Our Daily Prayer: Give Us Our Daily
Work
Work is love made visible, and if you can't work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms from the people who work with joy."
— Kahlil Gibran
God's Creation Ethic is the natural ideal for our daily work; Adam's fall into sin is the ongoing reality with which we must live; Christ's redemption is the promised hope that is still before us. Until we are redeemed, we cannot know the spiritual fullness of our daily work. But once redeemed, our daily work can be transformed into a vehicle of grace through which we hear the call of God, do the will of God, and give the glory to God.
But first we must deal with the truth that Christ's purpose is to redeem us as workers, and then transform our daily
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work into a gift for the glory of God and fulfill His promise of all things becoming new. New creatures precede new work in God's redemptive plan. With His new creation come changes in our character, motives, attitudes, values, and goals. It is literally true. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away; behold all things have become new: (2 Corinthians 5:17). This includes our daily work.
TRANSFORMING OUR DAILY WORK
Now that I look back upon my childhood in a small independent Tabernacle in Ypsilanti, Michigan, I can see clearly how new Christians created new work. A majority of our members had migrated from the Deep South to join the labor force in the North, building B-24 bombers for World War II. Even though most of the southern transplants were unskilled people who bore the burden of being called "hillbillies," they were a socially and spiritually needy group of people who responded to the mixture of bombastic preaching, high-spirited singing, and occasional shouting spells in the Tabernacle services. The primary pull toward faith, however, came from the personal witnessing of the members on the job who assured their coworkers on the assembly line of immediate acceptance in the Tabernacle family. So, they came by ones, twos, and families to the service and responded by the scores to the altar call which followed every sermon. With their conversions they gained dignity that gave them confidence as witnesses and workers. Prayer and praise meetings became the platform for their reports. Jim, a toothless and bald-headed converted alcoholic, lisped his miracle story about finding a steady job, recovering his family, and winning fellow-workers to Christ. Sadie, a Southern woman who had dropped out of high school, lost two marriages, and who likened herself to Mary Magdalene, came back the Sunday after her conversion with a new hairdo and a modest but comely
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dress, to tell how she now saw herself and her work in a school cafeteria as ministerial rather than menial.
The stories could go on and on, but Ellsworth stands out in my mind. From an impoverished home in Appalachia, he had never learned to read. After his conversion, however, he declared that he would learn to read the Bible. Each week he reported his progress — verse, chapters, books, a Testament, and finally the triumphal moment — he had read the Bible clear through! Then his native intelligence took wings. He brought amazing intuitive insights to the Scriptures. Soon, he started a Bible study during the breaks from building bombers and then he brought his converts to church with him. He demonstrated what C.S. Lewis said, "I never met a common man," Jim, Sadie, and Ellsworth are the unforgettable characters who taught me how new creatures in Christ, nurtured in a redemptive community, can live out the spirituality of their work.
CHRIST'S PRINCIPLES OF WORK
Even if the Bible said nothing whatsoever about the spirituality of our daily work, Christ's example would be enough. The fact that He was born into a working home, learned a trade, labored until He reached the age of thirty, and never denied His workman's titles as a carpenter settles the issue. Jesus Christ advances the meaning of work from the natural gift of creation to the supernatural gift of grace. In His work as a carpenter, for instance, we see far more than the dignity of common labor. Through His work Jesus revealed His servant character and His redemptive destiny. And He taught work-related principles for personal, interpersonal, and functional relationships.
His
teaching about the person in relationship to work leads the way. If
we survey Christ's preaching and teaching for specific statements regarding
our daily work, we don't find many. His primary purpose is to redeem the
person and teach
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the principles of developing new citizens in the new kingdom. Therefore, He deals most directly with the relationships of the person to God and to other persons. The centerpiece of His teaching is the first and greatest commandment, "to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself" (Mark 12:33). The inescapable truth confronts us that the broken relationship between God and us, us and others, us and nature can be restored only by love.
