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September 3 - September 23, 2024
If the people I pastor work forty hours a week for forty years of their lives, that means they will put in more than eighty thousand hours at a job during their lifetime. These hours don’t even include the thousands they spend in school preparing for work, on top of thousands more they spend in cars, planes, and trains traveling to work. Consequently, one of our greatest needs in the church is an understanding of how daily work according to God’s Word ties in with God’s ultimate purpose in the world.
The gospel brings significant meaning to the seemingly mundane and provides a supreme purpose for every employee and employer on the planet.
Work tends to wear us out and wear us down. It can be a source of massive frustration in our lives. On the other hand, it shouldn’t surprise us that when we do enjoy our work, there is an always-present danger that our work will swallow us whole—that our hearts will come to be defined by it and we will be reduced to nothing but workers.
Who you work for is more important than what you do. The world will tell you otherwise. The world will tell you that life finds its meaning in success at work, or that work is just a necessary evil on the path to leisure. All those ways of thinking are lies. You do work for someone beyond your boss. You work for Jesus. That fact is the most important thing you can know and remember about your work. It’s much more important than the job itself, regardless of whether you’re a homemaker, a banker, a political staffer, a construction worker, a barista, or a corporate executive. No matter what you
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when glorifying Jesus is our primary motivation, our work—regardless of what that work is in its particulars—becomes an act of worship. We are freed completely from thinking that our work is without meaning and purpose, and we are equally freed from thinking our work holds some ultimate meaning.
When we get right down to it, it seems that most of the sins we face when it comes to our jobs can be boiled down to a couple of pitfalls. On the one hand, we can let our job become an idol. Our work can become the primary object of our passions, our energy, and our love. We end up worshiping our job. On the other hand, we can slip into being idle in our work. When we fail to see God’s purposes in our work, we don’t really care much about it.
The trouble starts when our pursuit of enjoyment or influence or status in our work begins to make our work the source of ultimate satisfaction or meaning for us. When that happens, our work has become our god.
Idolizing your work, however, is more than just a bad idea; it’s a deadly spiritual danger. If your pursuit of joy, satisfaction, and meaning centers on “what you do” and “what you are accomplishing,” you’ll find nothing but emptiness at the end of that road. Deep and lasting satisfaction can only be found when our worship is directed at the one who alone deserves it—Jesus Christ.
Every form of idolatry—every act of worshiping something that is not worthy of our worship—will bear bitter fruit in our lives. Good and godly desires can quickly be transformed into idols, producing covetousness, comparison, dissatisfaction, and unrelenting competitiveness. Idolatry is the classic bait and switch. Idols promise fulfillment, but they never provide it. We are left with increasing dissatisfaction and unfulfilled longing.
The logic of idolatry is clear in my thinking. There will always be a next step, always something more for me to attain.
One of the subtlest—and perhaps most dangerous—forms of idleness in our work is our failure to recognize God’s purposes for us in the workplace. We may be active in our work, but we have concluded that our work simply doesn’t matter.
Idleness can also take the form of a “slackivism”—measures taken by a person to only do the minimum required to get through the day. Some
In a world in which most people think of their jobs as either a necessary evil or as the source of their identity and fulfillment, what is it that uniquely brings meaning and purpose to our jobs as Christians? Begin by asking yourself these questions: What difference does it make in my workplace that I am a Christian? Does it make me a more moral person? Do I have integrity? Am I less competitive than others? Do I always have a smile on my face? Is it that I’ll go the extra mile for a coworker and stay late to help on a project?
ultimately you are in your job so you learn to love God and other people better. This is your new assignment.
The point of the gospel isn’t how great you are; it’s how great Jesus is, and how deeply you benefit from his greatness.
Once you accept this truth and believe it, it begins to change the way you approach your work. No longer do you look to your job to provide you with ultimate rewards, because you know that the greatest rewards you can ever have are secure for you in Jesus. You are free, not to make your work into an idol, but to make it an arena for loving God and loving others.
1. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to worship God through your work.
To worship is to give God the honor he deserves. This means obeying God in every task you perform, knowing that when you do that task with all your heart, you are pleasing God. It means your attitude and aims are no longer tied to yourself and your circumstances. The goal of life is not how much money, power, fame, or comfort you can accrue. Rather, you desire to please God and make much of him.
2. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to serve others wholeheartedly.
Serve and love your coworkers unexpectedly and unashamedly, because that is how Jesus has served and loved you.
3. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to trust God in your work.
4. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to rest from your work.
First, set some natural boundaries. While you’re at work, be focused, efficient, and intense. Once you leave, rest from your work. Don’t check your work email.
Second, bookend your days with prayers of dependence and thanks to God. In the morning, pray and ask him to give you wisdom to focus on the work he has for you. In the evening, thank God for the work he accomplished through you.
Third, set aside Sunday as a day of worship and rest—even if you fear that taking off an entire day will cost you profit or promotion.
5. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to do your work well.
6. Working for Jesus gives you freedom to have joy in your work.
The Bible doesn’t give us one single grand purpose to motivate us in our work. Instead, we are given multiple reasons, different motives, for working. Let’s look at some of those purposes to see how they can motivate you to do your work with all your heart.
MOTIVATION #1: WORK TO LOVE GOD
You love God; therefore work with all your heart!
MOTIVATION #2: WORK TO LOVE OTHERS
When we realize we work in order to love others, it motivates us to work hard and work well, to encourage the people who work with us, and to strive not just for our own good but for the good of those around us. If
MOTIVATION #3: WORK TO REFLECT GOD’S CHARACTER
The way you exercise authority will speak loudly to your employees, revealing not just your own authority but the way you submit to God’s ultimate authority. In the same way, choose to live well under the authorities God has placed over
MOTIVATION #4: WORK FOR MONEY
It glorifies God when a Christian works hard to provide for his family and to be a blessing to others. It shows others that our contentment is grounded in God, not in the things of this world or in our own advancement.
Our ultimate sense of meaning and purpose as Christians should come from knowing that everything we do is for Jesus’ glory, which in turn should motivate us to work with all our heart wherever he has deployed us in this season of our lives. Aligning your job with your passions is great. And certainly, personal career growth is a good thing, and it is fine to pursue satisfaction in our jobs. However, none of those things should be the primary reason for our work. We work to glorify Jesus, no matter what we do.
MOTIVATION #5: WORK FOR ENJOYMENT
Enjoying our work and finding satisfaction in it bring glory to God. Why? Doing so reveals that our hearts find their rest and joy and satisfaction ultimately in him, no matter what circumstances he has decided to deploy us in.
MOTIVATION #6: WORK TO ADORN THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST
The way we live will never fully communicate the good news of Jesus Christ to anyone; we must use words to share a verbal announcement of what God has done in history in the person of Jesus Christ. Yet the way we live does communicate something to people. It can either confirm or undermine what we say with our lips.
In some ways, it can be helpful to have the mind-set of a soldier in an army. A soldier does what his general commands, even if he doesn’t fully understand why he is deployed to a certain location or how his particular task fits in with the overall battle plan. Christians, in their work, need to learn to be content to serve as a private—an ordinary soldier—among God’s people. We all want to be generals and tank commanders. We feel miffed when the King doesn’t explain everything to us and simply decides to deploy us to the trenches. But isn’t that his right? Isn’t it a gift of incredible grace
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First of all, we should acknowledge that the entire idea of “choosing” a job is largely a modern Western concept. For most of human history, work was something you did to survive, and often there were no options to consider.
The Must-Haves
1. Does this job glorify God?
2. Does this job permit me to live a godly life?
3. Does this job provide for my needs and allow me to be a blessing to others?
it? If you choose a job that uses your gifts but doesn’t pay enough to provide the basics for yourself and your family, the Bible says you’re living in sin. Believe it or not, money is a must-have.
The Nice-to-Haves
4. Does this job benefit society ...
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