Why Christians Need to Work Hard[er] (Genesis 3:16-19)

This picture represent "work hard" nothing to do with the Scripture quotes :P

“[God] told the Woman: ‘I’ll multiply your pains in childbirth; you’ll give birth to your babies in pain. You’ll want to please your husband, but he’ll lord it over you.’

He told the Man: ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, ‘Don’t eat from this tree,’ The very ground is cursed because of you; getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife; you’ll be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, you’ll get your food the hard way, planting and tilling and harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk, until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you’ll end up dirt.’”
(Genesis 3:16-19, The Message)

Before Adam and Eve sinned, the earth was perfect. Have you read that in the beginning the earth watered itself? Read Genesis 2:6. Everything changed, however, after that first sin [second, if you count the fall of Satan]. Now cursed, the ground produces thorns and thistles more easily than fruits and vegetables. Since the Fall, work has been struggle – a push back against a hostile world.

Work is not the result of the Fall, remember that fact. Even before they had sinned, Adam and Eve had the job of taking care the Garden. From our modern perspective, it’s hard to imagine what such work might have entailed if there were no weeding, no tilling, no pulling rocks out of that ground. But whatever that work entailed, we can be confident that it was a work of cooperation with the earth, free from the frustration and futility of the work we experience where the weeds always grow back, no matter how many times we pull them (I asked my mother about it).

Because of sin, everything is harder than it has to be. Work is harder. Childbirth is harder. Relationships are harder. And yet this is still our Father’s world, and He still calls us to work hard to gain rewards and fruits from this world. Today, in Christ, working hard with faith can lead to great things!

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.