Getting Your Hands Dirty
The apostle Paul was a hard worker. He worked to support himself and his ministry. While some churches supported him financially at times, he often sacrificed his time, energy, and health to labor full-time for the advance of the Gospel and full-time to support his own needs. I guess he didn't sleep! In Acts 20:35 he is recorded as saying to the Ephesian elders, "I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
You know, we are called on throughout the New Testament to live sacrificial lives, to serve others, to work hard, and to do everything we do to the best of our abilities for the glory of God.
To live this biblical lifestyle, we will often have to "get our hands dirty." Of course, I mean this figuratively, but I do not discount the fact that sometimes we have to do it literally! Working for the Lord and serving others is a wonderful blessing, but we will often have dirty hands. Life is messy. Families are messy. Sin is messy.
The Lord does not need prima donnas. He wants (pick your illustration) soldiers, field medics, mechanics, coal miners . . . You get the idea. God needs laborers! We cannot be those who shy away from high pressure situations and messy tasks. We are "ministers of reconciliation" (2 Cor 5:18) or, in other words, we are special ops on a rescue mission.
Take the Gospel to a lost and dying world! Shine the light of Christ into a dark and hopeless generation. Don't waste your life ensuring that your fingernails are clean! Get out there and serve the Lord by confronting the powers of darkness, the sin that so easily entangles, and point people to the only hope of the world, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! And let this be one of our life's mottos: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."