Redeeming the Job
“I hate my job. I go to work every morning, push buttons all day long, go home. When I get home, I’m so tired from the monotony of my ugly job, all I can do is sit in front of the TV and veg out.” Many people have this view of their jobs. Sometimes they add that the people they work with are mean, or rude, or crude, or something else. Sometimes they add that they aren’t any good at their job and would hate it even if they were good at it. Or sometimes people add that they are really good at the job, but no one recognizes them and they are stuck. At the end of the day, many of us are stuck in jobs that aren’t any fun.
One of my favorite questions to ask folks, right about now, is “Where is Jesus in all this?” Or “What does God think about your situation?” Behind these are questions like, “Does God even care about you and your situation?” “Does he know you are suffering so?” “If he knows and cares, why doesn’t he do something about it?”
When I was 18 years old I found myself in the Navy, with everyone telling me how to make my bed and fold my underwear. What’s with that? And then later, in various jobs, I thought the same things. What in the world am I doing here? What is going on? I’m worth more than this, I should be the leader instead of one of the peons. I’m way smarter than my boss and here I am “serving” him/her. Then over a period of time, and probably a lot of teaching at church and various Bible studies, the answer came to me. The job is not why I was there.
I’m was there to give glory to God; to grow into Christ’s likeness, and to minister the Lord Jesus Christ to people who would never see him were I not there.
Here are some verses that helped me understand this:
Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Ro 8:29).
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19).
The first verse told me that everything I did was to be done to the glory of God. The short definition of glory is “fame.” It was/is my duty as a Christian to make God famous in everything I do. If I am eating I give God glory. If I am sleeping, I do it for God’s glory. If I am working, it is for God’s glory. In all things I am to make it my goal to please him by making him famous (2 Cor 5:9). When I discovered this, it meant that I needed to change how I thought about and approached my job. I had been there to make money to live, now I needed to realize that I was really there to make God famous.
The second verse told me that everything in my life is there to make me more like Jesus. There are a number of passages that talk about how to react to the trouble in our lives. For example, James said, “consider it all joy when you encounter various trials” (Jas 1:2). Wasn’t my job a trial? Weren’t the people at my workplace serious trials? Wasn’t my boredom a trial? Various trials? Yep. So, the Bible tells me to think of them with Joy, to rejoice in them and for them (Phil 3:1; 4:4), to exult in them (Rom 5:3), even to boast in them (2 Cor 12:9-10). When you look these passages up, notice that in each case the reason we are to think of our suffering this way is because we receive something good as a result of them being in our lives; patience, maturity, perseverance, character, hope, glory, strength, grace, etc. In short, the result of difficult jobs (trials, suffering, hardships, etc.), when we obey God and react rightly to them, is that we become like Jesus.
The third verse tells us to go into all the world and make disciples. Wasn’t my job part of the world? And if everyone at my workplace thought the same thing about their jobs that I thought about my job, they probably didn’t do very much outside the job that would bring them in to contact with Christians. Thus, my contact with them could very well have been the only place they ever saw or experienced, a Christian. With this in mind, I needed to change my reason for being at whatever job I had. I was there, not to make money, but to share the love of God in Jesus Christ with my co-workers.
How was I to do this? I’ve known Christians over the years who realized they were at their jobs to convert the gang and so they started wearing Christian clothing, putting Christian doo-dads all over their workspace, talking about Jesus to everyone they met, and on and on. But because they didn’t change their attitude toward the job, they only alienated everyone at work and looked like hypocrites to everyone. So, I decided to begin by taking the first two verses seriously. I began to rejoice in the job, to look for things to commend everyone around me so that their lives in my presence would be sweeter and more fun. I began to be grateful for my job, to work hard to please and serve everyone around me, and to love everybody with a godly more mature kind of love.
I made one of my goals to change my heart so that the light of God would shine brightly in my own heart first (Mt 5:14). Then, I prayed that God would shine that light on everyone around me without my saying or doing anything obviously “Christian” (Eph. 5:8). I had it in my head that I didn’t want to do anything that would distract or take away from the employer, so I was very careful not to talk about Jesus on work time. On the other hand, when I started being “different” people began noticing and they asked me about it. As this was happening, I asked God to give me answers for the changes in my heart, demeanor, and actions (1 Pet 3:15).
These changes had several results: One was that these changes changed my attitude toward my job. When I began viewing it as a ministry instead of something I was stuck in, it gave me a purpose and a goal. Another result was that when I started thanking God for the job, rejoicing in the job, loving my co-workers, etc. It changed my outlook on all of life. I genuinely began to enjoy myself at work and in the work. The last major result was that God did shine his light through me and people began to ask me about the reason or my joyfulness. As I shared Jesus with people, they also began changing. Some changed and became nasty toward me (2 Tim 3:12), but many more changed to be like me (some becoming Christians) and the whole atmosphere at work was charged with life.
One last thing; some might wonder if what I’ve said here means that because God has them in their current job, that that means they can never leave and go to another job? No, it doesn’t. All it means that they need to flourish where they are. We need to be joyful where we are; to be content where we are, and to be grateful for where we are. But if God gives us the opportunity to go somewhere else, we’re free to go (1 Cor 7:21). We just need to go with the same kind of grateful heart we had in the job we were in.