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

by Timothy J. Keller

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. . . . This album is a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say “THANK YOU GOD” through our work, even as we do in our hearts and with our tongues. May He help and strengthen all men in every good endeavor. —John Coltrane, excerpt, liner notes to A Love Supreme

I do wonder, as Coltrane was known more as a universalist than a Christian, I am not sure how to draw inspiration from this. There is still joy and delight that comes from exercising passion that God has given us. I would appreciate more of examples from Christian people.

the idea that all human work is not merely a job but a calling.

The headwaters of Lutheran theology put special stress on the dignity of all work, observing that God cared for, fed, clothed, sheltered, and supported the human race through our human labor. When we work, we are, as those in the Lutheran tradition often put it, the “fingers of God,” the agents of his providential love for others. This understanding elevates the purpose of work from making a living to loving our neighbor and at the same time releases us from the crushing burden of working primarily to prove ourselves. Those in the Calvinist, or “Reformed,”

God tAking care of eope through our jo b

In this Reformed view, the purpose of work is to create a culture that honors God and enables people to thrive.

And the difficulty lies not merely in the plethora of theological commitments and cultural factors involved, but also in how they operate in different ways depending on the field or type of work.

Is that all it means to integrate her faith with her work? In addition to these, does the Christian teaching about the nature of reality bear on what she depicts and how she depicts it through her art? Will it influence what stories she tells with her art? Will her art be influenced by her beliefs about sin and redemption and hope for the future? It seems that it must be. And so we discover that faithful work requires the will, the emotions, the soul, and the mind—as we think out and live out the implications of our beliefs on the canvas of our daily work.

Thiks seems like a very advaced leve.

The Bible teems with wisdom, resources, and hope for anyone who is learning to work, looking for work, trying to work, or going to work. And when we say that the Christian Scriptures “give us hope” for work, we at once acknowledge both how deeply frustrating and difficult work can be and how profound the spiritual hope must be if we are going to face the challenge of pursuing vocation in this world.

He began to despair of ever completing the work of his life. It was not just a labor of a few years at that point. When he began The Lord of the Rings, he had already been working on the languages, histories, and stories behind the story for decades. The thought of not finishing it was “a dreadful and numbing thought.”

One seems to be Justice, the severe voice, which says that Niggle wasted so much time and accomplished so little in life. But the other, gentler voice (“though it was not soft”), which seems to be Mercy, counters that Niggle has chosen to sacrifice for others, knowing what he was doing.

This feels like me. I feel like i have wasted a lot onotherzs

But in his new country, the permanently real world, he finds that his tree, in full detail and finished, was not just a fancy of his that had died with him. No, it was indeed part of the True Reality that would live and be enjoyed forever.

He believed that God gives us talents and gifts so we can do for one another what he wants to do for us and through us. As a writer, for example, he could fill people’s lives with meaning through the telling of stories that convey the nature of reality. 17 Niggle was assured that the tree he had “felt and guessed” was “a true part of creation” 18 and that even the small bit of it he had unveiled to people on earth had been a vision of the True.

There are moments when i feel like this

Artists and entrepreneurs can identify very readily with Niggle. They work from visions, often very big ones, of a world they can uniquely imagine. Few realize even a significant percentage of their vision, and even fewer claim to have come close. Those of us who tend to be overly perfectionistic and methodical, like Tolkien himself, can also identify strongly with the character of Niggle.

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught.

Yup

Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.

Why do you want to work?

Why is it so hard to work?

How can we overcome the difficulties and find satisfaction in our wor...

Creation, then, is not the aftermath of a battle but the plan of a craftsman. God made the world not as a warrior digs a trench but as an artist makes a masterpiece.

The second chapter of Genesis goes on to show that God works not only to create but also to care for his creation. This is what theologians call the work of “providence.” God creates human beings and then works for them as their Provider.

The word “subdue” indicates that, though all God had made was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor.

“It is perfectly clear that God’s good plan always included human beings working, or, more specifically, living in the constant cycle of work and rest.”

Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul. Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

“Our people want to participate in the ‘work-a-day’ world; to feel positive about themselves; and to help pay their own way.” Their employees are finally able to respond fully to a vital aspect of their design as workers and creators.

According to the Bible, we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.

Also, work is also one of the ways we discover who we are, because it is through work that we come to understand our distinct abilities and gifts, a major component in our identities.

Freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, those that fit with the realities of our own nature and those of the world.

In the same way, human life works properly only when it is conducted in line with the “owner’s manual,” the commandments of God. If you disobey the commands, not only do you grieve and dishonor God, you are actually acting against your own nature as God designed you.

As beings made in his image, then we can assume that rest, and the things you do as you rest, are good and life-giving in and of themselves.

Your relationship with God is the most important foundation for your life, and indeed it keeps all the other factors—work, friendships and family, leisure and pleasure—from becoming so important to you that they become addicting and distorted.

Josef Pieper, a twentieth-century German Catholic philosopher, wrote a famous essay called “Leisure, the Basis of Culture.” Pieper argues that leisure is not the mere absence of work, but an attitude of mind or soul in which you are able to contemplate and enjoy things as they are in themselves, without regard to their value or their immediate utility.

just so the leisure of man includes within itself a celebratory, approving, lingering gaze of the inner eye on the reality of creation.

joyful reception of the world and of ordinary life.

When we think, “I hate work!” we should remember that, despite the fact that work can be a particularly potent reminder (and even amplifier) of the curse of sin on all things, it is not itself a curse.

But when we feel that our lives are completely absorbed by work, remember that we must also honor work’s limits.

“Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: . . . the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.” 36

exercising stewardship over the rest of creation in his place as his vice-regents.

The current economic era has given us fresh impulses and new ways to stigmatize work such as farming and caring for children—jobs that supposedly are not “knowledge” jobs and therefore do not pay very well.

I dont share the stigma against all these jobs buht i guess i am not impressed with some he jobs that seem more temporary

don’t know . . . it’s just what I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try my best every day.”

Integritgy

The Bible sees death not as a friend, but as an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), because the created world is a brilliant and beautiful good (Genesis 1:31), destined to exist forever (Revelation 22:1–5).

For Christians, even our ultimate future is a physical one. Some views of reality see the spiritual as more real and true than the physical; other, more naturalistic views see the spiritual as illusory and the physical as the only thing real; but neither is true of the Bible.

And so birds flying and oceans roaring and people eating, walking, and loving are permanently good things.

More reason to embrace and appreciate the nature

We work in a wondrous world that is designed at least partly for our pleasure

We have the freedom to seek work that suits our gifts and passions.

Do people? What about the need to provide for family?

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

So there is no violent intent to “subduing” the earth. Instead, “ruling” the world as God’s image bearers should be seen as stewardship or trusteeship. God owns the world, but he has put it under our care to cultivate it. It is definitely not a mandate to treat the world and its resources as if they are ours to use, exploit, and discard as we wish. Nevertheless,

So the word “subdue” indicates that even in its original, unfallen form, God made the world to need work.

No, we are to be gardeners who take an active stance toward their charge. They do not leave the land as it is. They rearrange it in order to make it most fruitful, to draw the potentialities for growth and development out of the soil.

Leave itbeter thab wn yiu found it?

we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing.

According to James, one of his lifelong and faith-derived values is “making beautiful things of enduring value.”

Recognizing the God who supplies our resources, and who gives us the privilege of joining in as cocultivators, helps us enter into our work with a relentless spirit of creativity.