Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

by Timothy J. Keller

“Cheer up: You’re a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you’re more loved than you ever dared hope.”

Work did not come in after a golden age of leisure. It was part of God’s perfect design for human life, because we were made in God’s image, and part of his glory and happiness is that he works, as does the Son of God, who said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17).

All work has dignity because it reflects God’s image in us,

Human beings “filling the earth” means something far than plants and animals filling the earth. It means civilization, not just procreation.

Your daily work is ultimately an act of worship to the God who called and equipped you to do it—no matter what kind of work it is.

But Christians look to an Audience of One, our loving heavenly Father, and that gives us both accountability and joy in our work.

Without something bigger than yourself to work for, then all of your work energy is actually fueled by one of the other six deadly sins.

In fact, the very definition of a Christian is someone who not only admires Jesus, emulates Jesus, and obeys Jesus, but who “rests in the finished work of Christ”

C.S. Lewis observed, You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. . . . Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.210