{"id":83268,"date":"2025-01-16T10:52:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T16:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/?p=83268"},"modified":"2025-01-16T10:52:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T16:52:35","slug":"the-joys-of-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-joys-of-involvement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t<p>by David Gibson<\/p>\n<p>Have you noticed? The happiest Christians are highly involved in the Lord&#8217;s work. Why is this so?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is joy in using our God-given talents as He intended for the good of others. &#8220;<em>As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God&#8217;s varied grace<\/em> &#8230;&#8221; (I Peter 4:10; see Romans 12:4-8).<\/li>\n<li>There is joy when we see fruit from our labors. Usually, gardeners don&#8217;t till, fertilize, plant, weed, or water just for exercise. They want to see something coming up out of the ground!<br \/>\nJesus said, &#8220;<em>Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together<\/em>&#8221; (John 4:36).<\/li>\n<li>There is joy in knowing that God is pleased with our efforts to serve Him. &#8220;<em>Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God<\/em>&#8221; (Hebrews 13:16; see Philippians 4:18).<\/li>\n<li>There is joy in being prepared to give an account of our stewardship. The five-talent and two-talent servants had nothing to fear when their master returned and asked them to account for what he had entrusted them (Matthew 25:14-30). They had something to show for their time. And then they had the pleasure of hearing their master say, &#8220;<em>Well done, good and faithful servant &#8230; Enter into the joy of your master<\/em>&#8221; (Matthew 25:21, 23).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>God knew what He was doing when He put us together in His church, assigned us our tasks, and instructed us to work together!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by David Gibson Have you noticed? The happiest Christians are highly involved in the Lord&#8217;s work. Why is this so? There is joy in using our God-given talents as He intended for the good of others. &#8220;As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God&#8217;s varied grace&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[1543,374,55],"class_list":["post-83268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-good-works","tag-happiness","tag-works"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":53988,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/what-if-im-not-good-enough-for-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":0},"title":"What if I&#8217;m not good enough for God?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I read something on your website about a statement made that says that if a person could not be trusted with things on earth, then why would God trust him with things in heaven? Does this mean if somebody is a complete failure, they have no hope of even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":93912,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/harvesting-the-fruit-of-his-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":1},"title":"Harvesting the Fruit of His Spirit","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 13, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"by Randall Caselman When Jesus genuinely, truly comes into our lives, things change. Opening our hearts to His presence means we'll never be the same. Go with me to a well outside the city of Sychar. Jesus, tired from the journey, sat down by the well. A Samaritan woman came.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":59295,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/repentance-leading-to-salvation\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":2},"title":"Repentance Leading to Salvation","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bryan Matthew Dockens God \"commands all men everywhere to repent\" (Acts 17:30), and Jesus' purpose on earth was to call \"sinners to repentance\" (Luke 5:32). Repentance is necessary to receive the remission of sins (Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38); the alternative being death (Luke 13:3, 5). Repentance simply means to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":91508,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-fruits-of-personal-evangelism\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":3},"title":"The Fruits of Personal Evangelism","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Joe Collins In Matthew 28:19-20 and Mark 16:15-16, Jesus commanded all disciples to go and preach the gospel and teach all nations. For centuries, men have been fulfilling this commandment. Christians often become discouraged when they cannot see all of the results from their labors in personal evangelism. Perhaps\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20556,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-the-point-of-life-seeing-the-fruit-of-your-labors\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":4},"title":"Is the point of life seeing the fruit of your labors?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: For a while, I was going through King Solomon's view of realizing how pointless life is. I was struggling with that for a couple of weeks. But I am doing better now. Just really meditated on it and what Solomon said and a realization of life in itself. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42319,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-to-be-truly-happy\/","url_meta":{"origin":83268,"position":5},"title":"How to be Truly Happy","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew Allen \"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.\" Abraham Lincoln Are you happy? Truly happy? Have you found the joy that is found in Christian living? Christianity contains the keys to true happiness during our earthly existence. It is only in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/happiness-184x300.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}