Building Things Of Eternal Value

The Headship of Jesus means we belong to Him, and everything we have been given. It also means that we shouldn’t just go our own way, but follow His direction.

On the other hand, look for a moment in Philippians 2:16. Paul says:

“... that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.”

I want to suggest to you if you are doing your own thing and working on your own plans and your own projects, in ‘that day’, I’m very sorry to tell you, you’ll discover that you’ve labored in vain and run in vain. I’m probably nearer to eternity than most of you here. And for me this is a very serious matter. I ’ve devoted the biggest part of my life to serving the Lord and I don’t want to end up with a zero when I stand in front of God.

Paul warned us in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13 you can pile up material: wood, hay, stubble; but there’s coming a fire that will consume it in an instant. You’ll be saved. The New International Version says “the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.” But all your works will be burned up. It is my personal conviction everything that God has not initiated will be burned up because it’s contrary to the principles that He’s laid down, the principle of headship.

Please allow me to ask you a few probing questions coming to the end of this message. Let’s make some personal application. I mentioned before that, for five years, I trained teachers in Africa for African primary and intermediate schools. They had to make a lesson plan on certain stages. But the end was application, to check that the children had really learned the lesson. My poor student teachers, they failed on the application.

I remember a young man; he was teaching a lesson on sanitation —to give it a very respectable title. Or, as they call it, the Kenya long drop. And he had a beautiful lesson plan and wonderful diagrams on the board! When he finished, he stood there with his arms folded waiting for me to approve. I tiptoed around the class and I looked at what the children had gotten in their exercise books. It didn’t have any relationship to what he had on the board. So, I had to deflate him and say: “you taught all right but they learned nothing.”

So, let’s have the application. I’m going to ask you a series of questions. This is the first: how much has God really initiated in your individual life? Just mentally run over the things you ’re involved in right now, the things you’re giving your time and strength and ability to. And say has God initiated those?