Work is hard. The ground doesn’t yield easily. We can’t just dig and get what we should out of it, anymore. Success is hard fought and won. For every success there’s a lot of waste and failures. For every pop star there’s 1000’s who tried but we’ll never hear of. For every mega church there’s 1000’s of ministers who can barely take a salary.
We can naively think that Christian ministry is ‘clear’ or free from that frustration or burden that God has placed on work under the sun. That since it is God’s work we are participating in, it is blessed and so we expect ‘doors to fly open’ and God to make straight paths. But any work, ministry or not, that is done under the sun, will suffer under the ‘burden’ or ‘evil busyness’ that Solomon observed.
We like to find significance in our work, so it’s not surprising we’ll reach for the ‘Devil did it’ explanation when our ministry plans go astray. Is this no more than a vain attempt to inflate our sense of purpose and worth of what we are doing?
When we present the gospel to others, God can make that word take root and grow up into eternal life. So of all our works, it is potentially the most enduring work we can do. But as long as we are under the sun, every work, including presenting the gospel, will be tainted with the heavy burden God has given us to answer.
