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

by Timothy J. Keller

Though Jesus’ twelve apostles left their nets after meeting him (Luke 5:11), we later see them continuing their trade of fishing. We see Paul continuing to work as a tent maker while he worked as an evangelist. These are not men who meet Christ and stop their “secular work” or who dial back their intensity and passion. Instead, what forever changed was the disciples’ relationship to their work. Jesus gave them the big picture; in fact, he was the big picture. He very deliberately called them to a kind of fishing beyond their fishing: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people” (Luke 5:11). In other words, he was coming to redeem and heal the world, and he invited his disciples to be part of this project. Now they had an identity and significance untethered to their job or financial status. So they could walk away from it (if that was called for), or pick it up again, or approach it in a different way from before. They had a new freedom both from their work and in their work. Notice that when Jesus called them to follow him, it was at the moment of great financial success—the huge catch of fish. But they could, and they did, leave their nets behind. In Jesus’s presence, they were no longer controlled by their work.