Live for God
by Joyce Meyer - posted April 23, 2012Behold, I am coming soon, and I shall bring My wages and rewards with Me, to repay and render to each one just what his own actions and his own work merit. —Revelation 22:12
Every person, with no exception, will one day stand before God and give an account of his life (see Rom. 14:12). I want to encourage you to remember Jesus will come for us when we least expect it, and then it will be too late to do all the things we intended to do but never got around to.
Salvation is a gift of God; He extends it to us because of His grace, and we receive it by faith. We do not get into heaven because of good works, but today’s verse teaches us that our works will be judged and rewarded according to what we have merited.
God sees what we do in secret and will reward us openly. Everything that is now done behind closed doors will one day be brought out into the open, so we should realize that nothing can be hidden forever. A day of reckoning will come.
Some people might think, Well, as long as I am going to heaven, that is enough. Simply hoping to get to heaven after death is a selfish motive that produces a selfish life. We should live for God and for His glory. We should love God with all our hearts in response to His great love for us and realize that we are alive for a purpose, and part of that purpose is for God to use us to help reconcile others to Him.
We are actually created for good works that God prepared for us ahead of time (Ephes. 2:10). God’s desire and will is that we do those good works, but do them because He loves us, not to get Him to love us or to impress people.
Love God Today: You are created for good works, and you will never be happy unless you are doing them.
From the book Love Out Loud by Joyce Meyer. Copyright © 2011 by Joyce Meyer. Published by FaithWords. All rights reserved.
