Do Something!

“So always be ready. You don’t know the day or the time when the Son of Man will come.

“At that time God’s kingdom will also be like a man leaving home to travel to another place for a visit. Before he left, he talked with his servants. He told his servants to take care of his things while he was gone. He decided how much each servant would be able to care for. The man gave one servant five bags of money. He gave another servant two bags. And he gave a third servant one bag. Then he left. The servant who got five bags went quickly to invest the money. Those five bags of money earned five more. It was the same with the servant who had two bags. That servant invested the money and earned two more. But the servant who got one bag of money went away and dug a hole in the ground. Then he hid his master’s money in the hole.

“After a long time the master came home. He asked the servants what they did with his money. The servant who got five bags brought that amount and five more bags of money to the master. The servant said, ‘Master, you trusted me to care for five bags of money. So I used them to earn five more.’

“The master answered, ‘You did right. You are a good servant who can be trusted. You did well with that small amount of money. So I will let you care for much greater things. Come and share my happiness with me.’

“Then the servant who got two bags of money came to the master. The servant said, ‘Master, you gave me two bags of money to care for. So I used your two bags to earn two more.’

“The master answered, ‘You did right. You are a good servant who can be trusted. You did well with a small amount of money. So I will let you care for much greater things. Come and share my happiness with me.’

“Then the servant who got one bag of money came to the master. The servant said, ‘Master, I knew you were a very hard man. You harvest what you did not plant. You gather crops where you did not put any seed. So I was afraid. I went and hid your money in the ground. Here is the one bag of money you gave me.’

“The master answered, ‘You are a bad and lazy servant! You say you knew that I harvest what I did not plant and that I gather crops where I did not put any seed. So you should have put my money in the bank. Then, when I came home, I would get my money back. And I would also get the interest that my money earned.’

“So the master told his other servants, ‘Take the one bag of money from that servant and give it to the servant who has ten bags. Everyone who uses what they have will get more. They will have much more than they need. But people who do not use what they have will have everything taken away from them.’ Then the master said, ‘Throw that useless servant outside into the darkness, where people will cry and grind their teeth with pain.’
-Matthew 25:13-30 (ERV)(1) 

We are all given something from the Lord and he expects us to do something with it. We are all called to serve, and the court we serve on is the the kingdom of God.  All Christians are in the kingdom and the church is in the kingdom.  The church comes out of the kingdom. It may look like the kingdom comes out of the church, but the church is the vessel of the kingdom; not the other way around.

Jesus' message was the kingdom of God. Jesus and his kingdom is the central principle of Christianity. We are servants of the kingdom, living in the kingdom, beholden to the king.

The kingdom is unlimited: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", and the kingdom works in the world through the church. We serve God, in the kingdom, in our daily lives. There is no kingdom work in the world outside the church. But this does not mean that kingdom service only happens in church, in church gatherings.

There is a phrase, "church gathered and church scattered". We are the church, "out there", and "in here"; or, "out here", and "in there". Christians are in the kingdom, which encompasses our whole lives. And all Christians are in the ministry. Kingdom ministry and service happens among church gathered and church scattered.

The Bible passage, from Matthew 25, above, which is commonly referred to as "The Parable of The Talents"; is about the stewardship of Jesus' deposit in your life. A talent is a weight amount of money in the ancient world. It gets confusing, because we might surmise that Jesus is talking about God given talents: singing, preaching, counseling, cooking, artistic or athletic talent.

Photo: Pixabay

The lesson here is, "Do something!". Doing something with what you have been given gains you something. If you try and fail, you gain experience. If you minister, being kind to people in your daily life, you are being a servant of the king.

Don't think of minister as a person up there, whom you are not, or as a position; but think of minister as "administering" as in, "administering first aid".  The concept of certain people being "ministers" and the rest of us being "lay people" is not in the New Testament.

In the church, we are all ministers and we are all priests.  There are some who are elders, who shepherd and manage the affairs of the church, and there are people who are gifted to equip others.  But there is no special class of people called "ministers". 

The lesson here is that passivity is a sin. It is wrong to do nothing. You may have a small or a large deposit in your life.  What are you doing?  Do something.

Jesus says, "to who much is given, much is expected" (Luke 12:48). What matters is, are you doing something.  Life brings forth life and light shines out light and those empowered move.

Jesus is not looking for perfection or stellar results.  He wants faithfulness.  Doing something, doing anything in faith, is being faithful.  Doing nothing or doing what you know is wrong is being unfaithful.

We are in a covenant relationship with Jesus, where faithfulness is required.  And the good news about the covenant is that he holds it together, just like Christian marriage; but you must participate for it to work.

There is a principle here that says, "Do something", or "Just do something", or "Just do it". This harmonizes or goes hand in hand with the principle of waiting until God comes. The context of this teaching by Jesus is how to live while you are waiting for his coming.

We are all waiting for something: Waiting to get married, waiting to be a parent, waiting for a job or a promotion, waiting to see people we love get saved, waiting to be healed, waiting for deliverance, or waiting to get out of prison. Waiting and the waiting room are part of life.

So we know that we must wait sometimes or much of the time. And the Bible says this about waiting: "Wait upon the Lord", and the "upon the Lord" part is the key to waiting.

Consider waiters and waitresses at restaurants. They "wait" upon the people. They are also called "servers" who give service. Can you guess what I am getting at?

Waiting in the Bible is active. The idea that I will engage in ungodly or sinful activity while I wait, is completely foreign and completely antithetical to our walk in Christ. While we wait, we serve, we do something, we are "on our feet", attentive to serving.

We serve by doing things for people and thereby, doing something with what the Lord has given us, to and for the Lord.


The creativity that God has given each person is unlimited. Doing something, till he comes is simple. Just do something, anything, that is from the deposit God has made in you. Get up and do something.



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1. Easy To Read Version, 2006