628 Anything But Easy - 1 Corinthians 16:9

How can you tell when you're doing what the Lord wants? Is "easy" necessarily good? 

I am Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. Thanks for joining me today. We're talking about 1 Corinthians 16, and I'm going to read verses eight and nine.

This is the end of the book where Paul is wrapping up his letter to the Corinthians. And he makes the statement in verse eight. He says, "But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries."

Do you consider adversaries a sign that you're doing what God wants? Often that's the case. Sometimes God uses difficulty to get us out of doing something or to communicate to us that we should be doing something else. But there are other times when God assures us that we should be going forward into what we're doing, and yet we still have many adversaries. 

This podcast airs on Week 2 - Day 1 of the Marketplace Mission Trip and our topic for that day is "Go!" And we talk about how we all already go. We go to work or whatever we're doing. We are where we are and God puts us to work. Paul is saying I'm staying in Ephesus because "a wide door for effective work has opened to me." He sees fruit from his work, but there are many adversaries. The adversaries are almost like a secondary sign to help Paul understand that he's doing God's will. We have an enemy. This world is operated by a standard that doesn't align with Jesus and the Bible. Our world and our flesh all operate according to Satan's desires and will.

And we're part of the insurgency if you will. We're part of God's effort to restore mankind, to a relationship with him. And so to expect things to be easy for us all the time, I think that's unreasonable. 

Paul's not running from the challenges. Paul's hanging out in the challenges. Where do we today need to hang out in the challenges? Where today might you say, "I need to invest more. I need to spend more time or give more energy." We talk about this on the Marketplace Mission Trip as being prepared to serve our coworkers, to pray for other people, and to do things to show appreciation to them because we follow Jesus. 

And that's what I want to challenge us all to do today. Let's take our relationship with Jesus and remind ourselves that we're here to do what he wants; not to do what's easy. 

I often default to easy, but I want to do what God wants. I want to listen to the Holy Spirit today and let Him prompt me on who I serve. Where can I spend a few extra minutes? Where can I take some additional time? What can I do that's extra effort so that I can show other people that my relationship with them, and my relationship with Christ is more important to me than the deadline or the timeframe. That's our action item for today. Let's find a way to invest in the lives of other people so that Jesus is glorified. 

Thanks for being a marketplace minister. If you're on our Marketplace Mission Trip way to go, keep it going.

And if you've never taken our Marketplace Mission Trip, I'd like to invite you to go to https://community.followerofone.org and sign up for the next one. There's always another mission trip scheduled just a few weeks away. 

Thank you for being a minister in the marketplace. Like I said earlier, thanks for sharing this podcast. Check us out at https://followerofone.org. Thanks very much.