Slavery turns human beings into assets. The master makes demands with no concern for our well-being. Manipulation and fear are all wielded to get the slaves to do whatever the master wants. And many of us, when the alarm goes off, are hearing the call of our master. When the phone vibrates, the whip cracks.
Most of us wouldn't call this slavery, and in a strict sense it's not. But for many of us, we functionally have a master that manipulates and demands. Questions of worth and value beat us into obedience. Doubts in our performance make us suffer throughout the day.
The job of our dreams can be a cruel task-master - it robs us of our joy, separates our family, and even leaves us with emotional scars.
We all have a master. We are all trying to keep someone (or something) happy. Gratification is the law we adhere by. Do whatever it takes to make the master happy.
@@When self-gratification is the master, we go on a never-ending pursuit for more.@@ We can achieve more but the bar gets set higher. We make more only to find out there's still more to be made. It's a never ending pursuit to please an unappeasable master. It leaves us exhausted and never able to measure up.
With others, we rely on our performance to make others happy. Their approval signifies our worth. We want to make mom and dad proud. We want our neighbors to be impressed. We are waiting for the boss to give us a pat on the back. Occasionally we manage succeed and have an opportunity for celebration, but more often than not we are crushed because our performance failed to make the master happy. We are crushed because when our master isn't gratified, it threatens our worth.
And then there's God. The moment we try to make our work about gratifying God, we've twisted work into something it was never meant to be. When we turn work into merits for God's approval, our work is never spiritual enough and we've never done enough. We get beaten with no mercy as we look for good enough, hard enough, and spiritual enough and still find that it's not enough.
If the God you are doing your work for needs your work in order to be pleased, he's not God. @@God is already pleased with your work because Jesus is enough.@@
In Galatians 5:1 Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Jesus came to set prisoners free.
Whether you are slave to the imaginary deity that needs to be pleased by your efforts or you are slave to the gods of money, self-employment, or influence - Jesus’ blood breaks those chains. The grace of Jesus calls you out of slavery and into freedom. God is pleased with you because of what Christ has done. If you're trying to do your work to make God happy, you can rest assured that God is pleased and it has nothing to do with you.
We are free to do our work because God is already gratified on account of Jesus.