What does God want you to do?

John 6:28-29 (NIV)

Then they asked Him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.”

There are several questions that either you ask yourself or others (like your children) ask you about God and Jesus and the Bible such as

·       What is God like?

·       Is Jesus really God?

·       What is the primary purpose of mankind on the earth? 

·       What is my purpose in life?

·       Why is there suffering?

·       Why is there evil?

·       What is heaven like?

and many other questions like these.

In John 6:28, Jesus’ followers ask Him one of these simple questions: “What must we do to do the works God requires?”  Perhaps this is a question you have asked of yourself.  What does God want you to do?  What can you do such that you know that God will be pleased with you (“well done, My good and faithful servant”)?  Often people wonder what one must do to earn favor with God, even to earn salvation.  The history of mankind has always been attempts to earn one’s way into heaven.  We are programmed somehow, perhaps because of growing up trying to please our parents, where we think that we must work to earn our place in heaven

Jesus clearly answers their question with this answer:  The work of God is to believe in the one He has sent.  At first, this doesn’t appear to be a very good answer.  What must you do?  No, you don’t need to do anything.  Rather, you must believe in Christ the Lord.  There no action involved except for the action of belief, of faith.   It’s one thing to believe in God, people everywhere believe in God, but Jesus’ answer is to believe in Him.  

Does that seem right, that the work of the Creator of this Universe--of everything we see, of who we are, of who you are—is simply to believe in Jesus?  That’s not much work, is it?  According to www.religioustolerance.org, the World Christian Encyclopedia estimates that in 2000, 32% of people in the world claimed to be Christians.  However, that percentage had declined from 34.5% in 1900 and was forecast to continue to decline.  Therefore, perhaps today, there are over 2/3 of the world’s population who do not believe in Christ as Lord.  If the world’s population is over 6 billion people, that means that 4 billion people do not believe in Jesus Christ.  Might there be anything more difficult than the work required to evangelize and convert four billion people to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God when the Christian faith is on the decline? 

It is a seemingly impossible task to do the work God requires.  He wants you to believe in Christ first, then to serve as a Christian witness to everyone else in your life.  As Jesus said in Matthew 9:37 and Luke 10:2, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and then on the basis of your faith, you spend the rest of your life doing good works.  And first among your works for God is to help others see their need for Jesus Christ to forgive their sins, their need for assurance of eternal life in heaven, and their need for the most abundant life possible on earth. 

May you pray as though everything depended on God and work as though everything depended on you---St. Augustine