Today's Timeless Task by David Jackson

David Jackson is one of the most Godly men I've ever had the honor and privilege to know. About once a month or so, he sends out an email of encouragement. I needed this reminder and encouragement today. You may, too.

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“I have finished the work which You have given me to do.” John 17.4b

When I think about the massive Messianic task that constituted Jesus’ divine calling, His short lifespan (not to mention the even briefer period of full-time ministry), and the limited number of people He engaged (not to mention the few He actually discipled), I marvel at this comment in His conversation with God. His work is finished? Really? The work to redeem a broken, lost world enslaved by evil? The work to establish a worldwide kingdom of righteousness and peace? How could His work be finished? Yet this enigmatic phrase provides us with clues for living a life fully pleasing to God, with Jesus as our pattern. Jesus was task-focused and time-conscious. You can hear that in His conversations, including such statements as: “you go up to this feast, I am not yet going…for My time has not yet fully come” (John 7.8). He was fully aware of the tasks given to Him by the Father and of the time allotted to accomplish those tasks during His first coming.

We, too, have been equipped by God with a specific calling and a timeframe. We must be careful to avoid an unhealthy focus on the overwhelming needs of a fallen world or the swift seconds ticking off the moments of our brief lives. The world is a huge mess. It needs a major overhaul at virtually every level of individual and community existence. We can’t begin to comprehend, never mind accomplish, the work required to move humanity toward the healing it so desperately needs. Jesus referred to us as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But when I consider my life, it is at best a single grain of salt that has been dropped into a vast vat of corruption. It is a single candle immersed in a deep sea of darkness. My potential impact seems so minuscule as to be completely irrelevant.

It is the mysterious and miraculous nature of God’s ways that He somehow accomplishes His eternal will through temporal vessels. His power to heal a seriously sinful world flows through small, sinful people. His everlasting kingdom comes in moment-by-moment increments, using frail, inadequate individuals. The information technology that provides an ever-open window into the local, national and global evils in our world can easily overwhelm us with the impossibility of our redemptive calling. Yet Jesus shows us by practice and parable that saving the world is done one little task at a time. Our job is to know and do that next task, which is typically right in front of us and not that hard to discern. This truth seems apparent in Jesus’ reference to Elijah’s ministry when He reminds us that of the thousands of widows in Israel who needed help in the days of Elijah, the roving prophet was tasked with helping just one of them. This appears to be Elijah’s chief focus for over a year…a year in a period of ministry that rivaled Jesus’ for brevity. Perhaps one of the key lessons gleaned from this snippet of Elijah’s life is that we each need to focus on that individual we are tasked with helping today. Despite the frequent message in many superhero movies, no one person can save the world. But you may be able to save the spiritual, emotional or even physical life of a needy person God has sovereignly placed in your path today.

At the conclusion of Jesus’ three-and-a-half-year ministry, He had but 12 men discipled and equipped as leaders for carrying on the work of the Kingdom. By almost any standard of measure, a first-century historian would have had a hard time finding evidence that the kingdom of God had indeed arrived. But the parables Jesus left us provide insightful clues as to the nature of the kingdom. It’s like a crop: you plant a few seeds, add water, nutrition and time, and you can reap a bountiful harvest. You put a little leaven in the dough and, given the allotted time, the whole lump is leavened. It can be debilitating to focus on the number of people in the world that need to be fed. But planting a single seed in the soil under your feet and tending the resulting plant as it grows is a simple, do-able assignment. I don’t have to fret about whether or not the seed will multiply as it should, for Scripture assures me that it is God who makes it grow (1 Corinthians 3.7). The growth, the final crop and the harvest are in His sovereign hands. My job is to take the seed He provided me, plant it in that portion of the ground where He placed me, water it from His inexhaustible watering source that wells up within me, pull the threatening weeds with the strength He gives me, and then watch the miracle of growth take place.

Jesus planted the seed of the gospel into the hearts of 12 disciples at His first coming and then empowered them to go into the world bearing that precious seed. Before He left, He gave them a key sign signaling His second coming: “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come” (Matthew 24.14). From twelve humble men to the four corners of the earth. Given the tools of communication and the means of travel in their first-century world, was there ever a more impossible task assigned to a handful of fishermen and tax collectors? But this is how the Kingdom works: cell by cell, task by task, using the seemingly magical method of relational multiplication. His promise to return ripens into reality when those initial 12 bits of leaven expand to penetrate the whole doughy globe. Given the penetrating extent of the leaven in our current generation, we should be watching the skies with joyous anticipation!

The question you must ask yourself as you are confronted each morning with the staggering needs of our world, is simply “which need do I tend to today?” Out of 7 billion hurting people on the planet, which person do I weep with today? In the vast sea of sickness before me, where do I throw my net today? On which wound do I apply the healing balm of God’s love and truth today? To find the work He gave YOU to do TODAY, you don’t need to look far. As previously mentioned, our ability to know what’s going on in virtually every nation of the world at any given moment easily overwhelms our sense of mission. But the soil where your seed needs to be planted is typically right underneath your feet. Your calling is within earshot. Your task is on the whiteboard hanging in your home or office. As it was with Jesus, your work is to do the will of the Father and His will is wrapped up in a unique time and place package that is delivered to your doorstep each new day. It is best unwrapped in your early time alone with Him through prayer and meditation on His Word. As you prayerfully ponder and perform each assignment, you’ll eventually begin to perceive His Spirit working out His will through your life, expanding His kingdom one stone, one task, one day at a time. And when your time is through, you should be able to say, “I finished the work You gave me to do”, in anticipation of His response “Well done, good and faithful servant”.