Battle Drill #25:

Commit Your Work to the Lord!

Proverbs 16:1-9 (NAS95)

Today, we are going to walk through the four action steps of a soldier’s training routine to learn the next battle drill – “Commit Your Work to the Lord!”

For 25 years, I have learned how to start my day by committing myself and my day to the Lord. I have not done this perfectly each day, and there have been some seasons of drought in those years, but as a general practice, this battle drill has defined my Christian life. This is a very important daily discipline for me that became anchored in my soul during the late summer/early fall of 1997, during my second time in the two-month US Army Ranger School. The first time I went through the training, the winter of 1997, I only made it two-thirds of the way through it before I was medically dropped, but my deeper story was how my perceived failure broke me. I was sent to my unit at the 82^nd Airborne Division without the coveted Ranger Tab that every Infantry Officer is expected to have earned.

Looking back, I realize that this was one of the most important moments of my life because how I handled my deep level of disappointment was a critical decision point on the person I was to become. By God’s grace, I chose wisely and started back to church. I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ and started my Christian discipleship with a renewed vigor. Six months later, I was graduating from Ranger School, and I testify to you that it was night and day. Not the school, but me! There was a dramatic difference in my experience because I had changed – Christ was now the center of my life! I went from being a basket case the first time to missing honor graduate by one spot the next time. Every single morning of Ranger School, that second time, I did two things: 1) I dedicated myself and my day to the Lord; and 2) I promised myself I wouldn’t quit. To the glory of God, I continue to make those two decisions as your pastor.

Being faithful is a trained behavior! It doesn’t happen by accident, and you must learn to train it daily. So, let’s take the first action step of a soldier’s training routine to live on mission.

Action Step #1) Know the Field Manual.

The battle drill we are going to learn and apply this week is from Proverbs 16:1-9:

The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established. The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil. Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; assuredly, he will not be unpunished. By lovingkindness and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil. When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Better is a little with righteousness than great income with injustice. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.

This is what the Field Manual says, let’s now take the second action step to learn how to apply today’s battle drill to our everyday lives as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.

Action Step #2) Train together as one unit.

Let’s talk about how to do this. According to the Bible’s creation account your day begins with how you go to bed the night before. Listen to the refrain of creation in Genesis 1, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). We often miss this or hear it as a poetic device to separate the creative work of God in the creation account, but I believe that there is a profound truth here that will change your life, as it has mine. It’s simple, but not simplistic: How you go to bed determines your day!

Grace always comes first – sleep comes before work, just like grace comes before works. You don’t earn a good night’s rest because it’s all grace. You do nothing during your sleep, God’s got you and you are completely dependent on His grace to sustain your life until morning, which is why people still pray this very old Puritan bedtime prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Newer versions make it even more clear, “His love to guard me through the night and wake me in the morning’s light” and “Please angels watch me through the night, and keep me safe till morning light.”

Allow me to describe how I do this: I get up at 6 each morning so that I have an hour with the Lord before others in my family wake up. That is the most important hour of my day, and it often goes longer. It is when I pray, when I read Scripture, when I meditate upon what I’m reading and seek to apply it to my life. This is the time of the day when I commit my work to the Lord and when I resolve that today I will get in the easy yoke of Jesus, abide in the Vine, carry my cross, and remain faithful to my family and church. It’s a time that I decide that I will not quit – a time of covenant renewal as the sun rises.

But my key to success is not an alarm, though that is helpful on some mornings, but a good night’s sleep. I seek to be relaxed and ready for a good night’s sleep by 10 PM each night. That means well before that time the dishes are done, doors are locked, messes are cleaned up, the kids have been read to and prayed with, the work of the day is over so my computer and devices are off, all of that before 10 so that I can be in a place of relaxation to rest well, to get good REM and deep sleep, and not just shallow restless sleep. The quality of my morning devotion time is determined by how I get to bed the night before. Except for my personal Sabbath day, which is Friday night until Saturday night, if I want to get extra sleep, then I must go to bed earlier, not sleep later. My whole day is messed up if I don’t have this time to commit my work to the Lord. This time of devotion is hindered if I don’t take intentional daily steps to sleep well. Sleep is a gift from the Lord and a product of God’s grace, as Proverbs 3:13, 21-24 explains:

How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. … My son, let them not vanish from your sight; keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid; When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

For me to commit myself and my work to the Lord, then I must daily get back in the easy yoke of Jesus to work from a place of rest because everything I have is by God’s grace and not the work of my own hands nor earned by the sweat of my own brow. It’s for the glory of God alone. That takes us to the third action step.

Action Step #3) Seek the Commander’s approval.

Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

We commit our work to the Lord because work was God’s idea first! Work is not what you do to earn your daily bread or find your identity. Both of those come from the Lord. When we commit our work to the Lord, then we put our work in a right perspective, which is under the Lordship of Christ. The Apostle Paul made this very clear in Colossians 3:23-25:

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

There is a divine purpose for work, it is a part of God’s plan that we work hard. When we commit our work to the Lord, then our work becomes a part of God’s mission to demonstrate the rule of God to the world. No matter what it is you do, when your work is committed to the Lord it can be used by God to bring glory to His name and advance the Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. That brings us to the final action step.

Action Step #4) Live on mission.

Your work is intended to have eternal fruit – results that last! Jesus taught us this in John 15:12-17:

This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.

Faith, hope, and love are the currencies of Heaven, and they are our greatest commodities here on Earth. Faith, hope, and love are what we use to build the Kingdom of God. Paul soberly admonishes us in 1 Corinthians 3:10-16 to be wise with which we build the Kingdom:

According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Your legacy is determined by your work so be very wise in where you are investing your most precious commodities – your time, your love, your energy. When I do graveside services, after I have done the committal prayer, I read Revelation 14:13, “And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, “Write, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them.” After I read this, I look out at the people who have gathered, make eyes contact with them, open my arms, and say, “You are the good works who follow this person’s life.”

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