Proverbs 10:16

16The labor of the righteous leads to life,
The wages of the wicked to sin.
-Proverbs 10:16

What is the righteous man supposed to labor for? This is a question that I have posed to many believers in the past. I have heard many answers. "We need to labor to keep from sin. We need to labor to pray or stay in our bibles. We need to labor to do what is right. Etc." While all of these may sound well and good, they are actually not what we are laboring directly for. If those are what we are laboring for, then we are trying to do it on our own flesh and opposing the thing that we are actually told to labor for.

Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. 2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. 3 For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

“So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’ ”

although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; 5 and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:

“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.”

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.
-Hebrews 4:1-11

We are to labor to enter the rest where we cease from our own works. It is not by the effort of our flesh that we have gained salvation. It is not by the effort of our flesh that gain in sanctification. It is by the death of our flesh, the life given to our spirits, that we excel in all those things that we strive for in the Lord by our own strength. Finding our rest in the Lord naturally produces the fruit of righteousness and leads from sinful paths. We hunger and thirst for righteousness and find our satisfaction in spending time with Him in prayer and in His word. Many of those things that we found difficult, we may yet find to be natural when we do not strive in our own flesh, but in the Spirit. So labor, then, to enter that rest.