Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee.
Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do
If with his love he befriend thee.
Summer is a time of rest and refreshment for many, but soon we’ll be exchanging family vacations, relaxed schedules, and slow evenings grilling on the patio for freshly sharpened pencils, a rigorous schedule, and full evenings of extracurricular and ministry activities. Yes, the Lord grants us times of rest, but he is a God who works, and as his image bearers, we are made to work. He gives us resources, abilities, and spiritual gifts—and he expects us to use them.
After spending much of the weekend prepping for a new homeschool year, feeling equally excited and apprehensive about how it might go, I was encouraged by the above verse of the hymn we sang in church on Sunday morning. What great reminders for all of us as we labor for the Lord in various ways in the coming season.
1. The Lord prospers our work.
Sometimes our labor feels futile. The lessons we teach don’t always seem to stick. Our efforts at evangelism and discipleship sometimes fall flat. The kitchen sink and laundry hamper continually refill, and the meals we spend hours cooking vanish in 15 minutes. But God sees everything we do, and he will make it prosper.
Our daily faithful plodding has an eternal impact when we lay it at his feet. “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58 NIV).
May we approach our work with this in mind, praying as Moses did, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Ps. 90:17).
2. His goodness and mercy are always with us.
Sometimes the work ahead feels daunting. Sometimes our days don’t go as smoothly as we’d like. We might be tempted to feel anxious about entering into a new season of work, knowing there will be trials ahead. But let’s remember that the Lord’s goodness and mercy accompany us daily—in fact, they pursue us (Ps. 23:6)! Even on the hard days, he is with us, working all things together for good (Rom. 8:28).
3. The work is ultimately his.
We aren’t to ponder what we can do if we befriend him, but what he can do through us because he has chosen to befriend us. It is a privilege to take part in his work.
We are like the servants at the wedding at Cana who obediently brought Jesus the water pots so he could make wine. We are like the boy who gave Jesus his lunch scraps so he could turn them into a feast for 5,000. The results are not up to us; we must simply obey God, humbly offering him our time and effort and leaving the rest to him.
Yet the reverse is also true: “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus reminded his disciples (John 15:5). We abide in him as we work. Then, when our efforts succeed, we give him the credit. When they fall flat, as they sometimes do, we remember that God rewards faithfulness, not results.
4. We have been befriended by the Almighty.
Let that sink in! On one hand, we lament that work is not pure joy as it was in Eden before the fall. The ground has been cursed, and that means our work in the present age involves blood, sweat, and tears—both literal and figurative—and sometimes even fruitlessness. But we find comfort in the fact that the Almighty God himself is our companion, and we look to him for help: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1).
The last verse of this hymn reminds me of the ultimate purpose of our work: God’s glory.
Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him!
All that has life and breath, come now with praises before him.
Let the Amen sound from his people again;
Gladly forever adore him.
Is this not what all our work is for? We labor so that the people in our spheres of influence would know Jesus as we do. We labor so that “all that has life and breath”—the people in our homes, our communities, our workplaces, and every nation under heaven—would praise the Lord with us:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9–10)