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.”

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)