Jesus said His Father — our God — is always working, and so was He. The call to work is one of God’s gifts to mankind. We derive pleasure and pride from what we accomplish. When our service is God-directed, when we are acting in His will, the reward is sweeter. To experience that joy, to claim God’s promise, we must humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and repent from our evil ways; then
He promises to hear our prayer, forgive our sins, and heal our land.
CHRISTIAN MESSAGE By WARD PIMLEY
But Jesus answered them, “To this very day My Father is at His work, and I too am working.” – John 5:17 BSB
“For who has despised the day of small things?” – Zechariah 4:10 NKJV
GOD IS ALWAYS WORKING, yet from our limited and temporal perspectives, we often miss seeing what He is doing, unless we are actively looking for it, unless we want to find it.
How often we find it much easier to see what God is doing in our lives when we look backward, instead of forward, to see how He has managed to combine events and bring people into our lives that have changed us in some way.
However, when we look in front of us, we often miss what God is doing now, or how He is preparing us now, for what lies ahead.
There’s that famous example of someone walking along the shoreline who sees two sets of footprints — one set beside the other — and then sees only one set of footprints, and asks, “Lord, where were You when I needed You?” — and the Lord replies, “See where there’s only one set of footprints? Those were Mine. That’s when I was carrying You.”
In my own life, I can see, looking backward, how God has intervened when I’ve humbled myself and asked Him for help and He has carried me for a term.
Of course, He won’t always carry us because, without our struggles, there’s no growth, so He’ll gently let us down from His strong shoulders to resume walking beside us. He doesn’t abandon us; He just shifts position.
~GLORY IN WORK~
IN OUR BIBLICAL TEXT, Jesus had just healed a man who had been lame for 38 years. This was the Sabbath, and Jesus and His followers were on their way to worship.
The Lord saw the man resting beside a pool with others who were blind or deaf or lame, and Jesus had told the man to stand up, pick up his pallet, and walk. As the man obeyed, he was healed.
While the man obeyed Jesus, carrying one’s pallet on the Sabbath — plus healing a lame man on the Sabbath — were both forbidden by the Jewish leaders.
When the leaders questioned Jesus about His healing on the Sabbath and directing the man to pick up his pallet on the Sabbath, Jesus replied that He and His Father were always working, even on the Sabbath!
That added another problem with the Jewish leaders — for Jesus was equating Himself with God — which, we know, He was and is.
Jesus used that example to teach the eternal presence of God in our lives, that the Sabbath is holy but it was made for man, not the other way around, that He was and is God, and that there is dignity and worth in working.
It is worth noting, again, that the man who was lame was not healed until he obeyed Jesus’ command to stand up; then, he could pick up his pallet and walk.
~ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE~
THIS PASSAGE IS LOADED with meaning. Besides the ones we just mentioned, there were at least two more important lessons.
One is that God has an eternal perspective while our viewpoint is very limited. At most, we see what’s happening to us and around us right now, and as we’ve noted, often we miss it, but God sees today’s events as part of the eternal landscape. It takes faith on our part to recognize that God is working even now when we cannot understand what He is doing or why He is doing it.
Besides the eternal perspective, the other meaning from our passage is that God calls on us to help in His work. In the passage we cited, Jesus did not just heal the man; He asked if the man wanted to be healed. Was he even interested in hearing from God and doing what God asked him to do.
We were to find out. Jesus told him to pick up his pallet and walk. It was in the doing that the lame man was made whole.
~WISP OF SMOKE~
WHEN WE ASK GOD for guidance, we want ASAP, yet God works through eternity. Our days are numbered; His are unlimited. He exists from eternity past to eternity future, while our lives are a wisp of smoke.
That’s why He calls us to faith – to believe those things that we cannot see and to trust that He is working out His eternal and universal plan in our lives even at this very moment.
When we look behind us, we are more likely to see the progress, the change, the work that He has done.
When we look ahead, we often see a blank slate. God sees what He will do … but we have to wait, in faith, that He will act; in fact, to see that He is acting. We will see it in time, if not right away.
In the Old Testament, God is speaking through the prophet Zechariah to tell His people these three truths: “You will succeed, not by military might or by your own strength, but by my spirit”; “For who has despised the day of small things?”; and “This shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.” (Zech. 4:6 GNT; Zech. 4:10 NKJV; Zech. 6:15 ESV)
The Bible tells us not to despise “the day of small things,” of limited progress (at least, to our eyes), because the days pile on, one after another, one month after another, one year after another, one decade after another, and then that compilation of “small things” over time becomes something grand.
Just as a little faith will move mountains, so faith in the “small things” can lead to greatness. God is always working, even when we don’t see it. He is with us, and He is faithful.
~FINAL WORDS~
MY QUESTION TO YOU, faithful church, is this: Do you have faith that God is present in your lives, that He sustains you when you are discouraged or face defeat, that He carries you when you need a lift and accompanies you when you just need a friend.
Do you listen for His voice. Do you hear Him reassuring you, or is your own voice drowning out His voice.
Are you even walking with Him in faith? Do you not know that all of the benefits that God promises are available to everyone, but only those who humble themselves before the throne, who receive His Spirit into their hearts, will ever know the peace and joy that He willingly offers.
Today, if you have not turned your life over to the Lord, or even if you’re not sure you have, or you’re ‘pretty sure’ you might have at one time but have since walked away, I invite you to change that now. Don’t let this moment pass without calling on God’s grace.
Pray this with me, or use your own, but similar, words:
ABBA FATHER – I confess that I am a sinner in need of God’s grace. I cannot earn salvation on my own. I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son who came to earth to save the lost, to reconcile fallen man to Himself, and that He died on the cross for my sins, to pay the price that I am unable to pay. Almighty God, today I turn my life over to You. I humbly confess my sins and my need for a Savior, and I ask You to wash away my filth with Your spilled blood. Give me the peace and joy that only You can give, and when I die, take me — body and soul — to live with You forever. In Jesus’ name, I pray. AMEN and AMEN
Church, if you’ve prayed that prayer for the first time, then welcome to God’s holy and eternal Kingdom. If you prayed that prayer in recommitment to Your Creator, thank God that He is patient with all of us, not wanting anyone to perish but all to come to repentance.
In other words, “
As antipathy toward conservatives grows, especially those conservatives who are seen to be Christian, there could be a beneficial outcome to the Christian church, which has become too 
Ward's Words | BY WARD PIMLEY 