Bible Reading: Colossians 4
Key Verse: Verse 13 - “For I bear him record, that he hath a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis.”
Key Words: For I bear him record, that he hath a great zeal for you
The word zeal carries the idea of enthusiastic devotion. One can survive without zeal, but I don’t think one will ever fully be successful without it.
John Milton got up at four o’clock every morning to work on Paradise Lost. William Cullen Bryant rewrote Thanatopsis ninety-five times. Noah Webster worked thirty-six years to produce the first edition of his dictionary. Many business executives put in ten or twelve hours a day, six or even seven days a week – not always because they have to, but because they are enthusiastic about their work.
The seventh-century English pastor Richard Baxter said he preached with great intensity because he saw himself as a dying man ministering to dying people. He always spoke as if he were preaching his last sermon and as if his listeners were hearing their last message. And what a schedule he maintained for fifty years! On each Monday and Tuesday he spent seven hours instructing the children of the parish, not omitting even one. On Wednesday he went from house to house to make sure the material needs of the widows, the aged, and the infirm were met. During the rest of the week he prepared his sermons and wrote books – a total of one hundred sixty volumes. As a result of his ministry, the town of Kidderminster was transformed. It had been a place full of sexual immorality and other vices, but it became a village in which almost every household honored God, read the Bible, and prayed. Baxter’s consuming zeal had paid off.
Zeal does pay!!
What to do:
✞ Remember, you can make it without zeal; but you can accomplish much more with it.
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