Well Done
Scripture Reading — Matthew 25:14-30
“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”
Many Christians dream of what it might be like to stand before Jesus one day and hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Could any other affirmation be more important?
Can we be assured of receiving that kind of affirmation from Jesus? Yes, we can—through faith in him, as Ephesian 2:4-10 explains: saving grace comes through faith as a gift to us from God.
That’s what Jesus teaches in this Matthew 25 parable. Two servants receive abundant gifts and trust their master enough to go out and invest those gifts. Any investment involves risk, and yet these servants are willing to take the risk because they trust their master. The third servant doesn’t trust the master, doesn’t invest his gift, and then loses his gift and his job when the master returns. God—our Master—insists that we trust in him.
God gives all of us gifts to invest in the world around us, particularly in ways that show his love to others. But if you’ve ever been faced with the choice between stopping to help someone and getting to work on time, you might understand how the world doesn’t always value our desire to invest our gifts for God’s glory. Trusting him enough to use our gifts his way isn’t always easy. But if we want to hear him say, “Well done,” we have to trust him anyway.
Dear Jesus, help me to trust you and to be faithful with all you have given, and may I look forward to the joy of hearing you say, “Well done!” Amen.
About the author — Scott DeVries
Scott DeVries has served as a church pastor and as a ministry coordinator in the Holland, Michigan, area. He currently works at facilitating connections between the more than twenty ministries and 1,100 churches of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. He has a passion for prayer, church organization, and studying the Scriptures in their original languages.
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