What is He Accomplishing Through Me? (18)

I love it when a project comes together.  When you sweat, toil, the fruit of your labor is sweet; the feeling is just grand.  I remember all the hard work I put into our backyard.  Well, it really wasn't a “yard” 7 years ago.  It was more a glorified wood chip garden with a slope.  It had two paths, marked out by a darker, cedar-colored wood chip variety that led to a flat of dirt.  The only thing exotic about it were a few exotic perennials, ordered to sprout each year somewhere in the middle of the wood chips.  With a 1 year old, we looked at each other and said, “Something has got to be done.” 

Over the course of the next few years, and a whole lot of planning and sweat, we now have a backyard.  Small as it is, it is covered with fresh, green grass, perennials that sprout in several corners, periwinkle ground cover that springs from the corner of a brick patio, and level ground to run on.  It is a beautiful little piece of God’s heaven back there, a great place to relax with friends and play with the kids.

How good it feels to accomplish something after laboring many hours over it.  Yet when I read Romans 15, I wonder if I have spent too much time on it.  Paul has left everything, completely attempting to die to himself and his desires, and preaches.  He feels accomplished by what God is doing using him.  But his preaching isn’t in the easy, comfortable areas.  In fact, he intentionally tries not to preach in areas he or anyone else has already been to.  His ambition is to preach the gospel where it has not been heard, to meet people who have never heard the good news.

It’s not that gardening and yard work is wrong.  I guess what hits me is his passion to reach others who haven’t heard about Christ.  In my yard work, I love to work on that which is mine and beautify that which God has given me, bringing it to its fullest potential, but how often it is that I seek that than seeking the lost.  How often it is that I stay within the confines of my property, rarely going out to meet other neighbors – except for the ones I already know – and sharing His good news.

Paul is excited by the work he is doing, the harvest he is reaping, but most of all, it isn’t about his work.  He’s not boasting about what God is doing in him, making him better or greater, priding in the miraculous works Christ has allowed him to do.  Rather, Paul is excited for the work that is happening through him.  Paul understands that it isn’t about him and it never will be about him.  He knows he is a tool in the master’s tool belt and he feels honored to be used in His service, to be held in the master’s hand.

I pray that every time I grab a rake, a shovel, the cultivator, the edger, I will ask myself, “Have I submitted myself to him today, to be used by Him, just as this tool 'submits' to my authority?"

¹⁴ I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another. ¹⁵ I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me ¹⁶ to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

¹⁷ Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— ¹⁹ by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. ²⁰ It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. ²¹ Rather, as it is written:

“Those who were not told about him will see,
   and those who have not heard will understand.”

²² This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.

Romans 15:14-22

18 days!