Date: April 19, 2023|Series: Youth for Jesus|Number: Vol. 5, No. 49
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (Gen 1:31NIV)
Why are we taught in Scriptures to imitate God? It is because we can do so. If we could not imitate God, we would not be told to do so. But because we have been created in His image and after His likeness, we have what it takes to imitate Him. And that is exactly why we are told to do so. (Cf. Gen 1:27; Eph 4:24; Eph 5:1)
Now in what ways are we to imitate God? We actually have several instructions in Scriptures pointing us to ways in which we are to imitate Him. But the one I want to draw your attention to has to do with the way we handle our work. How, then, are we to imitate God in the way we handle our work? Or what exactly are we to imitate in the way God handles His work?
As we see in the book of Genesis, everything God made in the beginning was good, perfect and flawless. In fact, in our opening bible text, we are told that when God was done with all His work in the beginning, He Himself testified that all that He had done was very good. And why was His work very good? It was very good because He Himself is a good God. So, He cannot do anything that will not fully communicate His goodness or carry the trademark of His excellency.
That being the case, we too, who are God’s children and creation, must learn to function with the same mentality. We must continually say to ourselves, “I am God’s child and creation. So, I cannot do anything that will not fully communicate the goodness and excellency of God my Father.” And until we begin to function with this mindset, we will not stop handling our jobs and anything else that we lay our hands on anyhow.
When God started the work of creation, His focus was not to create a universe that He would have to come around to repair every now and then. Rather, His focus was to create a universe that would have all that it would need to transform itself with ever-increasing glory. That is why He has never had to repair the sun, the moon or any of the stars. And none of them has ever failed to live up to expectations.
Also, observed that God has never had to put any new thing here on earth since He created it in the beginning. Why? It is because He put in it right from the beginning everything that we would need to make it a wonder. So, we are the ones to do the investigating and searching. We are the ones to labour to find out the things He has placed here on earth to beautify it and make it most enjoyable for us. And ever since some of us have been doing that, we have been finding the earth to be more and more interesting to live in.
You can see, then, that when God judged all His works as very good, He was not overrating Himself. He did a very good creation job in the beginning. And whatever mess we are seeing in the world right now was not made by Him but by us through our sins and various scheming. (Cf. Ecc 7:29)
In any case, I said all of that to show you what we ought to imitate in God about our work. And that has to do with making the works of our hands very good too. In other words, just like God, whenever we are done with anything, we should be able to tell ourselves that what we have done is very good and will truly serve the purpose for which we have done it. But our works will not be very good, if our goal is not to make them very good. No, our works will not be very good, if our minds have not been renewed to embrace the fact that we were originally created by God to do good works and that everything we do must bear testimony to this fact, whether it is spiritual or natural. (Cf. Eph 2:10)
Look, doing things that are not good, things that are substandard, things that are of low quality and things that will not fully serve the purpose for which they are done is contrary to our nature and also to the will of God for us. In fact, we should consider it shameful and beneath us to do such things. So, if you are a child of God, you need to cleanse yourself of every culture of doing things anyhow, of doing things that will make those who are going to use them mad or upset with you.
Yes, sometimes, it is people that will compel you to go below what you know to be good and acceptable because they want something cheap. Yet they are the ones that will go about ridiculing your work as substandard or worthless. So, don’t allow anybody to kill the goodness of your work because of money. That is because it is not a must that you serve everyone. If you have to serve anyone, then, be sure to take from them what will make you serve them well. That way, the goodness of your work or service will by itself continually speak for you. And you will be proved to be a true child of God, your Father, whose eternal goal is to always make everything very good.