My friend Steve is leading a particularly rich men’s group in our church around the topic of God and our work. Below is his latest communiqué – valuable for pastors and laity alike.
The output of our work should be a function of our priorities as “workers” in God’s Kingdom. Let’s remind ourselves of the priorities Scripture gives us:
Read Matt. 22:35-38 and Col. 3:17
Glorify or worship God through your work – this must come before we “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Why?
[Dorothy] Sayers suggests that if we work to serve “our neighbor” as first priority it moves us off the sense that the work in and of itself is given us to do to please God as an expression of our unique being and purpose. She cites several consequences of this (talk about examples of these you’ve seen at work):
1. Poor Quality – “You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it – any more than you can make a good drive from the tee if you take your eye off the ball. ‘Blessed are the single hearted’: (for that is the real meaning of the word we translate ‘the pure in heart’). If your heart is not wholly in the work, the work will not be good – and work that is not good serves neither God nor the community; it only serves mammon.”
2. Entitlement – “The second reason is that the moment you think of serving other people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains; you begin to think that you have a claim on the community. You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause, and to harbor a grievance if you are not appreciated. But if your mind is set upon serving the work, then you know you have nothing to look for; the only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection. The work takes all and gives nothing but itself; and to serve the work is a labor of pure love.”
3. People Pleasing – “Nine-tenths of the bad plays put on in theaters owe their badness to the fact that the playwright has aimed at pleasing the audience, instead of at producing a good and satisfactory play. Instead of doing the work as its own integrity demands that it should be done, he has falsified the play by putting in this or that which he thinks will appeal to the groundlings (who by that time have probably come to want something else), and the play fails by its insincerity. The work has been falsified to please the public, and in the end even the public is not pleased. As it is with works of art, so it is with all work.”
Think about God’s pronouncement at the end of each day’s work during the work week we pattern all work weeks after – the week of creation. If we focused our work with the goal of finishing each day with our own pronouncement of “it is good,” how might that change our way of approaching our work?
Pray for each other that God will give you focus this week as you seek to worship Him through your work.
