Connecting Your Work to God's Work

As we approach our Faith+Work event this Friday, November 3rd, here’s a piece from our teaching/training time last year. If you still haven’t signed up - it’s not too late to do so. You can register here.

Here are a few numbers that will probably stagger you.  These are hours spent doing these things across the average persons life-time: eating = 32,098, driving = 37,935 (age 17-80), at work = 90,360. 

(Side note: we also spend 229,961 sleeping - not sure why we’re all so tired.)

So if Jesus is the most important thing (or should be) and work is where we spend most of our waking hours in life - we need to understand rightly the integration or relationship between our faith and our work. Often, though, we tend to isolate between two ditches when it comes to our understanding of faith and work.

Similar to a car out of alignment - if we take our hands off the theological wheel of work we will slide into one of two ditches.

• Side #1: work as necessary evil

• Wake up, go to work, punch in/punch out, collect our paycheck and just hope Saturday comes faster than it did last week.

• Side #2: work as identity 

• Wake up, consumed with work, neglect other more important matters, over work.

The Bible gives us a much more robust theology of work…One that gives us a much deeper and greater meaning in our work.  But one that keeps us from finding our hope, security, identity, and ultimate happiness in work: work matters to God because work is worship.

There’s this subtle and sneaky lie we tend to believe as followers of Jesus.  We think that in order to meet Jesus (in order to do something of real spiritual/meaningful significance) we have to do that outside of work (in church, Bible study, or prayer meeting). We end up bifurcating the things of God with the things of work OR at best we’re not really sure how the former affects the latter.

What does my relationship with Jesus have to do with my job as a nurse, engineer, firefighter, builder, stay at home mom. So we relegate faith and work to not lying, cheating, stealing from the petty cash money, and maybe every once in a while if we have the opportunity - sharing Jesus with a co-worker.

We think that in order for our work to have spiritual significance we have to layer spiritual things onto our work or into our workday.  The Bible flips that notion on it’s head and in fact you see Jesus (himself) flip that on its head when he meets his first disciples in their work.

In Mark 1:16-20 we read,

“Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.”

Here we find a microcosm of what the Bible teaches about faith and work: we don’t have to leave our work/vocation in order to encounter God - God encounters us in and through our work.  The Bible says that our work doesn’t simply matter to God because we layer spiritual things onto our work or into our workday. The Bible says that our work matters to God because in and of itself our work is worship to God. 

This is only further confirmed if we go back to creation and see in Genesis 1:1-8…

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven.  And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And then on the seventh day it says that..”So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” [Genesis 2:3] So in the first chapter of the Bible where we are introduced to the God of the universe - one of the first things we learn about God is that God is a God who works.

Here’s what that means:

• Work is not something that came after sin entered the world.

• Work is an integral part of God’s nature.

But what about us? Genesis 1:26-28 tells us,

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 

God is a God who works and we bear the image of God… to work is to be human. It’s not just enough to say that work is important. Secular culture would say that because they realise that work provides money (which in turn gives you food to eat and a house to live in). As followers of Jesus…work is so much more than that… it’s not just pragmatic.

It’s deeply spiritual – because in our work (in our vocation) we bear the image of God. Thus the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Your work matters because work is worship.

Fill in the blank: my work as a ___________ is worship to God. Think about that for a second… if you knew and believed that your work was a form of worship – what would you do differently on Monday?  What habit would you change?  What thought would you get rid of?  What attitude would you have?