Why what you do matters

It’s an amazing moment…

Out of nothing, God has created the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Birds, fish, plants, and animals. Innumerable galaxies spinning 92 billion light years into endless space.

And then, with all of space and time and matter to delight in, God steps down to a garden in the Middle East and brings the animals and birds to a lone human being.

‘He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.’ Genesis 2:19b

Really? God, the creator and king of the universe, is interested in what this single human chooses to call that huge animal with big ears and a nose that doubles as an arm? Interested in this ordinary, little task that he, in his grace, has delegated to his steward? Surely not.

But there it is. Genesis 2:19 is proof that God is interested in how Adam will use his powers of observation and speech to differentiate this from that and that and that.

As it was with Adam, so it is with us. God is intensely interested in how every one of us uses our talents, resources, power, opportunities, and freedoms to complete the ordinary tasks we’ve been given. And why wouldn’t he be? He loves us.

Work has purpose

God, in his deep love for us, isn’t only interested in the way we do our work. He also gives us meaningful, purposeful work that he really wants done.

In Eden, God creates a context for human flourishing with him, and he gives human beings a clear mandate to extend that work to the whole world – to look after it, and to release its potential in ways that will support a planet that will one day be filled with people.

We then, through our work, are called to create contexts for human flourishing – homes, workplaces, streets, towns, cities, countries – that bring glory to God. And we are called to do it in God’s ways. And with his aims.Indeed, in creation, we can see God’s work producing five outcomes that all contribute to flourishing.

How does your job fulfil some or all of these goals?

Bringing order

Just as God formed a garden from an earth that was ‘formless and empty’, we tidy a room to make doing the next thing easier, design traffic systems to keep things moving, or make arrests that keep people safe.

Making provision

Just as God provided Adam and Eve with a place to live and food to eat, we stack shelves, cook pasta, build homes, pay salaries, and start businesses.

Crafting beauty

Just as God made fruit that was ‘pleasing to the eye’, we pick just the right colour, perfect that phrase, hit that note, or lay those bricks in a level course.

Sparking joy

Just as God declared that his work was ‘very good’, we can do our work in ways that bring delight – a delicious meal, the right prescription, a personal note on the end of an email.

Releasing potential

Just as God released the potential in matter to create the universe in all its immense variety, so we work to release potential – bread from flour, glass from sand, teams from disparate individuals, godly adults from rowdy toddlers.

Work is a gift

‘Yeah, right. You should try doing my job for a few days.’

Of course, the Fall is real. Yes, work can bring order, provision, joy, and beauty, but sometimes the project fails, the part doesn’t work, the colour runs, and people do what people do. Some work is downright dangerous, some teams are toxic, and some schedules are grindingly tiring.

And yet, in every task, in whatever circumstance, work is still a gift God gives us. It is a context for spiritual growth, prayer, and even worship; a context for Christ to work in us and through us; a context to love extravagantly, pursue justice, show mercy, and lavish generosity. It’s an opportunity to bless, minister, and transform.

Seen like this, work is a way to serve God with our hands and minds. An opportunity to bring his wisdom, his peace, his way of doing things into a situation, to be salt and light as we welcome, or listen, or ask, or generously provide whatever our colleagues, clients, and customers need. Our work is a gift to us. And to them.

Take Meron for example. Meron’s a minicab driver but she doesn’t see her job as just getting people from A to B safely, smoothly, and as swiftly as London traffic allows. She’s not just in the transportation business. She’s in the hospitality sector.

Yes, her passengers book her through an app, but she sees each one as God-sent. And she wants every passenger to feel better when they leave her car than when they got in.

She keeps the car spotless inside and out, and seeks to drive in a reassuring way, prayerfully trying to give each passenger what she senses they need – quiet for the person busy on their laptop, a bit of banter with someone who wants to chat, a gently probing question for the person who seems distraught or distracted.

She knows that for people who are carrying heavy burdens, the opportunity to share with a stranger can be like finding a fountain in the desert, and, for the duration of the journey, her cab turns into a mobile oasis, a haven, a sanctuary. Sometimes she’ll carry on talking after the end of the ride, and even turn off the ride-request app so she doesn’t get pinged for another ride. And sometimes she’ll share something about Jesus, how he’s helped her on her journey and how he might help them on theirs.

What a joy to serve God day by day, passenger by passenger – a gift from him to her. And a gift to those she serves.

Work is mission

This is godly work: doing our job well, caring for the people we work with, having their best interests at heart, and praying for the Spirit empowered creativity to find ways of working which point to our Father. Furthermore, our everyday work plays a significant role in God’s overall mission.

After all, Jesus did not just give his life to enable people to come into eternal relationship with God. He gave his life for the reconciliation and restoration of all things: to bring peace, wholeness, and shalom to all things ‘through his blood, shed on the cross’ (Colossians 1:15–20). He does not just save us from the penalty of our sins and guarantee resurrection life with him. He saves us for our high calling to work with him in all we do, making his world more like he would want it to be before he returns, caring and developing all God has made and entrusted us with.