Once again we see how work is integrally connected with worship and wedlock — which is representative of all human relationships. In order for us to fulfill the purpose of God's creation, love must be activated as the motive for our daily work, in a similar way as love gives meaning to our worship and our wedlock. It is no violation of Scripture, therefore, to say, "Love your neighbor, and love your work." Christ restores this triad of relationships in His redemption.
The second kind of relationship to work which Jesus teaches by word and example
is the interpersonal. To introduce love into human relationships is
to appeal to grace. Within ourselves we have no power to heal the alienations
caused by sin. It is through our repentance of sin and trust in Christ that
we all receive grace — best defined as the unmerited favor of God —
and are reconciled to God in worship, to others, and to nature in our daily
work. In grace, however, far more than justification or even reconciliation
is enacted. As recipients of Christ' grace, we come to our daily work with
a spirit of thanksgiving for grace received. To demonstrate our gratitude
for what Christ has done for us so freely, we see our working relationships
in a totally new context. Jesus set that context in His kingdom
principles:
to show respect to every person regardless of status (1Peter 2:17)
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to do simple chores without expecting special favor (Luke 17:7-10)
to be ready for emergencies beyond the call of duty (Luke 10:25-33)
to consider others better than ourselves (Romans 12:3)
to have integrity that is better than an oath (Matthew 5:33-37)
to forgive debtors and enemies (Matthew 5:43-48)
to lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21)
to be anxious about nothing (Matthew 6:25-34)
Because these kingdom principles apply to all human relationships, they create a climate of grace for our daily work.
Jesus illustrated the difference between a climate of justice and a climate of grace in His parable of the workers and their daily pay. Those who were employed at the beginning of the day and those who worked only one hour received the same wage. When the full-day workers cried, "Foul," the master explained that he had the power to do justice and to show grace. To me this emphasizes God's grace more than His sovereignty. Jesus is teaching us how God sees us in our work — not through the eyes of lock-step justice which requires pay commensurate with the work done, but through the eyes of grace, which gives us all the opportunity to receive full forgiveness and abundant life without regard to our longevity in service, our status in the system, or the amount of our productivity in achievement. In all of our work relationships, including those where there is competition or conflict, if we will stop to ask, "How would grace respond?" our daily work will be transformed.
A third principle of grace which Jesus taught bears upon our functional
relationships in daily work. Consistent with His early occupation as
a carpenter and with the role He assumed in
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His early ministry, Jesus defined servanthood as the proper role of His followers in whatever they did. To be a servant in the Spirit of Jesus Christ without grace is impossible. Try as we might, if we do not receive grace for our daily work, our self-interest will break through time and time again to spoil our witness and cause cynicism, hostility, domination, and to reach for self-glory. A servant of Jesus Christ is called to be totally dependent upon the will of God the sovereign Master, and on the grace of Jesus the model Servant. To be a servant, then, is to obey the will of God, speak the work of God, do the work of God, and give the glory to God. Grace then invokes the law of greatness for us in our daily work.
Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 2:26-28).
When I think about the law of greatness in the lives of believers I have known, I see a company of humble servants leading bishops and superintendents, presidents and pastors, celebrities and stars, into the kingdom of heaven:
Carl, a janitor who whistles while he mops, because God has saved him from suicide.
Billy, the deformed boy who drags himself to the altar every time the pastor prays.
Mary, a retiree who honors her Lord by keeping fresh flowers around the church.
Randy, the blind man who sees farther into faith than those of us with sight.
Allen, the mechanical genius who serve his
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Lord by fixing things no one else can fix.
Sally, the prominent pastor's wife who ministers on her own in a thousand unsung ways.
Without pretense or pride, these friends are all servants of Christ in their daily work.
Recently I met two Christian leaders from behind the Iron Curtain. My Western naïveté caused me to wonder how they could be Christian under Communism. Surely, I thought, if they had not come to a crisis of conscience with their atheistic government, they had to be compromising their faith. How wrong I was. Within minutes after we opened our conversation, I realized that I had compromised my faith more under the subtle pressure of my comfortable capitalism than they had under a Communist government. Yet, by grace under pressure and genius for frustrating the system, they demonstrated to me what the Apostle Paul meant when he encouraged believers, slave or free, to be content with their circumstances and to live as under Christ, their ultimate Master (1 Corinthians 7:21). If only we could make the same truth operational in our daily work. Rather than suffering from the symptoms of stress because we fight against our work or our position, we can find the means of continuing the work of Christ as His friends wherever we are.
PAUL'S INSTRUCTIONS FOR DAILY WORK
The Apostle Paul built upon the redemptive principles of Jesus in his practical instructions to the new Christian churches. Although his admonitions applied to specific situations for living in the cultures of which they were a part, they also help us as we consider how to base our daily work on the principles of Jesus. As the nature of work changes and the work ethic evolves, we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to develop biblical practices for our work.
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As we look at Paul's admonition on work, we find so much that we can only cite some key examples:
All work is an answer to God's calling (Ephesians 5:1-9).
Each person is given a gift and with it a task (Romans 12:6).
Each gift for work is spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:12-14).
Each believer is free to remain on the job, slave or free (1 Corinthians 7:20).
Every job is done to the glory of God (Ephesians 6:19).
No work done to the Lord is futile (1 Corinthians 15:18).
We bring to our work the mind of Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:3).
God's will and work come together in our will and work (Philippians 2:12).
Each person has a different calling, but we all serve one Lord (1 Corinthians 12:5).
All human work is temporal (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).
Our motivation for work is in Christ (Philippians 7:8-13).
We are to be worthy of the vocation to which we are called (Ephesians 4:1).
We are not to be a financial burden on others (1 Thessalonians 2:9).
We must not chafe at our ministry (Philippians 2:4).
We are to obey our superiors without fear (Titus 2:9-10).
We accept instruction (Colossians 3:22-25).
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We are to treat subordinates fairly (1 Timothy 6:11-19).
We are to avoid idleness, luxury, and begging for money (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12).
Employers and employees are to treat each other fairly since Christ is the master of both (Ephesians 6:9).
We are to break contact with thieves (1 Corinthians 5:10).
We are to be aware of the transiency of wealth (2 Timothy 6:10).
Any honest work is dignifying (Titus 3:1).
In the unity of the body of Christ there is no distinction or honor (Colossians 3:11).
Whatever our work, our employer is Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:22-24).
Our work is thanksgiving (Colossians 3:17).
We are urged to mind our own business and work with our hands (1 Thessalonians 4:1).
We are to share from our work with those in need (Ephesians 4:28).
We are God's workmanship, created in Christ for good works (Ephesians 2:10).
All work is service to the Lord (Ephesians 6:5-8), and
Every job is a work of faith and a labor of love (1 Thessalonians 1:3).
These examples show clearly that Paul and Jesus both emphasized the motive of love for doing God's will and work; the expression of grace for dealing with persons in work relationships, and the attitude of servanthood for depending upon God, being accountable to Him, and giving Him the glory. If we put these biblical concepts into practice, our daily work can be transformed.
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THE SERVANT'S PRAYER
Our search for redemptive work principles comes to conclusion in Jesus' Parable of the Talents. Each person in the parable is called to steward the resources of the Master. Each is given different gifts of talents, each is charged with the responsibility for making an investment that will bring those talents to their full potential, and each is accountable to the Master for the results of his stewardship.
Except for the unfaithful steward who buried his talents, the others received their master's commendation. "Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord" (Matthew 25:21).
In the commendation of the Master are the criteria for reviewing the spirituality of our daily work. When all is said and done, God expects our work to be "well done," and He expects us to be "good," and "faithful."
"Well done" is the standard of excellence for our daily work. Over and over
again, I have found that there is no substitute for excellence as the point
of entry for our Christian witness. As a college, university, and seminary
president, I have always faced the temptation of pressuring our children
to excel in their academic work. When our first son was little, the young
women in my wife's prayer group brought weekly reports on the progress of
their children — who teethed, walked, talked, read, and spelled first.
Right then and there, I decided we should drop out of the rat race with our
children. It has paid off. Each, with varying speeds of development, has
risen to his or her own level without extra pressure from parents. Collision
came only if they were performing below their level because of lack of effort.
When our youngest son, for instance, dropped a full letter grade from a B
to a C because he failed to turn in a paper, we had a father/son meeting
on self-discipline and time management.
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I believe that God expects us to perform at our highest level of capacity in our daily work. Whether we answer telephones, construct buildings, teach children, sell products, or preach, our goal should be to hear His commendation, "Well done."
God's second expectation for our daily work enjoins the quality of our character
with the quality of our performance in the commendation "good." The same
standard which God applied to His own work of creation — "good" —
involved two dimensions: the holiness of His character and the
wholeness of His work. Our daily work is subject to the same twofold
test. "Good" is the inner integrity that can be fully known only through
faith in Jesus Christ and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. "Good" is also
the wholeness of our completed task. It means that the quality of the job
extends to the relational aspects with other coworkers, the moral community,
and the body of Christ, as well as to our vocational competence. It is one
thing to push a project through to completion, and quite another to leave
a trail of exhausted people and questionable decisions along the way. The
spirituality and the goodness of our daily work is proven by the holiness
of our character and the wholeness of our contribution.
"Faithfulness" is God's third expectation for our stewardship. To be faithful
is to be consistent in our tasks and in our trust. Studies show that the
trust of followers is built on the consistency of leaders. To accept the
trust of talents and tasks which God has given us and then to hold our course
through highs and lows, praise and criticisms, success and failure —
this is the path of the faithful servant. The Apostle Paul went so far as
to say, "But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory
by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen,
and settle you" (1 Peter 5:10).
As "good" is to be true to oneself, so "faithful" is to be
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true to one's trust. The spirituality of our daily work is joined to the quality of our finished work in the same way that it is bound to the quality of our personal character.
"Servant," in the Parable of the Talents, means "love-slave." Thus, a Christian
servant at work is bounded to the will of God, and yet is free to develop
the full potential of personhood through that investment and growth of God-given
talents. Puritans had no corner on obedience, craftsmen had no hold on
creativity, entrepreneurs have no exclusive right to risk, careerists have
no special claim on enjoyment, and self-developers are not alone in their
interest in personal growth. All of those opportunities belong to the Christian
who lives and works by the biblical ethic. "Well done, good and faithful
servant" is more than an eternal hope for our stewardship. It is a present
possibility for our daily work.
But there is more. In the Creation Ethic we are copartners with God in secondary creation — making good things out of existing resources. By Christ's example, we are commanded to be servants who do God's will and God's work. By His grace, the value of our daily work rises to redemptive heights when we are called the friends of Christ.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.
These things I command you, that you love one another.
(John 15:15-17)
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What confidence God has placed in us! His intention is that our daily work be a continuation of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Because love and grace converge in our daily work, no vocational track, career path, or current job is unworthy of a Christian. In a very real sense, we are the friends of Christ.
So let our prayer be, "LORD, GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY WORK." To do the will of God as His vocational calling, with His gifts, by His grace, and for His glory, is to love our work — an experience of joy that awaits us all!
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SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS
ON OUR WORK AND LOVE
Remembering without ceasing your work of
faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in
the Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our
God and Father.
1 Thessalonians 1:3
* * * * * * *
A PROVOCATIVE QUESTION
What are the major temptations in your work which could keep you from being faithful? If your coworkers were asked if they could trust you because of your integrity and consistency, how do you think they would answer?
A PRACTICAL EXERCISE
Much is said about being a servant. If you were to rewrite your job description according to a servant role, what qualifications, expectations, tasks, and terms would you change and emphasize?
A PERSONAL PRAYER
Redeeming Christ, fill me with the joy of doing my daily work with faith, hope, and love — knowing that the greatest of these is love. Amen.
