4 reasons God wants you to work & 3 he doesn't

Last night in bed I was thinking about what God says about work. That isn't in my top 3 favourite things to do in bed ;) but it has prompted this blog:

Work has been a big thing I've been mulling over for the last month or two, especially as I feel like I am disappearing further and further into the the sticky goo of Christian sub-culture.  I think work is one of the major issues for most men.  Here's where I've got to so far.  I'd love to hear your comments:

The time you spend at work is not wasted.  It is not a distraction.  God wants us to work.  He calls us to work.  He equips us to work.

Why:

1) if you work hard and do it well you will receive a reward from Jesus (trying to do your work well will give you spiritual benefit!)

Colossians 3:23 "whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving"

2) if you respect your employer you will bring glory to God

1 Timothy 6:1 "all who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered"

3) work gives you money to provide for your family (if you don't bother trying to provide for your family God doesn't like it very much. As an aside, providing for your family in Paul's eyes is giving them food, clothing and probably shelter (cf 1Tim6:6-9 below). It doesn't mean you have to give all your children their own bedroom or your brother an expensive present every christmas etc etc)

1 Timothy 5:8 "if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever"


4) work enables you to get alongside people and witness to them

1 Peter 2:12 "live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the Day he visits us"


So I fully believe that God sends you off to work every morning and is cheering you on when you are there.

But there are some reasons that many of us, if we are honest, go to work and (in particular) stay at work late.  I think there are bad attitudes that God wants to prune out of us because they all fundamentally grow out of a lack of trust in God:

1) Lack of trust in the love of God - desire to gain approval from work colleagues:

John 12:42 "yet at the same time many even among the temple leaders believed in Jesus.  But because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved praise from men more than praise from God"

- confessing the faith is not just in words but also in life priorities, in commitments, in actions.                 Does your diary suggest your love praise from your boss more than praise from God?

2) Lack of trust in the provision of God - hungry to get rich

1 Timothy 6:6-9 "Godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.  People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction"

Matthew 6:31 "So do not worry, saying, 'what shat we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'what shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them."

3) Lack of trust in the call of God - hiding at work from your non-work responsibilities

1 Corinthians 15:58 "Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.  Let nothing move you.  Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain."

- the 'work of the Lord' that you have been called to spans many contexts - work, family, community, church and culture.  Over-giving yourself in one of these contexts is actually letting something move you.  It is failing to stand firm.  It is under-selling yourself.

If you find yourself working for any of these 3 reasons, repent! Ask God to forgive you and change your heart and know that he will! God is for us not against us and he is not unaware of our struggles. And then talk it through with someone and ask them to pray for you, that you will grow in trust and awareness of the both the strength of God and the depth of his love.

God has made us to work.  God has called us to work.  God has equipped us to work.  Let's work for our reward, for His glory, for our family and for the sake of our colleagues, and then let's pack up our stuff and get on home.

The call to be polite

I was reading through my bible blog from last year and came across this which I think was one of the best things I wrote.  What are you fostering in yourself?  What are you fostering in your children? What are you fostering in the guys in your house group, what are you representing to the guys in your workplace?

Luke 17:11-37

My sons have been to various kids groups where they have been read this 10 lepers story and then told that this means Jesus wants them to say thankyou when people do nice things for them.  What a load of crap.  This is just absolutely not about politeness and it angers and distresses me so greatly that anyone would feel that they should tell kids that it is.  What our children, and us, need to know is not that God wants us to sit calmly at the dinner table but that he wants us to acknowledge that all saving and healing power flows from Jesus.  Jesus is perplexed by the other 9 lepers because they have failed to see who he is.  These 9 lepers have been wasting away outside of the city, cut off from all prospects and relationships, permanently ringing a bell and saying “unclean, unclean” and watching their body decay before their eyes.  Now they can live again - they are healthy and pure, they can marry and gain employment, they can rejoice and converse with others.  How can they not see that this points to Jesus as the Healer, to Jesus as God with Us bringing hope to the hopeless and life to the lifeless?  Jesus expresses surprise not because he wanted recognition of himself but because the 9 lepers have chosen only to go 1 step along a 10 mile journey.  The 9 have received the tiniest scrap of grace and have been too thick or too self-obsessed or too distracted to come back for some more.  The greatest gift this 1 leper received was not his healing but his faith in Jesus.  That is what we should be teaching our children.  That is what we should be acknowledging ourselves.  This is what we should be screaming out to our world.

