We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one will be able to work (John 9:4).
Jesus had a tight schedule. He understood just how tight it was. He had work to accomplish in history. He knew that the end of the Old Covenant era was almost upon Israel. He had to prepare His disciples for this transition. They in turn had to prepare their disciples for the New Covenant era. The two covenant eras overlapped in Jesus’ day and the apostles’ day. This overlap ended with the fall of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple in A.D. 70. For a discussion of this, read David Chilton’s book, The Great Tribulation (1987). (http://bit.ly/ChilTrib)
You and I do not face a transition comparable this. We therefore are not under comparably tight time schedules. But time waits for no man. Our allotment of days remaining is shrinking, day by day. With each day’s passing, there is less time to accomplish our tasks. At some point, working harder and working smarter cannot make up for lost time. There is insufficient time remaining. We must then start wrapping up our legacies in preparation for our personal transition out of history. I assume that I am at that stage. What about you?
You have read Part I. I went through five areas of your personal covenantal responsibility: dominion covenant, individual covenant, family covenant, church covenant, and civil covenant. If you believe what I wrote, you now have a sense of the magnitude of what it takes to be an effective covenant-keeper. It is a great deal more than what most churches teach their members. The amount of time that you must devote to fulfilling the dominion covenant in your life is large. And remember this: I limited my discussions in Part I to economics. There is far more to life than economics.
Part II will add to your sense of obligation. This may overwhelm you. There are other areas of responsibility in your life. I cover five of them: calling, job, volunteering, education, and business. Four of the five are mandatory for most people. The last one, business, offers an opportunity for great wealth, but also likely losses. Most people are not entrepreneurs or speculators. They will not take advantage of this area of service. But God has selected a calling for everyone, although most people are not self-conscious about God’s all. They do not hear it in their lives. A tiny handful of people do not have jobs: the very rich, the mentally deficient, and the retired. But you probably have one. It may be salaried. It may not be. But adults normally have regular assigned tasks they must perform on behalf of others, and for which they are compensated in some way.
To the extent that your calling and your job are not connected to your responsibilities in family, church, or state, these to areas constitute additional opportunities for Christian service. The same is true of volunteering. Opportunities for service are inescapably connected to responsibilities. They are also connected to education, if only self-education. So, you may have four additional areas of service. These eat up more of your time and possibly also money. This means that you must budget your time even more rigorously.
I do not want to overwhelm you. People who are overwhelmed often quit in despair. I am attempting to persuade you to take the other approach: exercise greater self-discipline. You must get in far greater control of your time than you have done in the past. This is not easy. Most people never achieve this. But for those who do, their output increases. Their influence increases. Maybe their wealth increases. Their leadership skills increase.
Why does God require so much of His people? Because there is so much to do. The world is to be redeemed: bought back. The world is big. But God has given us all the time we need. If you doubt this, read David Chilton’s book, Paradise Restored (1985). (http://bit.ly/dcparadise) We must therefore be patient. We must not imitate Adam.
Covenant-keepers are not supposed to coast through life. Jesus did not coast through life. Neither did the apostles. They also did not procrastinate. They worked, for they understood that the covenantal night was coming. For us, that night is long gone. The day of the New Covenant replaced it after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D.70. But our personal nights are coming, one by one.
You may have lacked a sense of purpose in your life. Because you have read Part I, this missing sense of purpose may have begun to bother you. If it has, perhaps Part II will bother you even more. I recommend the words of James. “But if any of you needs wisdom, let him ask for it from God, the one who gives generously and without rebuke to all who ask, and he will give it to him. But let him ask in faith, doubting nothing. For anyone who doubts is like a wave in the sea that is driven by the wind and tossed around. For that person must not think that he will receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:5–8).
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