Romans

Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

Rom_12:1

In this passage we see a great formula for a well balanced pursuit of glorifying God. In the first part of the verse we are told not to be slothful or lazy in business. It is to say don't worry about how you feel but get to work. It teaches us to make good us of the time we have and to always be striving to accomplish more for Christ. At the end of the verse we clearly see the type of business we should be involved in "serving the Lord". Every Christian has enough to do to never be idle, and those who do should doubt there understanding of the task that God has laid out before us. The second part of this verse balances out this charge to "work, work, work." Each of these statements "not slothful in business" and "fervent in spirit" keeps us from misunderstanding the other statement. Be "fervent in spirit" would cause you to believe that your production doesn't matter just you passion at work. However, we see in this verse that in the ministry we should "labor passionately". Practically we should work as hard as any businessman. In the spirit we should be as passionate about our work as any painter would be about his work. TLC