Tick Tock Ouch Ouch

Each ticking of the clock is like a paper-cut to the soul of a man.  At least that’s what I’ve been thinking a bit recently.  

I’ve been subscribing to GQ magazine as the most popular men’s magazine in the UK (woof!) and I’ve been amazed by how many watch adverts there are in it.  In last month’s issue the first 10 pages had 8 separate advertisments for timepieces and across the rest of the magazine every third advert was for a watch.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was expecting cars to be the things most often wafted under the noses of men.  Either that or some fragrance that would guarantee you hot sex with some very skinny woman.  But no, it is the watch that takes pride of place.

I wonder what it is that makes a finely crafted watch so desirable?  Maybe it is simply because it is one of the few pieces of jewelry that most men wear.  But I think there is something deeper to it as well.  I think it is an attempt to redeem the fleeting nature of life.  

The Teacher bonked the nail firmly on the head when he said in Ecclesiastes that everything is meaningless.  And the word ‘meaningless’ in the Hebrew language conveys a sense of evaporating mist.  It is a slightly depressing fact of life that no matter how toned your six-pack becomes, it will be wrinkly and/or flabby in 20 years time (I’m talking about your six-pack, not mine - mine will never be less obvious than it is now...).  And no matter how many times you are promoted at work, you will one day see a younger pup coming along and take your place.  And no matter how much time you pour into your family, your great-grandchildren will very likely not even remember your name.  No matter how virile and bombastic you manage to be in life, in the long run you will be dead and forgotten.

And I think we men really get cut up about that.  I certainly do.  I like to think that I am making my mark on this universe. I don’t like to be reminded that every second that ticks by is a second closer to my mark disappearing away like a hand imprint on a wet sponge.  Each one of those tick tocks is like an assault on my soul.  They really hurt.  And so my desire is either to find some way of forgetting about the passing of time or to find a way of redeeming it.  And so I buy an expensive watch.  A watch that I can pass on to my ancestors.  A watch that is grand and shiny and which assures me of how important and successful and significant I am even at the same time that it is reminding me that I am like a mist.

But as The Teacher says (in a bit of a paraphrase), buying an expensive watch is just like chasing after the wind; it is trying to redeem something that cannot be redeemed.  My watch is lying to me when it suggests to me that I am not like a vapour.

And yet, thank the sweet Lord Jesus, it does not end there.  The yearning for eternity is not just a futile yearning.  The desire to make a mark does not have to be frustrated for ever.  We can indeed become more than a vapour.  For it is God who has put eternity in the desires of all men, and He is not just a sadist.  And it is in the Ageless One; it is in the Maker of the Beginning and the Maker of the End; it is in Eternal God that we can find redemption for our fleeting existence.  In God, in fear of Him and obedience to his commandments can we overcome the trifling insignificance of our years on earth.  For He calls us to step into his eternal river of life.  He has beckoned us to join with him in his everlasting purposes.  Not by buying watches.  Not by getting promoted at work.  And not by just praying either.  He bids us to store up eternal riches for ourselves by asking us to fight for the salvation of our colleagues and neighbours, to strain every sinew in tackling injustice and to push hard to build up others in their faith.  

When we choose to co-labour with Christ we can be assured of this - even though these blokes’ great-grandchildren won’t remember us, Our Great God will.  And he will reward us for every single effort we make for Him.