Doing Your Best

     There are some courses in school that you may not like as well as others.  I always liked the courses in which I excelled.  That might  be misleading as I didn't "excel" in too many courses in the first place.  There were all the courses connected to English Grammar from diagramming sentences to English Composition.   They were not my favorite classes.  I would often do just about as much as would let me get by.  At one point, I would have to have some extra help as I was about to fail the class.  As we mature, we soon realize that there are many things in life that are not things which we really like.  Yet, we do them because they are necessary.  Colossians 3:16-17 reminds us when it says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.  And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him."   
     These verses tell us that whatever we are going to do, that we should do it with an earnest desire to please God.  When it comes right down to it, everything that we do has a reflection upon God.  It is our character that is being put to the test.  Every believer needs to realize that God is the immediate superintendent over all of our work.  To fail by doing  "just enough to get by" is going to be giving a poor reflection of our own character and God Himself.  The things that you enjoy doing always seem to get done and they get done well.  It is the list of things that you don't enjoy doing that seem to cause you the problem.  We continually try to find shortcuts that will help us finish the project.  We soon discover, however, that those shortcuts will cause us problems in the future.  If you keep rounding off the corners when you cut the grass, you will soon have corners that are high with weeds and thereby diminish the beauty of the lawn.  When you wash the car and leave the wheels alone because they only get dirty quicker than any other part of the car, you will soon have a big eye sore and much harder to clean in the future.  So, take a look at your "to do" list and discover which ones are there because you have been putting them off.  You just don't like to do them.  Try to remember that whatever we are doing in this life needs to be done in order to give God glory.  Homework, chores, work,  are all things that have to be done.  So, do them all for the glory of God and do them the best that you can.  Praise God today that He gives us the strength and the desire to excel in all that we do because we are eventually doing it for Him.