Our Best

 

I’m hosting my Sunday School Class Christmas Party tomorrow. I want to do my best to make them feel special and welcome. I’m doing some pre-preparation today. A trial run on setting the table, meat marinating in the refrigerator…That sort of thing.

My dishes are old. I bought them over the years at discount stores that no longer exist and most people haven’t even heard of. Some of them are chipped because the shelves collapsed several years ago and broke some of them. I have my mother’s silverplate flatware. Not sterling. I don’t know where my mother got it, but it’s possible it came from a time when a piece of silverware came in a sack of flour. A few of pieces are cloudy, possibly because I tried too hard to clean the tarnish at some point. I’m short one dessert fork, so someone will have a mismatched one. I have 2 brass chargers and several plastic ones that don’t all match. It’s not the best but it’s the best I have. 

Before we accepted God's gift of redemption through Jesus' sacrificial death and powerful resurrection, we were broken and chipped. We might have looked like silver on the outside, but on the inside, we were not. When we tried to make ourselves clean, we failed. The tarnish of our sin does not come off by our efforts. Our righteousness did not even come close to matching His righteousness. We are totally unworthy by our own efforts. We are like my place settings. 

This made me think about our desire to do our best for God. The only way we can serve God like we should is to yield to Him, allow His Spirit to work in us. 

1 Corinthians 15:9-10 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by God’s grace I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not ineffective. However, I worked more than any of them, yet not I, but God’s grace that was with me.

Paul knew that he was unworthy, but that God used him, not because of how hard he worked, but because God’s grace worked in him and through him.

God does expect us to bring the best we have. 

Exodus 23:19a “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your land to the house of the Lord your God. 

What that means to me is keeping my focus on God, realizing that He is Lord. The King of Kings. Lord of Lords. Creator. Sustainer. My strength. My security. But I don’t always bring Him my best. I can almost hear a coach yelling at a player, “Get your head in the game!” Don’t we all sometimes lose our focus on God. We don’t have our heads in the game. We aren’t bringing Him our best. The way to bring Him our best is to keep our eyes on Him and allow Him to produce fruit/results in us. 

Even in our daily tasks, like preparing for a Sunday School Class Party, God expects our focus to be on Him, because everything we do should be for Him. 

Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ.