The Difference Christ Makes
In Your Work

"Woman's work is never done." Neither is modern woman's work ever classified! She is free now to do almost any kind of work which interests her. Had I lived in the days before women were set free, I should have headed all parades with the largest banner of all held high proclaiming our rights to be people.

   Men have always been permitted to be people.

   We have just recently made it.

   But thank God, we have made it. And now and forever, as long as the earth shall last, I hope that it will never be possible to classify woman's work. In this chapter we will be speaking of women who may be homemakers, office workers, teachers, doctors, lecturers, nurses, chemists, manufacturers, advertising executives, electronic experts, saleswomen, writers, ad infinitum. But they all have womanhood and work in common.

   We will use actual illustrations from the lives of a few who have proven to themselves and those with whom

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they work, that there is an amazing difference even in these daily tasks when a woman's personality is controlled by Jesus Christ.

   First of all, in one sense, all women are homemakers. This is our natural instinct. I have been in my own home approximately only three months out of each of the past three or four years. But I still care about it. I am still interested in its decor. There was left out of my make-up entirely the usual womanly ingredient of loving to cook and sew and bake and mend. I can broil steaks and make a fair garlic salad, but I still can't sew on a button so that it will stay sewed on or make a bed properly. Personally, I should hate the confinement of regular housework. I would make a dreadful full-time homemaker and wife and mother. I wouldn't like the roles and I would not be successful at any of the three.

   But still I dare to write to you who are homemakers and wives and mothers, because I am a woman, too, and because in my own life I have experienced and am experiencing the vast difference between my work with and without Jesus Christ at the controls. You see I have lived most of my life with myself at the controls. The difference is one to inspire great lyrics.

   I hope many of you who are reading this are still students in high school or college. You are women, too. And I am convinced that no work you will ever have to do will be harder than what you are doing now. I spent almost half of the years of my life in schools and universities. Life never exacts more of us than it does during those years. So, without a doubt, what I will say now has to do with you also if you are a woman whose main occupation is studying. If you have received Christ as your Saviour, He sits in class with you, studies and takes examinations with you.

   As in every other area of life, our attitude toward our

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work is the key. You may or may not be in the work you would choose for yourself. And even if you are in your chosen field, as homemaker or career woman, I'm sure there are certain tasks connected with your work which you actively dislike.

   This is simply because you are human. So don't kick yourself around for it.

   But one glowing secret which I have learned (although I do not always practice what I have learned in this area) is that all work can and should be a sacrament to the Christian.

   A major part of the time, my personal belongings, clothes, and few books, my portable phonograph, a small case of favorite recordings, my portable typewriter and file cabinet are either in the process of being packed or unpacked from the back of my automobile. Or in the process of being loaded or unloaded onto some redcap's dolly in a railroad station or airport. I hate to pack! And more than that, when I come home from a trip, I hate unpacking.

   But when I remember that I can check toothpaste, make-up, cologne, writing paper, clean handkerchiefs, and lingerie to the glory of God, the very thing I hate most becomes a sacramental effort. I am doing it for Him. I also wash dishes this way. It increases my sense of nearness to Him. It marks my thoughts indelibly with the certainty that there are no little things with God where I am concerned. He is interested in all of it. This knowing gives me an added experience of His love. And His love is the great transformer of our human personalities.

   Anything that gives us a deeper conviction concerning the love of Christ is all glory! And there is no better place to find these tender indications of the true nature of His heart than in our work. Especially in the part of it which we happen to dislike. Anything that throws us onto Jesus Christ is something for which to give thanks.

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   Woman's work is one area of her life in which she can, if she will, and if she is seeing clearly, stay in an attitude of constant thanksgiving. My work gets too much for me most of the time. Writing books is the only part of it which I really enjoy. And other things have so crowded in that writing is almost the last thing I get around to doing. Speaking engagements, board meetings, writing short articles (which I don't enjoy!), telephone calls, troubled people, people with "great ideas" for religious TV and radio programs, TV and radio appearances, and the daily stack of mail to be answered — all this crowds my poor writing to the end of the list. And all I really like is the writing!

   So, you see, I have much for which to be grateful. Every day I am thrown into some situation which forces me to remember that it can, it must (if I am to keep my sanity) be turned into a gesture of love on my part to the Lord Jesus Himself.

   I am the first to admit, however, that unless He is, at the very moment of my feeling of being swamped, in full control of the very center of me, I am not even willing to make the unpleasant tasks a sacrament.

   Please don't leap at the idea that I am complaining about my lot in life. I'd be as lonely as anyone else if no one wrote to me, and as discouraged as anyone else if the requests for speaking engagements suddenly stopped. I am thankful for all of it. But I am also human and like you, I have certain tasks which I enjoy naturally, and others which I must enjoy supernaturally.

   I'm sure you follow me when I say that if there were only the daily forty or fifty letters, or only the new radio and TV ideas to work out, or only the speaking engagements, that would be different. If you only had the ironing to do today, or the shopping and the family chauffeuring, or if you had only your boss's current mail to get out, or if you only had

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your regular appointments to keep. If only. But life and work are not like that. No one's life and no one's work is truly simple.

   All of it is beyond us if we are honest.

   But none of it is beyond Jesus Christ.

   And we have access to His poise and His patience and His clear insight and His wisdom in making emergency decisions. We have access to His strength when we are too weary to tackle one other thing.

   Anyone, in any walk of life, who has really put this truth to the test knows that it is a fact. Not a pious theory.

   One woman, a supervisor of nurses in a large hospital, is living proof of the difference a Christ-controlled inner self can make in one's work. When Alyce E. gave her life to Jesus Christ in her late forties one Sunday afternoon during the time I was speaking at Cannon Beach conference grounds in Oregon, she was a bad-tempered, rebellious, disillusioned woman. By her own admission, her reputation among the nurses with whom she worked was good only where her professional capabilities were concerned. Her temper flared and she possessed no mean knack for cutting people down with her blazing tongue. Her work was heavy and hard. But I sensed in her a deep need for Him. She sensed it, too, although her first step toward Him was taken with some reservations on her part. Now, Alyce will be the first to tell you that He never has any reservations on His part! She cracked the door to her heart just a little and He came in. Just as He said He would.

   Life had not been easy on Alyce during her forty years. It has not been easy on her since she became a follower of Jesus Christ. But in the main she has been easy on life! I couldn't keep back a smile the day one of her nurses told me herself that everyone at the hospital was buzzing about

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the change in Miss E's disposition. She was always skillful as a technician. But as a supervisor, much of her actual work was with people. With the nurses under her and with the doctors. Several years have gone by since Alyce placed her personality under the control of Christ and He has held it. Real tragedy slashed across her heart recently as a result of a horrible automobile accident. But the inner controls held. Alyce E. is a peaceful woman inside. And her work, while it is still hard, with the same problems as before, has become creative. She does more for the reputation of Jesus Christ among those with whom she works now than a hundred books or a thousand sermons!

   "We didn't even know she had such a nice smile," the young student nurse told me. "Now, we all like to do things for her to make her smile!"

   Not only is Alyce E. easier to work with, her work has become easier on her, too.

   The change in her personality has not been sudden. It seldom is. And it is still going on. But her heart has been steadily intentioned toward Christ. She "gets" Him. And He's got her.

   Another close friend of mine, who is a professor of English Literature in a southern college, has been a devout Christian for most of her life. Recently, however, she confided in me that for the first two years as a professor, she just did not love her students. Especially the slow-witted ones who didn't move quickly with what she considered proper intellectual agility, through the heavy classics she was endeavoring to teach to them. Her work began to be a hateful thing instead of the good, creative thing it should have been, considering her own extreme love of English literature. But instead of buckling under it and falling into a pit of discouragement, she knew Christ well enough to know He had an answer for it. On her knees one night by her bed, she asked Him,

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with tears streaming down her face, to give her His love for those slow students whose personalities she didn't happen to like.

   Did He give it to her?

   Of course He did. She had to see her own need of it first, however, before He could give it to her. We simply won't take things we don't really want! At first, she justified her impatience with her students by saying they were too stupid to deserve patience. She was not being realistic and she was close enough to God to know it. He had to make her willing to love the slow students first. And then He poured His love through her to such an extent that although she was still considered the toughest prof on campus, she is without a doubt one of the most loved. A weekend retreat off campus is just no fun at all to the students now, unless my dear professor friend is along.

   As far as her ability and knowledge of her subject were concerned, she was already outstanding as a teacher. Now she is successful in all aspects of her work, because more important than their grasp of English literature is the total personalities of those young people whom she teaches. She is taking Christlike, loving care of their total personalities now. And she is able to do it because her total personality is Christ-controlled.

   So far, we have spoken of two career women. What of the homemaker? How is her work affected by her own personality?

   One of the greatest, most authentic Christian women I know is my dear friend, Anna Mow, to whom I dedicated my book Share My Pleasant Stones. To know her now makes her story difficult to believe. But she has told it herself on my radio series "Visit With Genie," and perhaps you have heard it.

   She was a missionary to India for many years, and before

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her recent retirement, she taught for several years at Bethany Biblical Seminary in Chicago. But at heart, she is first a homemaker. And in her own words: "I used to watch women leave my house after I had counseled with them and as they left, I actually envied them the help they had so apparently received from God! They showed personality changes and I didn't. I did a lot of public speaking then, too, and I taught a Sunday school class. I said all the right things but I wasn't living them at home at all. The Holy Spirit used two sharp knives, wielded by my son and my husband to cut out the cancer of self-control within me."

   Tears came to her kind eyes as she told me what her husband and son had said to her. "Mother, why can't you be at home the way you are in church on Sunday?" This from her young son.

   "Anna, what would the people back home in the church think if they could see you acting up this way around the house — you, a missionary they've sent out?" This from her usually quiet, philosophical, gentle husband.

   Anna Mow went straight to God. And through a series of chastening periods, He was at last given the inner controls of her being. Her life for the past twenty years has been like a touch of Christ Himself on every person fortunate enough to know her.

   I know I for one will never be able to express adequately my thanks to God because she is my friend.

   I have just now (as I write this paragraph) spoken by telephone to another woman who is a close friend of mine and who has given me full permission to tell you about the way in which God controls her personality as a homemaker. I must tell you that chose Kay Gieser as an illustration because I have been in her home, have seen the harmony come out of the normal chaos which occasionally hits the best run homes when there are three boys and a girl. I have never

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been in a more beautifully decorated home. The Gieser family did much of the work themselves on their new house and Kay's infallible color sense soothes my senses every time I visit there. There is imagination and excellent taste and above all, there is peace.

   Her husband is a successful eye surgeon, and also a genuine Christian. And before I spoke with Kay by telephone just now, I checked with him about her general disposition around the house! He gave her a glowing recommendation.

   And when I spoke with her, she was gracious enough to share with us the verse from the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah which is her refuge verse. I can see that it is more than a refuge. It is a stimulus to her to keep her conscious mind prodded into remembering that what it says can be true of her life and of her home. This is the verse she gave me: "And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isaiah 58:11).

   Kay reminded me that some persons may still consider her a weed patch and not a watered garden! But this verse which shows the tremendous potential of her life as a homemaker linked with the life of Christ, is the pattern she follows.

   She, of all people, knows that it is He who waters her garden. When her youngest boy, who is nine, and very, very talkative, gets too much for her, she asks him to excuse her a few minutes while she goes up to her room to the Lord about things. This habit changes her and she usually finds the youngster changed, too, when she comes back downstairs. But most of her talking to the Lord is during dishes and cleaning and dusting. She teaches two Bible classes a week, does her own cooking and cleaning, and keeps herself, as well as her house, always attractive. She

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asked me to be sure to tell you that she finds discipline for herself as important (or maybe more so) as for her children. She quite agrees that we have to form the habit of remembering that this living water in the Person of the indwelling Christ is always available. Our discipline is to remember to keep our inner selves conscious of His presence. He never leaves. The water is always there. But we do forget about it. We do forget about Him. Especially when something is broken and two children are crying and the laundryman rings the doorbell and the laundry isn't gathered up yet. This is an excellent time to forget about the One who waters your garden. But He is still there. Waiting for you to remember Him.

