Month: September 2014

Categories
Serving Others

Am I Wasting My Life At Work?

“Am I Wasting My Life At Work?”
    by brian rushing

Work can be drudgery.
Work can be difficult.
Work can be thankless.
Work can be stressful.

At times, these feelings cause many people to wonder – “Am I wasting my life by working at my current job?”

photo of an office with many cubicles - symbolizing a place where people might ask - am I wasting my life
That same question might take a different form as we think about our work in light of our Christianity, especially when we think of ministers and missionaries. Then the form of the question might become, “Am I wasting my life by not working in a church-related occupation?”

Here is a concluding quote for us to remember about our work:

“…secular work is not a waste when we make much of Christ from 8 to 5. God’s will is that his people be scattered like salt and light in all legitimate vocations. His aim is to be known, because knowing him is life and joy. He does not call us out of the world. He does not remove the need to work. He does not destroy society and culture. Through his scattered saints he spreads a passion for his supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples.

If you work like the world, you will waste your life, no matter how rich you get.

But if your work creates a web of redemptive relationships and becomes an adornment for the Gospel of the glory of Christ, your satisfaction will last forever and God will be exalted in your joy.”


I totally agree with this statement that God’s aim is for people to know Him because knowing Him is life and joy. Therefore, wherever you are, you have an opportunity to use your workplace as a platform for creating relationships where people can see Christ in you – bringing them into the life and joy of beginning a relationship with Him.

Certainly ask the questions: “God what would you have me do as an occupation?” & “God where would you have me work for you?”

But while you are waiting for the answer, do not fret, worry, or despair… Instead, use your workplace as a platform for showing others how wonderful life is when it is lived out with Jesus. Doing so could never be considered a waste!

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)


Categories
Serving Others

Making Much of God Through Your Work

“Making Much of God Through Your Work”
by brian rushing

There were several other helpful thoughts from John Piper on how we can “Make Much Of God” in our secular jobs. You can read my recent previous posts about this idea here:
     Taking Jesus All The Way To The Office
     Your Job is Your Mission Field
     Your Mission if You Choose To Accept It Is At Your Office

I didn’t want to take these next ideas and make a whole post about each one of them, but I did think that they were very helpful for me in continuing to think about how to live as a workplace pastor to my coworkers:

Work Is Good.
God is a creative, working God. His work included creating this world. He created us in His image and gave us the work of continuing to rule and shape His creation. “If you are not God, but like God—that is, if you are human— your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great.”

You Are Not a Beaver.
The difference between you and a beaver – “No beaver or bee or hummingbird or ant consciously relies on God.”

picture of a beaver symbolizing our work
photo from wikimedia commons; by steve from washington, dc.
A beaver does not think about God and make the conscious choice to work with excellence because God is excellent. No beaver decides for God’s sake to make a dam for another beaver and not for himself. But as a human, you have this potential, because you were created in God’s image. When God gives us work to do, he doesn’t mean for you to do it like a beaver. He means for you to do it intentionally for bringing Him glory.

“To be sure, when God sends us forth to work as his image-bearers, our ditches are to be dug straight, our pipe-fittings are not to leak, our cabinet corners should be flush, our surgical incisions should be clean, our word processing accurate and appealing, and our meals nutritious and attractive, because God is a God of order and beauty and competence. But cats are clean, and ants are industrious, and spiders produce orderly and beautiful works. And all of them are dependent on God. Therefore, the essence of our work as humans must be that it is done in conscious reliance on God’s power, and in conscious quest of God’s pattern of excellence, and in deliberate aim to reflect God’s glory.”

People See Christ Through You.
Have high standards of excellence and integrity and goodwill at your work. By doing so you remove obstacles in the way of the Gospel and call attention to the goodness and beauty of Jesus.

Your Conversations at Work Need to Change.
“Speaking the good news of Christ is part of why God put you in your job. He has woven you into the fabric of others’ lives so that you will tell them the Gospel. Without this, all our adorning behavior may lack the one thing that could make it life-giving…. The Christian’s calling includes making his or her mouth a fountain of life.” Our mouths must speak to others about Jesus. “No nice feelings about you as a good employee will save anyone.” Only by telling people that you are a good employee because of Jesus will move them toward Him- toward His grace and salvation.

