What's the point?

I just finished up at a leadership conference and I was reading through Acts tonight and this scripture caught my eye:

"We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus." -Acts 15:11

This got me thinking along the lines of what Tim Keller was talking about at the conference.

He talked about the story of the prodigal son (funny how that keeps popping up) from the perspective of the older brother.

Basically, the way this all came together in my head was that it is very easy to lose sight of this verse, and this verse's meaning when we get deeply involved in ministry.

We are saved by the UNDESERVED grace of Jesus.

Many times Christ followers will start to "work for God" and volunteer at their local church.

I want to go on record and say that I personally think that is the best way to connect with people in a church.

But as always, we have to be careful.

Anyways, a person starts volunteering at a church, or is on staff, and soon gains responsibilities and jobs.

They have a list of tasks that they want to get done every weekend, and get done with excellence. This is anyone from a person who hands out bulletins to the lead pastor.

We all start to get into this cycle of trying to constantly improve work. We spend more and more time on how to do a better job, instead of spending that time with God.

We start to pour all of our effort and time into our ministry under the banner of "God's Calling", and in a twisted way, we start to worship the ministry and not our God who is behind it.

We become so focused on our work that we put it up on a pedestal. We begin to prioritize our work for God above our relationship with God. We worship our work, worship those who excel in the area of our ministry, worship the strategy behind an effective ministry like ours, we begin to worship ourselves for our accomplishments in our ministry.

In a short matter of time, we have convinced ourselves that our work for God is more important than God. In a sense, our ministry is more vital to us than God's grace.

If we're not careful we may begin to think that our work is critical to how God views us, forgetting how He loves complete failures and successful people.

If that happens, we will be under constant pressure to please God through our work.

If we are trying to work hard enough for God to love us, then we in essence are trying to WORK for our SALVATION.

We put ourselves in this pressure cooker to live up to God's perfect standards and actually get lost in our work, instead of getting lost in our God and his salvation through grace.

We are saved by the undeserved grace of Jesus Christ.

Plain and simple.

We don't deserve. Never can, never will. No matter how hard we work, we will never be good enough for God's standards.

Yet through His love, and His son's death on a cross, God gives us His saving grace as a free gift that is unearned and undeserved.

It is not we do. It is what Jesus has done.

We can't forget that.

You're ministry is important to God. You are changing lives!

Just be careful that your ministry doesn't become a matter of eternal life or death to you.

Yes, you should focus on your work. But focus more on emulating the spirit of God through your work, and your work will take care of itself.