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

by Timothy J. Keller

Do we let our work control us to such a degree that we don’t even notice when God comes through with a new opportunity?

How can we have any freedom from the temptations of work and still keep our job?

the gospel also gives us new power for work by supplying us with a new passion and a deeper kind of rest.

Acedia, she says, means a life driven by mere cost-benefit analysis of

“what’s in it for me.” She writes, “Acedia is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and only remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. We have known it far too well for many years, the only thing perhaps we have not known about it is it is a mortal sin.”208

acedia—in which their driving passion is for their own needs, comfort, and interests—does not n...

acedia is the most subtle idolatry of all. It puts the cynical self at the center of your life. And when you do that you release all the worst vices and sins to be the main animating energies behind your work.

in the Bible, the very definition of passion—think of Christ’s Passion—is to sacrifice your freedom for someone else.

The burnt offering was offered as a way of showing your absolute commitment to God, as if to say, “Everything I have is yours, with no reservations.” In other words, it was an expression of passion.

want you to be a living slain thing,” is meant to be a jolt; it’s a way of saying you have to continually be in the rhythm of dying to your own interest and living for God.

But God’s charge means that you are to be both urgent and disciplined.

So where does this true passion come from?

in view of God’s mercy

But why was Jesus suffering? Where was his passion and sacrifice coming from?

Instead of working out of the false passion of acedia, which is born of selfishness, you are working out of true passion, which is born of selflessness.

have your affirmation. You are justified in God’s sight, so you have nothing to prove. You have been saved through a dying sacrifice, so you are free to be a living one. You are loved ceaselessly, so you can work tirelessly in response to a quiet inner fullness.