That is the grand project, and our work is one of the main ways we contribute to it. That is why Paul can write, ‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord’ (Colossians 3:23). That command is built on the truth of Colossians 1, because everything we do has an impact, for better or worse, on people made in God’s image – or on the planet he gave us to steward – or both. All our ‘whatevers’ matter in God’s grand plan. And he weaves them into his ‘all’.

So, of course, our work matters to God. We’re on his team. All this means that our everyday work is not an irrelevant side-show we have to grind through, until we can clock off and start engaging in the ‘real’ mission.

Our everyday work is real mission. What a privilege. And what an opportunity.

Annie’s story

Annie, 34, is a primary school teacher in east Scotland.

‘One of the best moments of my working life was sitting in a grimy café in the middle of a snowstorm eating a burnt cheese toastie. It’s not a common career highlight. But hear me out.

‘My colleague, Sophie, and I had been observing each other’s classes and were meeting for lunch to share our feedback. But we’d barely sat down before Sophie blurted out, “Annie, I just have to ask you, because I know you’re a Christian – what’s the deal with this grace thing? I don’t get it.”

‘Where did that come from? Sophie and I had never really talked about faith before. But a little while back, I’d joined a group going through Transforming Work, LICC’s small group study about following God in the workplace. It was radically changing my attitude to my job, and especially my relationships with my colleagues. I’d particularly felt challenged to be more vulnerable with people, to be better at genuinely sharing my life with them. So Grace’s question felt like an encouraging sign – maybe those changes were bearing fruit.

‘As we chewed around the burnt edges of our mediocre toasties, we talked together about the incredible and unusual concept of God’s grace. It was a short conversation. I can’t say she dramatically converted to Christianity before she’d finished her sandwich. But, somehow, I knew it was a defining moment. It was the start of something. It was the start of me really seeing God at work in my job.

‘Fast forward a few months. I was chatting with some colleagues about volunteering at my church’s weekly meal for homeless people, and one of them asked me why I helped out. “Is it to make God like you more?”, they joked.

‘Before I could respond, Sophie piped up, “Hey, I know this one, it’s about grace! It’s not about making God like her more, she knows God already likes her – he loves her. She says she doesn’t need to do anything to earn it, but she does stuff like that because she wants to show God she loves him too. That’s how grace works.”

‘I couldn’t believe it – an opportunity to share about God’s character and my non-Christian friend had beaten me to the punch.

‘It was incredible. As we carried on talking, I chipped in occasionally, but it was mainly Sophie who led the way through a great discussion about faith.

‘As I’ve gone on this journey with LICC and opened my eyes to what God wants to do in my workplace, I’ve seen him transform both the way I view my job and the lives of the people I work with.

‘At the end of the day I’m just an ordinary person in an ordinary job – but thanks to God, some extraordinary things are happening.’

Tom’s story

Tom, 29, is head of business sales for a car dealership in the Midlands.

‘Competitiveness. Ruthlessness. Single-mindedness. These are things you tend to associate with successful salespeople. But the secret of my team’s success? Forgiveness.

‘When you’re working in sales, especially in a competitive, corporate industry like mine, there’s huge pressure to perform. I know a lot of people feel the temptation to cover up problems and mistakes so they’re not blamed for their team’s low results.

‘But a value I hold close as a Christian is to be truthful and fair in my dealings with other people. I’ve worked hard – and prayed hard – to resist that temptation. And God has been with me in that. In fact, one of my managers recently said he really respected the fact that I “always told the truth and didn’t try to hide problems” – it made him feel he could be more open with me, and it’s been very beneficial for our working relationship. So that’s a great answer to prayer.

‘But that’s not the real story here.

‘A while back, I got involved in a Transforming Work group and one of the biggest things it showed me was that God was actually interested in the whole of my work. It sounds obvious, but I’d really only been seeing part of the picture. I’d always known God cared about how I behaved at work, how I went about my job. But the idea that my work itself – the culture of my workplace, the attitudes and actions of my colleagues, the outcomes of our tasks – could actually be transformed by God – that was a real revelation.

‘So I’ve been working hard and praying hard to see that godly value of truthfulness reflected in my whole team. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating an environment where my employees feel safe to admit when they’ve made a mistake or got something wrong. Attention to detail is key in our work, with all the financial calculations it includes, and errors do happen from time to time. But now they know they’ll be forgiven and I’ll do everything I can to help them fix it.

‘The brilliant thing is that this hasn’t only resulted in a stronger sense of team, but also in better sales figures this year. The atmosphere of trust and forgiveness is so much more conducive to good work than the backbiting and aggression that can so often go on in this industry.

‘How amazing for my team to see God’s values paving the way to success.’

