It's been a rough year, I've been feeling like a lot of things have been in vain. I recently came across this article by an author that I really respect, Jim McGuiggan (from his website www.jimmcguiggan.com) and it's just what I needed to hear. Maybe you need to hear it too.
Working in Vain
In 1 Corinthians 15:58 Paul said, “Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
Assuming you are in the Lord Jesus and you live to further his purpose your efforts are never in vain, he said.
Oh! Really? Can that be true? Did Paul not get carried away with the grandeur of the thought of the future triumph over death and the grave and say more than he really believed?
Your efforts are never in vain? Even when you tried to win your parents for the Lord Jesus and they died far from him? Even when we’ve prayed and worked to bring our children into a saving and transforming relation with God and they spurned it and spiraled down to permanent loss? Even when we worked for years to build a little business of truth and honesty and fairness only to see it collapse in an economic downturn that resulted in our losing our homes and living in a hostel. How can these and many other instances not be labor in vain?
Well, we’re not to be silly; we’re not to pretend we got what we aimed for when we manifestly did not! Even Paul said he was afraid he might have labored in vain with the Galatians [4.11 and see 2:2] and God admitted that even his loving chastisement of the nation failed to bring the response he was looking for [Jeremiah 2:30]—I chastised you in vain, he said.
So Paul’s word to the Corinthians means nothing? Hardly! What we do for the Lord’s sake is never wasted. What we do to honor him and further his loving purpose is never in vain even if it doesn’t bring the “success” we hoped for, even if it ends in “failure”. What is done out of love is always the right thing to do and a record is kept of it. A cup of cold water in Jesus’ name is never forgotten and it shapes the world even now and prophesies of a world of the future.
A mother running back into a burning building to save her child may lose her life along with the child but her loving act isn’t wasted. She doesn’t achieve what she wanted but what she has done changes the world. It inspires, reveals, strengthens, kills cynicism, and having heard of what she has done we secretly [or openly] wish we were more like her.
What great men or women do for us is this, said Wordsworth, they do something that we haven’t seen before and having done it we are no longer content with less than that.
Broken-hearted parents, distraught children, devoted friends, preachers working for years with tiny out-of-the-way congregations—anyone, everyone, who has done something for the Lord Jesus though they didn’t gain what they were longing for have not labored in vain. All that is shaped by and done for the Lord Jesus is observed, remembered and has its reward in the Lord.
