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

by Timothy J. Keller

It is also a call to serve him by reaching the world with his message (1 Peter 2:9

God’s calling has not only an individual aspect but also a communal one. It brings you into a relationship not only with him,

but also with a body of b...

“Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called

him. This is my rule in all the churches.

Paul uses these same two words here when he says that every Christian should remain in the work God has “assigned to him, and to which God has called him.

Just as God equips Christians for building up the Body of Christ, so he also equips all people with talents and gifts for various kinds of work, for the purpose of building up the human community.

work is a “vocation” or calling, “a contribution to the good of all and not merely . . . a means to one’s own advancement,” to one’s self-fulfillment and power.

Our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others. And that is exactly how the Bible teaches us to view work.

how is a committed Christian supposed to think objectively about his or her “calling”?

We are not to choose jobs and conduct our work to fulfill ourselves and accrue power, for being called by God to do something is empowering enough. We are to see work as a way of service to God and our neighbor, and so we should both choose and conduct our work in accordance with that purpose.

The question must now be “How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God’s will and of human need?

the point of work is to serve and exalt ourselves, then our work inevitably becomes less about the work and more about us. Our aggressiveness will eventually become abuse, our drive will become burnout, and our self-sufficiency will become self-loathing.

But if the purpose of work is to serve and exalt something beyond ourselves, then we actually have

better reason to deploy our talent, ambition, and entrepreneurial vigor—and we are more likely to be successful in the long r...

So God cares for our civic needs through the work of others, whom he calls to that

work.

So parents give their children what they need—character—through the diligence required for the chores they assign them.

His answer is, through good neighbors, who practice honesty and integrity in their daily interactions and who participate in civic life.70

Not only are the most modest jobs—like plowing a field or digging a ditch—the “masks” through which God cares for us, but so are the most basic social roles and tasks,

These are all God’s callings, all ways of doing God’s work in the world, all ways through which God distributes his gifts to us.

First, if religious works were crucial to achieving a good standing with God, then there would always be a fundamental difference between those in church ministry and everyone else. But if religious work did absolutely nothing to earn favor with God, it could no longer be seen as superior to other forms of labor.

many modern people seek a kind of salvation—self-esteem and self-worth—from career success. This leads us to seek only high-paying, high-status jobs, and to “worship” them in perverse ways.

But the gospel frees us from the relentless pressure of having to prove ourselves and secure our identity through work, for we are already proven and secure. It also frees us from a condescending attitude toward less sophisticated labor and from envy over more exalted work.

Since we already have in Christ the things other people work for—salvation, self-worth, a good conscience, and peace—now we may work simply to love God and our neighbors.

that Christians who understand biblical doctrine ought to be the ones who appreciate the work of non-Christians the most. We know we are saved by grace alone, and therefore we are not better fathers or mothers, better artists and businesspersons, than those who do not believe as we do. Our gospel-trained eyes can see the world ablaze with the glory of God’s work through the people he has created and called—in everything from the simplest actions, such as milking a cow, to the most brilliant artistic or historic achievements.

honor

God by loving your neighbors and serving them through your work.

their work was contributing to the very survival of their nation.

Work . . . yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular jobs put in.

The difference between [a wilderness] and culture is simply, work.

“ministry of competence.”

What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

“

laypeople cannot find any spiritual meaning in their work, they are condemned to living a certain dual life; not connecting what they do on Sunday morning with what they do the rest of the week.

‘Your work is your prayer.’”

the very first way to be sure you are serving God in your work is to be competent.

if the call of the Christian is to participate in God’s ongoing creative process, the bedrock of our ministry has to be

competency.

competent work is a form of love

will still desire to succeed but will not be nearly as driven to overwork or made as despondent by poor results.

if you have to choose between work that benefits more people and work that pays you more, you should seriously consider the job that pays less and helps m...

it will not be subjectively fulfilling unless you consciously see and understand your work as a calling to love your neighbor.

and ate of a particular tree they would “surely die.” What was so special about that one tree?

I want you to obey me, simply because of who I am, simply because you love me

and trust me more than anything.”

“run aground” when we choose to be our own source of authority.

when we instead chose to live for ourselves, everything began to work backward.

Sin leads to the disintegration of every area of life: spiritual, physical, social, cultural, psychological, temporal, eternal.

for many Christians tend to divide the world into “worldly” and “sacred” spaces and activities,