Daily devotion – approved or ashamed
2Ti 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
Every one of us as God’s workman will either be ‘approved’ or ‘ashamed’. The word Paul uses for ‘approved’ means – one who has been tested and found acceptable. The word was used in the industry or business of the smelting of metals. The metals were placed under great heat to be purified and refined so that they would end up at their greatest strength.
Every time you go through a trial they drive you to study the Word of God, to seek God’s will in the situation, so that we will rightly use the Word. That’s how we will succeed and make it through our trials and overcome the works of the enemy and our flesh. It is then we are approved of God!
But we cannot be approved until we are first tested.
The flip side of this however is to be ashamed. It means the workman’s work is below standard and cannot be accepted.
This brings with it a loss of reward. In Paul’s day, a builder who failed to meet the required specifications, was fined. When God judges our works, our service, it will be revealed to each of us at that time, whether we as workmen have handled the Word of God honestly and carefully.
Some who now are first will end up last!