Digging for The Kingdom of God

By Carol Doyel –

AS I set looking out the window watching the sun come up my heart leaps at the beauty of creation. I’ve always loved spending time outdoors touching and being touched by the beauty of God’s creation. The beauty encompasses all that God is and His character. He often teaches me “great and mighty things”, “unsearchable” things from His creation, that will never be found in a text book.

Ah, the Wisdom of God- No man can contain it, no woman speak it, no body of knowledge explain it. It can only be found in one that was here when the foundations of the world were established, yes, it’s in Christ Jesus that all wisdom is found.

It says that Jesus is the manifestation of wisdom. All wisdom in earth and in heaven. Wow! All wisdom, beyond what any man can imagine or attain through living a 100 years in a desert as a so called “desert father” might have done, or what one might learn through years of formal education, or even those who pursue it all the days of their life, in any manner, to any degree, not one will come to the full knowledge of God in this life.

There is only one who received it, one who lived it, and one who releases it through His life, by the Spirit and through the living Word, it’s Jesus. If there is anything worthy of our pursuit of a life time, it is Jesus. If you desire to study great men and great women, or want to imitate the greatest of all men, study the Messiah, Jesus Christ the son of God, the Son of Man.

We may think going to church will transform us; it can certainly be a part of the process, but if we want to become like Jesus and see His Kingdom come and His will be done, do as the disciples were told to do, “put down everything and follow me” as Jesus commanded them to do if they wanted to become like Him.

How does one put down everything? Do we leave our posts, as mothers, as wives, as homemakers, as business owners, as workers? Do we walk away from our lives, do we stop keeping our homes, building businesses, working for a wage, and move to the wilderness as John the Baptist did and pray for hours a day and eat honeycomb and locust. Well, if that’s what God asks you to do-Yes.

We need to go to the Bible to find the answers to how we’re to follow Him and for examples of those who were most like Jesus. Peter and John were two men who come to mind when I think about those who followed Jesus. They left their posts, but they continued to fish. I imagine they fished as they needed to. They were fishermen as described in the Word. And when they left their homelands to follow Jesus they left everything that was familiar to them, their friends and even their families.

We may have to leave things that are familiar to us to follow Jesus. There are probably friends that we need to stop hanging out with, maybe even family members that we need to limit our time with. I’m not suggesting that we have to abandon all of our friends and family, but who do we desire to be most like, our friends or Jesus?

The disciples changed their priorities and choose to seek God first and His righteousness over their own interests and professions, but we find them still fishing many times in scriptures. Jesus even helped them fish at times. As a matter of fact, some of their most successful fishing trips were with Jesus. Are we to leave or change our professions, some may be called to do so, but more important is that we learn to do our work with Jesus, side-by-side with Him.

When we learn to do our work with Jesus, our work will not be in vain, but it will become a whole lot easier to do it with Jesus than doing it in our own strength. Not that man cannot be successful without Jesus, but it comes at a great cost! When we work with Jesus we do not toil in vain. As Jesus suggested, lose your life for my sake and you will gain “life”, a much greater life than the one we know. We are given the opportunity to experience life more abundantly.

When we do life with Jesus, we will discover the abundance and bring the Kingdom of God to earth. There is nothing that we can do, no amount of striving, or labor that will produce the fruit that is possible by working with Jesus, because “His yoke is easy and His burden is light”.

Our work is our ministry and in some cases, our ministry is our work. Some people work in the streets, I’m not talking about street ministry, but literally working outside in the streets on the roads, or perhaps in an office, or grocery store, or at home, we all do some form of work.

And how are we to work? It says to do all things unto the Lord. So while we work we should keep in mind that whatever we do, we’re called to do it unto the Lord. Our work produces a fruit, a byproduct of our labor. Is your fruit good fruit or bad fruit? One is stretched to try to think of how digging a ditch could produce good fruit. Is it in what the work produces or is it in the process of work that the fruit is found? I submit that both are elements of the fruit.

An example is when I do something in love or out of love, versus when I do it because I have to and resent doing it. The result, good fruit or bad fruit? Well, I may get the job done but it is in my heart and in what others see as I labor that determines good fruit from bad fruit, in addition to the byproduct of my labor.

Now, I’m not saying that if you have a job digging ditches that you have to always love digging ditches. There may be days that you don’t want to dig ditches. But digging ditches allows you to build strength, you get plenty of physical exercise, you most likely get plenty of fresh air, you’re outside where you can enjoy some of the beauty that I mentioned at the beginning of this article; the beauty of creation. We can choose to be in awe, and thankful for what we do versus dreading what we have to do. And in digging ditches, it can often lead to a greater work such as building roads, laying pipe lines, opening up new territory, etc. It may even pave the way for the building of the Kingdom of God!

Those that are faithful “in” the small things will be given more. If we find serving and working a gift, and do so onto the Lord, I believe that the fruit produced will be good fruit. Further, I believe that whatever we do if we do it unto the Lord it becomes a form of worship. I recently read a statement at “The Mountain”, that said: “Worship involves music, and song, and poetry, and art, and writing, and media productions, and everything creative that can be done ‘to Glorify God’…. Lifestyle itself can reflect worship. Not every lifestyle reflects worship… but every life should!”

It is in the doing of life as we follow Jesus; in the digging of ditches, or what may seem like day-to-day monotony of homemaking, or whatever work you do day-to-day, if we do it in a position of worship towards the Lord, we will produce good fruit. We will make a difference right where we are. The God who sees-“El Roi” sees what we do and the Kingdom of God will be manifested through our life through the work we do.

So go and follow Jesus, as you fish, build bridges, establish businesses, pastor churches and live! And may you do it onto the Lord so that you might see the kingdom of God come forth on earth as it is in heaven, because it is what God has deposited within you that the Kingdom of God is found. He has placed those gifts or talents in you to build The Kingdom of God. Go and dig!