I believe there should be a balance on this issue. Primarily we should "Abide" in Christ, resting in Him, relying on Him, worshipping and praising Him for the great things He has done for us through His death and resurrection. Then, out of that gratitude and worship we should be about the Father's business, seeking and saving that which is lost, following in His footsteps. Did He not say we should work while there is still time, and that the time is coming when we cannot work anymore?(forgot the exact verse in John).
There is a danger of going extreme on both sides. On the one hand, you can work out of obligation and in the flesh without seeking His face first and abiding in Him. On the other hand, we can seek intimacy with Him to the exclusion of working for Him in His vineyard, and we can get cozy and comfortable and lazy and make excuses. I have seen Christians on both extremes. I am learning of the need to to both, Abide and work at the same time.

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Oracio

Brethren,

This has been an interesting discussion. I appreciate how the rebuttal temperature here is staying pretty low. I know a discussion is good and level-headed when many of the SI old-timers are present. :D

However, I do have somewhat to say to some of us newer-comers. Before we dissect Jimmy too much, please consider the words of John Bunyan in the afterword to the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress:

THE CONCLUSION

Now Reader I have told my dream to thee,
See if thou canst interpret it to me,
Or to thyself or neighbour; but take heed
Of misinterpreting, for that instead
Of doing good, will thyself abuse:
By misinterpreting evil ensues.

Take heed also that thou be not extreme
In playing with the outside of my dream:
Nor let my figure or similitude
Put thee into a laughter or a feud.

Leave this for boys and fools, but as for thee,
Do thou the substance of my matter see.
Put by the curtains, look within my veil,
Turn up my metaphors and do not fail;
There, if thou seekest them, such things thou wilt find
As will be helpful to an honest mind.

What if my dross thou findest here, be bold
To throw away, but yet preserve the gold.
What if my gold be wrapped up in ore?
None throw away the apple for the core.

But if thou wilt cast all away as vain,
I know not but 'twill make me dream again.

Everything we humans do will have flaws in it... especially our philosophical works. There will always be little details upon which we will not agree.

Yes, we should be Bereans and "search the Scriptures daily," to "see if these things are so." But let's be careful to be gracious as we do so.

Devotional thoughts are great to inspire meditation. But let's remember that these are just devotional thoughts, and not doctrinal theses.

I want to take the gold Jimmy provided for us, and leave the ore behind. We've got a good apple to eat here, so let's eat it and not worry about the core. :)

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Ryan G.

Thats good, NewCov. Jimmy, thanks for stimulating good conversation and JimmyHudson, many of the things on your list are what Christians do and love to do because they love the Lord. My apologies if I was too "dissecting".

Eat the chicken and spit out the bones is always a good thing to do. Those bones can hurt if you're not careful.

I was thinking, there are many, many paradoxes in God's Word, yet to the Spiritual Man, they have meaning and yet to the Natural Man, they are jibberish.

For instance, we are talking about works, yet His works and not ours and to rest and not to strive. Wow! A challenge to all of us until we die.

We are called to Rest (true), and yet we are called to RUN (the race). What kind of REST are we called to? The Scriptures explain that we are called to rest from our own works.

Heb 4:9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
Heb 4:10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Jesus was always at rest, yet was always working. Yet, we know that those that are in the flesh cannot please God. Jesus was never "in the flesh", so all of His works that He did were "wrought in God".

We cannot say the same thing. We are not always walking in the Spirit, therefore we do not always please God since when we walk in the flesh we cannot please God and then any "works" we do are obviously not wrought in God.

Joh 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

The Christian life is not a passive life. The Christian life is a very active life and doing the work of God can keep you quite busy, but at the same time He wants us to be at rest in our spirit. We will be at rest if He is authoring the work, but we will have no rest if they are works from our own strivings.

Jesus says,
Joh 5:36 But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.

Jesus is our BLUEPRINT, always working, yet always resting, always running the race yet always listening to His Father.

Again, just like Jesus, a Christian should not be passive because the Holy Spirit is not passive. If we are not moving forward our heart has probably been captured by something or someone other than the Lord.

The works of a Christian are what I think one could call it "a quiet sort of busy." That is, we labor, and we labor diligently in what we do. But we do it out of the rest of God we enjoy in Christ, simply walking in the works He already planned for us to walk in since the foundation of the world.

LOL. The phrase "A Quiet Sort of Busy" could be a trendy/catchy sounding Christian book title. :-)

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Jimmy H