God didn’t make work something to survive.

He made it so you could thrive.

Who doesn’t want to thrive in their work?

We want to be engaged in what we do – heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we want to be just as attuned to God’s Spirit on a Monday morning as on a Sunday morning – becoming more like Jesus each day.

Yet, often, the harder we try to do those things, the harder they seem to be (or the more we realise we fall short).

So, how can we begin to thrive at work as God intended?

Our focus group research with Christian young professionals across a variety of sectors suggests that thriving at work comes not by trying harder to thrive, but as a by-product of bringing our whole selves to work: letting our God-given identity and God-reflecting image shape the way we work. Here are three ways that happens.

1) Bring your prayer life to work

Reading our Bibles and taking time to pray before we get to work can keep our relationship with God compartmentalised. Why not turn up to work three minutes early, take some quiet time at your desk, and see what happens?

‘I usually start work about 30 to 40 minutes early and rush through admin right up until the minute I start doing calls. But when I did take the three minutes in the morning to pray at work, it helped me to keep God present throughout the day. It’s made me see that, even with three minutes, God has so much to say if we stop and listen.’
–Bekka

2) See the meaning in the most mundane tasks

It’s not only the flashy things that matter. God cares about the way we do the mundane things: emails, forms, diaries. In fact, the most unglamorous tasks can be opportunities for us to work in the most worshipful ways. This is the work he has prepared for us to do, so we can ‘work enthusiastically for the Lord’, knowing ‘nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless’ (1 Corinthians 15:58, NLT).

‘My work in retail is often repetitive. I spend plenty of time folding and hanging clothes that customers have left in changing rooms, or on the floor, or in piles. It’s easy to get fed up and despondent. And then I realised, if God causes the sun to rise each day and never gets bored, doing repetitive tasks is a way I reflect his image when I fold the clothes. Not only does that create a better experience for the customers in the store, but God is training me in the kind of careful patience that I know I will one day need as a mum.’
–Ennette

3) Prioritise the relationships you have at work

Sometimes, our most productive intentions can become a hurried efficiency that keeps us disconnected from the people we work with: people made in the image of God and loved by him. What would it look like to take the initiative and connect with a colleague on a personal level?

‘I’m reorienting my definition of a successful day from being efficient to maximising relationship building. I recently had a Teams call with a manager to check off a piece of work, but by asking questions and taking time to listen to her, the conversation turned to sheds-as-home offices, scrapbooking, and family life. It felt so much richer, and so much more uplifting, than spending four minutes on work bits.’
–Steve

Reading the Bible through worker’s eyes

Does the Bible have anything to say about my work? My difficult boss? My quarterly targets? My straight-up rude patient?

Often, ‘biblical times’ can feel pretty distant from our world. All those Romans and Pharisees. Sacrifices. Temples. People lying down to eat.

It can all feel so alien that we fail to see how (and how often) the Bible addresses work. Really? The Bible knows about being an air traffic controller? Installing fridges? Writing JavaScript?

Well – yes. The Bible has a huge amount to say directly about work. It’s full of stories set at work, and it shares bucketloads of wisdom that’s applicable to work.

Some of those things are obvious. It’s obvious that the account of God’s work of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 has implications for the way we understand work. Other things are less obvious. Take the stories of Noah and Babel, for example. You might not immediately think of them as work-related, but here are the first great biblical construction projects: Noah’s oversized boat is built in obedient response to God’s direct command, and Babel’s skyscraping tower is built in arrogant defiance of God’s direct command.

Similarly, it’s obvious that the oppression of the Israelites by Pharaoh’s supervisors in Exodus 1:11–14 and 5:7–9 has to do with work, but we’re perhaps slower to see that Jethro’s advice to his son-in-law Moses to restructure the judiciary in Exodus 18:14–26 makes him a biblical management consultant.

You don’t need a theology degree to pick up on this work-related wisdom. Often all you need to do is ask yourself two simple questions: What is this person’s role? And where is the action taking place?

In Exodus 1:15–21, for example, Shiphrah and Puah are midwives facing a totalitarian Egyptian regime that has legalised the compulsory murder of every new-born male. How will these health workers respond?

Or take Nehemiah (who has his own book of the Bible), a senior civil servant in a vast governmental system. How does he approach a challenging urban regeneration project?

When we notice details like these, our eyes are opened to the many ways biblical stories can speak into our own workplaces and roles. Of course, a passage doesn’t have to be specifically about work for us to find wisdom to shape our discipleship in the workplace. The commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’ applies to our behaviour in the office as well as the local jewellers. ‘Blessed are the meek’ is as relevant in a competitive company as it is in your home or a church meeting.

So, this week, as you read your Bible, listen to a sermon, or reflect on the verse of the day – ask the Lord to alert you to what he has to say about your work as well as other areas of your life. After all, ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3:16–17).