Tag: faith and work

1 Kings 18:1-19

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            “Obadiah was in charge of Ahab’s palace, but he faithfully worshiped the LORD.  In fact, when Jezebel was trying to kill the LORD’s prophets, Obadiah hid one hundred of them in two caves and gave them food and water.”  Ahab and Jezebel could have starred in the series House of Cardsby just being themselves.  They were a real king and queen who were thoroughly selfish and evil in all of their dealings.  Ahab, enabled and encouraged by his pagan wife, did away with the true worship of God and established the worship of Baal in the land of Israel. 
 
            But this did not mean that God was not active.  In fact, the Lord was working behind the scenes to undermine the systemic evil in the kingdom through a person, Obadiah, who was devoted to God.  Obadiah was not a prophet, a seer, or a priest.  He was a man working in an ungodly world, doing the best he could to serve the Lord.  Just because he was not Elijah did not mean that God couldn’t use Obadiah in the scheme of his will.
 
            Our ordinary everyday jobs and work have been ordained by God to use us where we are.  Rather than lamenting our limitations or wishing the situation were different, we all have an opportunity for God to work through us in our current positions and stations in life.  Every one of us has the opportunity every day to integrate our faith and our work through connecting biblical ethics to concrete applications at our jobs; working evangelistically and seeing our workplaces as mission fields; interpreting our work through a Christian worldview, and discerning that our vocation is a calling from God; and, knowing that our work is a means of God transforming and sanctifying us.
 
            How do you view your job?  How might you connect your faith and your work?  How does your job reflect the nature and character of God?  In what ways do you think God wants to use you at your workplace?
 

 

            Sovereign God, you cause nations to rise and to fall, leaders to rule and be brought down.  Take my life and my work and use it in redemptive ways that glorify the name of Jesus and exemplify the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Faith and Work

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

         
 

          For many of us the holidays offer a break from normal routines.  A break from work may be just the time to do some reflection on work itself.  I have had a lot of jobs in my life, from white collar to blue collar, from the exciting to the repetitive and the mundane. I wish I could say that I have always had a positive attitude about all my jobs, but the reality is that I have had jobs I hated, and have done work that left me feeling completely dehumanized.  One of the potential tragedies about church ministry is that there can easily become a secular/sacred dichotomy in which my normal work-a-day world has no relation to my faith; there can become a large spiritual gap between Sunday and Monday.  It behooves church leaders to bring some solid teaching for parishioners as to how to deal with living for God in any kind of employment.  The following are some things I have found to be helpful in not only coping with work, but in thriving as a Christian in my jobs.

First, a Reformed perspective on work has been tremendously helpful for me. The Reformers, like John Calvin, eliminated the long held medieval distinction between sacred work and secular work. They elevated all vocations into a calling blessed by God. All work is significant because God himself engaged in the work of creation. Work also involves, for the Reformers, worship. That is, we worship God through obedience to him in our jobs; our attitude makes work meaningful. Work, furthermore, provides a context for our continual learning about God. Our job, if we let it, can cultivate godliness, moderation, perseverance, and self-control. Thus, any job has the potential to transform us.

Second, we have opportunities to integrate our faith and work so that we don’t end up having a working world and another world outside of work where the two never meet. David Miller in his book God at Work offers four ways of bringing our faith and our jobs together: connecting biblical ethics to concrete applications in the marketplace; seeing the workplace as a mission field to reach the lost; finding meaning and purpose in work through a Christian worldview; and, using my job as a means of personal change through working with others in community and fellowship.

Yes, all work involves a certain amount of toil and difficulty. But seeing it as the possibility of sharing in the work that God wants to do on this earth can help us in those times when we feel like we are going nowhere. In a day when the level of satisfaction for so many in their jobs is low, we need to recover looking at our vocation from a more biblical point of view. If we can adopt this outlook it can be the means of transforming society for the better and bringing glory to God.