   Perhaps you are thinking, "Well, if my husband were a successful eye surgeon and I didn't have so many financial worries, I'd be a better homemaker, too!"

   A good point. But the same principle applies. Nothing changes Jesus Christ. He is neither limited nor helped along by our circumstances.

   Another friend of mine, in whose modest, but attractive home I lived for several days while speaking in her city, is equally as successful as Kay Gieser as a homemaker. Her name is Lethe Neeper and her personal life, her home, her disposition and her natural charm do great credit to Jesus Christ. In fact, Lethe and her husband and their three adopted children won my heart within the first five minutes after I arrived. I know of no one else who can meet and understand and show the love of Christ to her non-believing neighbors in a more convincing way than Lethe Neeper. She is not poor, but certainly she is not well-to-do. And it was an education to me to watch her coordinate her housework, laundry, meals, make a steady flow of contacts concerning my meetings and still stay casual and good-tempered with the active and inquisitive two girls she had adopted.

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   Her delightful sense of humor is proof enough to me that Christ is in control of her personality!

   As long as we are taking ourselves so seriously we cannot laugh when irritations pile up, it is a sure sign that we are not taking Him seriously enough. Lethe Neeper knows how to laugh. And she doesn't just laugh at a messy house and go on in spite of it. She could, if she had to, but her Christ-controlled personality gives her added energy, since little of it is wasted in complaining. I have sometimes cringed at the dripping, knotted disarray in some bathrooms when there are small children in the home. The whole Neeper family and I shared the same bath. I saw no confusion and no quick, frantic cleaning going on. It was a neat, orderly house. And even when the girls (aged two and four) dumped torn paper all over the living room rug two minutes before dinner one night, Lethe didn't lose her poise or humiliate the youngsters. There was no resentment evident from her, from her husband, from the little strewers or from their twelve-year-old brother. The whole family rallied around Lethe and the damage was cleaned up in no time. I sensed a loyalty to her because no one had caused to resent her.

   She wasn't on her good behavior for me. She was natural. I would have sensed immediate resentment in the youngsters over the pre-dinner accident, if her normal way had been to shout at them. Lethe Neeper is not a perfect woman. Who is? But she impressed me greatly as having a Christ-controlled personality. For this reason her heavy church work, her heavy housework, her heavy responsibility of bringing up three children, her heavy concern that her neighbors know Jesus Christ, is carried on with a minimum of confusion.

   Perhaps you hate housework and yet you got married a long time ago and now there are children and you feel trapped. You may be one of those well-meaning, but uneasy and inwardly rebellious women who feel she is "called" into

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vocational Christian work. Who feels her gifts are being wasted waxing floors and polishing windows and washing the same dishes over and over and over. Maybe you're a typist and you hate it. And you're also sure that you should be in vocational Christian work. Be sure your problem is not going to be neglected in this book. But it will be looked at in the chapter on rebellions. It belongs there.

   Here, we have attempted to look at various women who work under varying conditions. We have tried to find out what Christ really has to do with their work and their attitudes toward it.

   Everyone's work gets "too much" now and then. But I can't see that work is a curse upon the human race. I consider it a blessing. One of God's greatest. Neither do I believe we will sit around in heaven strumming harps on golden curbstones. I hope not. I'm sure I'd never learn to play a harp. And I think even in heaven we'd get tired of nothing but harp music! I believe there will be work in heaven. Good, creative work to keep us growing and to keep us learning.

   In Mark's gospel is a much overlooked line which is the key to our working conditions on earth: "And they went forth . . . the Lord working with them."

   Jesus Christ wants to work with us.

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