Consider a Strategic Move
“For many of you the move toward missions and deeds of mercy will not be a move away from your work but with your work to another, more needy, less-reached part of the world. Christians should seriously ask not only what their vocation is, but where it should be lived out. We should not assume that teachers and carpenters and computer programmers and managers and CPAs and doctors and pilots should do their work in America. That very vocation may be better used in a country that is otherwise hard to get into, or in a place where poverty makes access to the Gospel difficult. In this way the web of relationships created by our work is not only strategic but intentional.”

Are you asking God the serious questions of:
God what occupation do you want me in?
Where do you want me to live and do my work?
How can I be a better workplace pastor to those I am working with?

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)

Categories
Serving Others

Your Mission if You Choose to Accept It… Is At The Office

“”Your Mission if You Choose to Accept It… Is At The Office”
      by brian rushing

…or at the factory or school or hospital or wherever you work.

the mission impossible logo symbolizing our mission is at our office
I am about to wrap up these thoughts on being a witness in your workplace, but I think this idea is so very important for each one of us. I think that we too often believe that our work can only be considered a benefit to God’s Kingdom if we are in a church-related occupation. Nothing could be further from the truth. God has placed you where you can benefit His kingdom in the work you are presently in.

John Piper says that you should – “Stay In Your Job With God”:

The call to be a Christian was not a call to leave your secular vocation. Paul said: “So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.” Paul’s view was that God had sovereignly “assigned” or “called” unbelievers to positions in life where their conversion would have significant impact for his glory. “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” Paul does not mean that changing jobs is wrong in the Christian life. What Paul does mean is that when we are converted we should not jump to the conclusion: “my job must change.” Rather our thought should be, God has put me here, and I should now display his worth in this job. Therefore, the burning question for most Christians should be: How can my life count for the glory of God in my secular vocation?



Many people in the secular world enjoy their work and have spent much time learning how to be effective in their field. Why feel that you must step out of the area where you are effective and which you enjoy. You can learn to “make much of God” by how you work in your secular job. Piper says the Bible gives us at least six ways in which a person can make much of God through their secular job:

1. through the fellowship that we enjoy with him throughout the day while at work.
“In other words, we enjoy God’s being there for us as we listen to his voice, and talk to him, and cast all our burdens on him, and experience his guidance and care. Christians do not just go to work. They go to work “with God.” They do not just do a job. They do their job “with God.” God is with them.

2. by imitating God in our creativity and industry.
God is at work and God is a creating, creative God. And He created us in His image to work and to create. As we do so with joy and satisfaction, we make much of Him.

3. by enhancing the portrait of Christ that people hear in the spoken Gospel.
As we share that we are Christians, our fellow employees will be watching to see what that means. How we conduct ourselves at work shows others a glimpse of the picture of Jesus.

4. by earning enough money to keep us from depending on others, while also focusing on how our work helps others.
“This is paradoxical. I am saying, yes, we should earn enough money to meet our needs. But, no, we should not make that the primary focus of why we work. Don’t labor merely with a view to the things you can buy with your earnings. Work with an eye not mainly to your money, but your usefulness. Work with a view to benefiting people with what you make or do. Labor to love people and honor God. Think of new ways that your work can bless people. Stop thinking mainly of profitability, and think mainly of how helpful your product or service can become.”

5. by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God.
God tells us to work to meet the needs of others. And here is one of my favorite lines about why we should work:
“You can steal to have. Or you can work to have. Or you can work to have to give. When the third option comes from joy in God’s goodness, it makes him look great in the world.”

6. by treating the web of relationships at work as a gift of God and to whom we share the Gospel and offer practical help.
God has placed people around you who need your love and help. Make Him look great to them by loving them and helping them as their workplace pastor.

Your place of employment is your mission field. Will you choose to accept your mission?


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)


Categories
Serving Others

Your Job Is Your Mission Field

“Your Job Is Your Mission Field”
      by brian rushing

No matter who you are, where you live, or the type of work you do, God has a mission for you.

Mission From God

The “Blues Brothers” were on a mission from God, and so are you!

And you don’t have to be ordained, licensed, or commissioned during a church service in order to complete your mission. In fact, where you work – in the secular job you have – you have a mission to complete.

John Piper reminds us:

“Please don’t hear in the phrase “secular vocation” any unspiritual or inferior comparison to “church vocation” or “mission vocation” or “spiritual vocation.” I simply mean the vocations that are not structurally connected to the church. There is such a thing as being in the world but not of the world…. Jesus’ intention is that his disciples remain in the world (which is what I mean by “secular jobs”), but that they not be “of the world” (which is why I say we are in a war).”


