You Don't Have To EARN A Living

Thank you for taking time to read this article. This week, my focus is work and life. I trust you have enjoyed your work and life this beautiful week. If you haven't, there's no need to worry, God does restore lost times. As a follow up on my last article on Monday fevers, I want to share with you some insights on how to quit toiling to earn a living and start living on the resting side of life. My purpose is to address some common life's dysfunctions that stop us from receiving the best God has for us. 

One of life's commonest dysfunctions is hard-work mentality. People with this mentality believe they have to earn their living and work hard at doing so. To them you are lazy if you are not busy round the clock. As managers, people with hard-work mentality are more likely to be the controlling type of bosses who look over everybody’s shoulders in the workplace to see if they are busy or idle. By so doing, they put out the fire of creativity from the team, not knowing. People with hard-work mentality attempt to rationalize everything and dismiss anything that is not logical. They believe that the harder you work the more successful you will become; they function in circles of routine work and often get stock in the prison of tradition. As Christians, people with hard work mentality are likely to be focused more on laws and wrath of God than on grace and love of God. 

Are you working hard to earn a living? Are you working hard to earn God's favour? Are you studying hard to earn a degree and land a job? Do you find yourself attempting to rationalize everything and dismiss anything that reason cannot explain? If yes, you may already be caught in the web of toils and it is nothing but a futile chase after the winds. Set yourself free today. Start trusting God for your daily supplies. God, not hard work, your employer or government is your source. If you believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ and you are about promoting his kingdom, you are a candidate for divine supplies. Jesus has finished all the work required to meet our needs; he has made us the very righteousness of God. No one can work hard enough to earn God’s love or earn a living but anybody can trust God and enjoy a good life. The Psalmist knew this so well when he wrote:  

  It is useless for you to work so hard

      from early morning until late at night,
  anxiously working for food to eat;
      for God gives rest to his loved ones. Psalm 126:2 (NLT)

The first step towards correcting the hard-work mentality is realizing that you do not have to earn a living. To do so will take a life time and you could still end up poor. A study of successful people shows that the hardest workers are not always the richest and many poor people are very hard working. Alternative way to earning a living is receiving divine supplies. It is better and much easier to receive your supplies than to earn them. This is one of the most liberating lessons I have learned in my walk with God. One idea from God can end a long-term struggle, instantly. It happened to a fisherman named Simon. 

One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish. “Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.” And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear! A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking. Luke 5:1-7 (NLT)

Simon had toiled all night trying to catch fish but could not. As soon as Jesus showed up and gave him an idea, his all-night struggle ended in a moment. I am sure Simon was not a day-old fisherman. He must have known all the tricks of fishing business yet he did not make progress by working hard but by receiving an idea from Jesus. He trusted Jesus, acted on his word and got a big catch.

You don't have to earn a living. Why toil to earn what you can receive free of charge? For example, if you need a bike that costs $300.00, you would be making a mistake if you start to look for $300.00 because what you really need is not the $300.00 but the bike and it is possible for someone to bless you with a bike free of charge. So, I encourage you to quit toiling and start trusting God to meet your daily needs. Does this mean you have to quit your job and fold your hands? Of course not. It means you have to quit trusting your own knowledge, skill and ability to meet your needs and learn to trust God to bless the work of your hands. There is a difference between hard work and diligence. Hard work take so much effort from people and give them little or no results but diligent people have great results to show for their efforts. People with hard work mentality rely on their own abilities but diligent people trust God. Whether it is academics, family, finance, relationship or salvation, the rule is the same: don't toil, trust God. The blessing of God makes a person rich and he adds no sorrow with it. What’s more, “your heavenly father already knows that you need 'these things” and he promised to add all of them to you once you make his kingdom your priority (Matthew 6:25-34). We are not supposed to run after things; things are supposed to run after us because we run after the kingdom of God.

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