June 4 – Work to the Glory of God

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called.” 1 Corinthians 7:20

Most of the employments of life are, in their own nature, lawful. And all those so may be made a substantial part of our duty to God if we engage in them only so far and for such ends as are suitable to beings that are to live above the world. This is the only measure of our application to any worldly business: it must have no more of our hands, our hearts, or our time than is consistent with a hearty, daily, careful preparation of ourselves for another life. For since all true Christians have renounced this world to prepare themselves, by daily devotion and universal holiness, for an eternal state of quite another nature, they must look upon worldly employments as upon worldly wants and bodily infirmities — things not to be desired but merely to be endured until death and the resurrection have carried us to an eternal state of real happiness.

A person called into the kingdom of grace is not designed to make void the duties that arise from his peculiar calling or situation in life — but to enforce the practice of them in such a way as may be most to the glory of God. He must be no less diligent in business than fervent in spirit. He, therefore, that does not consider the things of this life as of little moment, or even nothing, in comparison to the things that are eternal, cannot be said either to feel or believe the greatest truths of Christianity; yet he who does not provide for his own house is worse than an infidel.

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)