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    The call to be a Christian was not a call to leave your secular vocation. That’s the clear point of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24. Paul had a high view of the providence of God — that God had sovereignly “assigned” or “called” unbelievers to positions in life where their conversion would have significant impact for his glory. 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.

…Our aim is to joyfully magnify Christ — to make Him look great by all we do. Boasting only in the cross, our aim is to enjoy making much of Him by the way we work.
–John Piper

Are you going to work today with the right mindset of making much of Jesus at your workplace – by how you work? by how you show your love for Him to others? by how you change your conversations with those you talk to? You have been placed in your position at work “for such a time as this,” so use your relationships there as a platform or springboard to exalt Christ at your place of employment.

Certainly, that is a bit “easy” for me to say, as I work at a church. But I know of people is so many different occupations who have made this their goal, and are impacting God’s kingdom at their store, their school, their hospital, their law office, their marketing agency. You can too. It takes a choice to go to the work the right way – not going for the primary goal of making money, but going for the primary goal of working for Him… the One who gave His life for you, wants you to give your life at work to Him!

Jesus’ account of the Pharisee & Tax Collector from Luke 18:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:
    “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
    But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
    I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

    Can we infer from Jesus’ story that behavior does not matter, that there is no moral difference between a disciplined legalist and a robber, evildoer, and adulterer. Of course not. Behavior matters in many ways; it simply is not how to get accepted by God.
    The skeptic A. N. Wilson comments on Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and tax collector, “It is a shocking, morally anarchic story. All that matters in the story appears to be God’s capacity to forgive.”
    Precisely.
–Philip Yancey

Isn’t it good to know that no matter our errors, mistakes, poor choices, and sin… God’s grace and forgiveness are big enough to take care of them?

The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather, he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is, in the sight of God, more important than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.
–A. W. Tozer

I hope that I can stop being fooled about myself. That I will stop telling myself lies and stop believing them, as well. I want to accept the truth – only then can I move forward and receive real help to provide me with true health.

The sick person who refuses to admit his illness may find himself at the point of death with no way to reverse the damage. But the sick person who honestly admits the truth and goes to the doctor early has a much greater chance of getting the medical treatment needed for complete healing.

I know that I am weak. I know that I am helpless. But I know that God is all-powerful, and that He loves me immensely. And so I want my motto to be: “In myself, nothing; in almighty, loving God… Everything!”

I want to stop caring about what the world thinks about me by me only caring what God thinks about me and allowing that to drive me toward greater caring about the world so that I truly can love my neighbor even more than I love myself.

Father God:
Inflame my coldness with the fire of Your love. Enlighten my blindness with the brightness of Your presence. Turn all earthly things to bitterness for me, all grievance and adversity to patience, all lowly creation to contempt and oblivion. Raise my heart to You in heaven and suffer me not to wander on earth. From this moment to all eternity will You alone grow sweet to me, for You alone are my food and drink, my love and my joy, my sweetness and my total good.
–Thomas à Kempis

An amazing prayer that I hope I “grow into.”

Often we are blind. We act as if those around us were not really people like us. If we see them bleed, we pretend they aren’t really hurting. If we see them alone, we tell ourselves that they like it that way.

Jesus wants us to see their needs, their loneliness, their longings, and he wants to give us the courage to reach out to them. If we are to do that, we need to do two things: we will have to take risks as well as get beneath the surface of people’s lives.
–Rebecca Pippert

My Prayer Today: Open My Eyes Lord, Help Me See Like Jesus.