Jesus replied, This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent…  – John 6:29, AMP

I’m an 80/20 Principle kind of guy, and the reason I am is because I am just not talented enough to juggle more than two or three things at a time.

The 80/20 Principle states, in a nutshell, that a minority of causes generates the majority of results in any given area of life.  In contrast, 80% of causes only generate 20% of the results.  This cause and effect relationship was first documented by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who, while studying wealth distribution in Italy and surrounding countries, noticed that approximately 80% of the wealth was controlled by 20% of the people in the countries he studied.  Business-management consultant Joseph Juran suggested the principle and named it after Pareto (later to be more commonly known as the 80/20 Principle), and over the years people have learned that the 80/20 Principle applies to most areas of life.

The Christian walk is no different.  God expects much from His children, but in reality there isn’t much we have to focus on in order to achieve what God wants us to achieve. As a matter of fact, there is only one work, or service, that God requires of all of us, and if we will focus on this one cause, we will produce the results that God wants.  The secret to success as God defines it is simply this: believe in Christ.

In John 6:28 (AMP), a crowd of Jews, having just been fed miraculously by Jesus in the wilderness, asked Jesus the following question:

What are we to do, that we may [habitually] be working the works of God? [What are we to do to carry out what God requires?]

In verse 29 (AMP), Jesus replied:

This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent [that you cleave to, trust, rely on, and have faith in His Messenger].

In this one verse we find both the cause of spiritual success and the cause of spiritual failure for the Christian.  When we believe in Christ – when we cleave to, trust in, and rely on Him for everything and in every way – then we have no trouble obeying Him, even when we don’t understand why we have to obey, because we know He knows what’s best for us. When we believe in Christ’s teachings, we understand the destructive nature of sin, and we seek to avoid it.  When we believe what Christ says, we have no trouble evangelizing and discipling others because we know that treasures in Heaven are more precious than treasures on Earth.  When we believe that Christ is who He says He is, then we have no trouble casting all of our care upon Him because when He says He cares for us, we know it to be true.

But, when we fail in these and other arenas of the Christian walk, we can trace the failure back to one root cause: we chose to believe in something other than Christ.  Maybe we chose to believe that God wouldn’t mind if we sinned just this one time. Perhaps we believe that “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me,” and we act in our own strength rather than waiting on God to empower us in His timing.  Or, maybe we value “not offending others” more than we do rescuing people from that awful place that Jesus Himself called Hell, so we don’t bother to tell others about Christ as often as we should.  Whatever we do to offend Christ, the root cause of the offense is that we simply don’t believe in Him as we ought to. And, because we don’t trust Him like we should, we fail him miserably.

Some wise person years ago coined the very common proverb, “Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.” Would the people you spend time with each day be able to look at you and say that Christ is “all over you?” Or would they be surprised that you call yourself a Christian? The answer is an indicator of how much you really believe that Christ is who He says He is – both your Savior AND your Lord.

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