A Different Attitude

 Bible Reading: Romans 12:9-21

Key Verse: Verse 11 - “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;”

Key Words: Not slothful in business

In Romans 12 Paul writes about three primary subjects.  

First of all, he writes about us presenting our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, and tells us how this can be accomplished (verses 1-3).

He also writes about our Spirit gifts and how each gift used for God’s glory benefits the body of Christ (verses 4 – 8).

In the remaining verses (verses 9 – 21) he writes about how we are to conduct ourselves so that our spiritual gifts will be more effective for God’s glory.  One of the things Paul tells us is that we are not to be slothful in business.  We are to do our best and work hard, no matter what!!

When the company founded by Andrew Carnegie was taken over by the U. S. Steel Corporation in 1901, it acquired as one of its obligations a contract to pay the top Carnegie executive, Charles M. Schwab, the then unheard of sum of one million dollars.  J. P. Morgan of U. S. Steel was in a quandary about paying this kind of money to anyone.  The highest salary U. S. Steel paid was one hundred thousand dollars.  Morgan met with Schwab, showed him the contract, and asked what could be done about it.

“This!” Schwab said, as he took the contract and tore it up.  (That contract had paid Schwab one point three million dollars the year before.) “I didn’t care what salary they paid me,” Schwab later told a Forbes magazine interviewer.  “I was not animated by money motives.  I believed in what I was trying to do and I wanted to see it brought about.  I cancelled that contract without a moment’s hesitation.  Why do I work?  I work for the pleasure I find in work, the satisfaction there is in developing things, in creating – also the associations business begets.  The person who does not work for the love of work, but only for the money, is not likely to find much joy in life.”

Now, there’s a different attitude, isn’t it?  We all need to take this attitude of work and apply it to our service for God.

 

                                                                                                                Dr. Mike Rouse

What to do:  

✞ Put your heart into your work.  That’s a testimony for Christ within itself.