Working with Wood

For the last couple days I have been praying for the Spirit to convict me of sin in my life. He answered my prayer very quickly and I know I have a lot of work to do by the grace of God to be more like Christ.

I was reading through 1 Corinthians 3 when I came upon verses 10-15.

“According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw-- each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

There are times I fool myself into thinking I am completely blameless in my actions because what I am doing outwardly lines up with scripture. But isn’t this exactly what the Pharisees did? They saw themselves as holding to the law perfectly, but they ignored the evil motivations of their heart.

1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."

I can “work with wood” by doing the commandments of the Lord with the wrong attitude and motivation. If my attitude or motivation is ever about bringing glory to myself rather than Christ, then I am prideful. My attitude should be the same as that of Christ (Philippians 2:5) and my motivation should be to bring glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Constructing a building with wood requires hard work. This is why I fool myself so often. I associate my hard work of living the Christian life as automatically being right and good because I work hard at it. Working hard does not automatically mean working right. My prayer is that I will be obedient to Jesus while having the attitude of Jesus for the glory of Jesus.