Blessed are those whose God builds the road to success.

Well, you HAVE to do something, right? You can’t just sit around and expect God to do what you can do yourself. Society programmed us from childhood into thinking hard work gets you the prize. From the world’s view, that would be the case, but from God’s perspective of the Christian walk, it doesn’t work that way. The natural man wants the answer to all his problems to be HIMSELF. He wants the power for success to come from his own abilities. The world says, “it’s up to you to succeed.” Jesus says, “it’s up to me to bring you success.”

John 6:27-29New Living Translation (NLT)
27 Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you…28 They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”
29 Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”

You may say, “that’s just ridiculous, there is a lot of work to be done. You have to overcome the sin in your life, love your enemies, do all you can to help others, etc.” This belief is a false assumption. These things cannot be performed by human effort no matter how badly we desire the ability.

There is a saying written in the metal at the top of the gate at Dachau concentration camp in Germany. The saying reads “Arbeit Macht Frei.” which means “Work Makes You Free.” When seeing the sign, the prisoners entering the gate at Dachau believed if they worked hard they might win their freedom. The Nazis, however, meant to work them to death instead, so that death would take them from life. The enemy says, “work,” work yourself to death trying to be good because that kind of work leads to your destruction. Jesus, on the other hand, wants to do the work for you so that you may have life, life everlasting.

 Psalm 68:19-20New International Version (NIV)
19 “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
    who daily bears our burdens.
20 Our God is a God who saves;
    from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.”

Resurrection awaits all who sleep in Jesus.

We will talk about what it means to believe next.