 So being in a secular job is a strategic place of battle for God’s kingdom work, and you have been placed there to do that work – as the workplace pastor for those around you. You are to care for them, pray for them, give them spiritual counsel, shepherd them toward the Lord – using your speech, your attitude, and your actions to point them toward God.

Martin Luther said it this way:

It is pure invention that pope, bishops, priests and monks are the only ones to be called the “spiritual estate”; while princes, lords, artisans and farmers the “temporal estate.” That is indeed a fine bit of lying and hypocrisy…. All Christians are truly of the “spiritual estate,” and there is among them no difference at all but that of office…. To make it still clearer. If a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken captive and set down in a wilderness, and had among them no priest consecrated by a bishop, and if there in the wilderness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves, married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, absolving and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as though all bishops and popes had consecrated him…. There is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, “spirituals” and “temporals,” as they call them, except that of office and work…. A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and everyone by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even as all the members of the body serve one another.”


So even back in the 1500s, this man of God realized that where you work wasn’t important. It was how and why you work. You are called to work for the Lord as a workplace pastor to those around you to “benefit and serve” them in order to help them better know Jesus Christ.

“The Bible makes it plain that God’s will is for his people to be scattered like salt and light among the whole range of secular vocations. Clusters of Christians living only with Christians and working only with Christians would not accomplish God’s whole purpose in the world. That does not mean Christian orders or ministries or mission outposts are wrong. It means they are exceptional. The vast majority of Christians are meant to live in the world and work among unbelievers. This is their “office,” their “calling,” as Luther would say.”

My prayer is that as you go out into your workplace today, you won’t think of your work as secular, but as strategic. That you would consider where God has placed you and how He wants to use you to make a difference in the lives of those you will encounter today as their workplace pastor.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)


Categories
Relationships

Taking Jesus With You…All the Way to the Office

Today, I want to revisit the idea of your needing to be a pastor to the people who you work with each day. I am a pastor of a church family, and so some of my roles or duties to my church members include:

  • being an example of godliness,
  • speaking the truths of God,
  • providing comfort during times of crisis, and
  • giving godly guidance to those needing direction.

And to be honest, everyone in this world needs someone who will do these things for them. But there are people who work with you who do not go to church… so who will provide these things to them? I will never have the opportunity to pray for them, share with them, or guide them. So God placed you there to tackle this role! He wants you to take on the role of being a workplace pastor for the people you work with each and every day.

a photo of four skyscraper window washers who are at work at the office
though exchanging a pulpit for rappelling gear, one of these guys needs to serve as a workplace pastor to the rest of his team… I know I would want someone saying an extra prayer for me!

I want to share with you some thoughts over the next few days about how to start doing this in your place of employment, whether you sit behind a desk or on a piece of heavy machinery instead of standing behind a pulpit. But both the professional preacher and you have the same roles – it is just that our “congregations” are different. Let’s start with this idea:

“Secular vocations are not bad, when we make them strategic.”

Sometimes some of you may hear a pastor urging more people into ministry-related vocations. Certainly we need more pastors, more ministers. But that doesn’t mean that a secular vocation cannot also be a ministry. It just has to be intentional and strategic to take place. How intentional and strategic are you in taking Jesus with you to work?

“You don’t waste your life by where you work, but by how you work and why you work.”

John Piper calls this: “Making Much of Christ from 8-5.” He says:

“The “war” is being fought along the line between sin and righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth and falsehood in every school
. . . between justice and injustice in every legislature
. . . between integrity and corruption in every office
. . . between love and hate in every ethnic group
. . . between pride and humility in every sport
. . . between the beautiful and the ugly in every art
. . . between right doctrine and wrong doctrine in every church
. . . and between sloth and diligence between coffee breaks.

It is not a waste to fight the battle for truth and faith and love on any of these fronts.

The war is not primarily spatial or physical—though its successes and failures have physical effects.

Therefore, the secular vocations of Christians are a war zone. There are spiritual adversaries to be defeated (that is, evil spirits and sins, not people); and there is beautiful moral high ground to be gained for the glory of God. You don’t waste your life by where you work, but how and why.”

You have a role to play in the spiritual warfare that is taking place all around you – especially at your work with your fellow employees. As you step into the secular workforce, you are stepping into a spiritual warzone. It is your role to strategically and intentionally battle for truth, faith, and love on the frontlines as a workplace pastor. How well have you prepared for this frontline battle?

Have you ever seen someone else do a good job of taking Jesus to work with them and serving as a workplace pastor?
What made them effective?

— brian rushing

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)