A four part series on connecting Christ with your career, and how he owns it.
1) Restorative — 2) Creative — 3) Narrative — 4) Connective

In church, they’ll tell you that “giving glory to God” ultimately means becoming a super-pastor, a globe-trotting missionary, or a teacher of systematic theology in the leftover classroom behind the auditorium. We use the word bi-vocational like working for God is one thing and your job is something else. It’s the Sacred/Secular Divide, a myth propagated by greedy pastors looking for free staff, and it’s compartmentalized your everyday churchgoer into guilt-driven church mode.

Following Jesus also means following your calling — what you were individually put on earth to do — and we’ve driven a splinter the size of the church wall right into it. A talented choir singer pursues a singing career and the church scoffs: Why can’t she be a Christian singer? Why don’t she just sing here? A young guy is interested in surgery or cancer research or archaeology or molecular biology, and the church sneers: How can he do science and say he’s still a Christian? You got an artist who draws incredible art on his bulletin during the sermon, and the church has no idea what to do with him. You have future lawyers and military and authors and business owners and we hardly give them biblical patterns except for, “Evangelize when you get there.” And if someone wants to get into Hollywood, acting or directing or producing, you can forget it. Might as well call them a Satan-loving pagan.

In short: the church has done a lackluster job encouraging a generation of called believers to be in-and-not-of, instead burdening them with narrow church-centered shackles that are not one-size-fits-all. There’s this bizarre disconnect between faith and futures that not only misinforms, but simply ignores the specific purpose that God has appointed every single person. Maybe we forgot Bezalel and Oholiab in Exodus 31, who were filled with the Holy Spirit to craft God’s house. No small task. It was their God-given talent to ferociously swing a hammer in the awesome name of the Lord.

Here then, biblically, will be four principles derived from the Books of Nehemiah, Daniel, and other places that outline how our individual vocations honor God. The first of the four is Restorative. The rest will be in upcoming posts.

1) Restorative.

Everything flows from the Greatest Commandment: Love God, love people.

To know God like He really is and to make a difference by serving people.

Out of your being emerges doing. When you’re rightly connected to God, people are no longer idols or benefits or tools, but are then in right relation to you: as God-created beings who are broken by sin (by nature and choice) and who eagerly await wholeness. The world will see God in how they see Him through you (John 13:33-34).

We see the being and doing in Nehemiah 1, where Nehemiah’s anguished prayer is both out of love for his people and love for his God. So his immediate course of action is to leave his comfortable job as the King’s cupbearer and go rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This would be like leaving your job as the President’s tailor to do construction work on the streets of Detroit.

In the midst of Nehemiah’s epic-sized mission, we see a theme that paints our own work: that the purpose of our work is inextricably the same as the purpose of our lives. Love God, love people. So all we do must build, breathe life, renovate, and restore.

I’m sure your job has some nasty people that don’t deserve a thing from you. You’re limited in your ability to make administrative change, or to even get a new coffee machine. You can’t imagine forgiving your boss, much less compliment his shoes or take him out to dinner. Many of you just want to show up on time, keep your head low, do the minimum, and collect pay. Understandable, given our current work conditions and the shady scandals and the cutthroat competition.

Except that would’ve been a pretty bad deal if Jesus had done the same. If he looked at you and said, “You don’t deserve a thing from me. I can’t change you. I can’t forgive you or encourage you or spend time with you. I’m just going to show up, keep my head low, build these tables, and fly to Heaven.”

Instead Jesus came on a counter-intuitive rescue mission into the midst of a sinful world that would crush him, and he gave life to everything and everyone around him. We are on the same sort of a mission: dropped into the middle of a sinful world to give it life. You might say, “I can’t do that” — but Jesus did it all by the Holy Spirit (just read Luke). All believers also have the Holy Spirit, meaning you are God’s House. We are empowered to follow Jesus and be just like him, and he says we’ll do even greater things than he did.

You’ll deal with difficult people. What would Jesus have done? By the Holy Spirit, forgive them and love them. If necessary, report them. You’ll be tempted to avoid your boss or avoid certain people or avoid the bigger responsibilities. What would Jesus have done? By the Holy Spirit, step in and get messy and work in love. You’ll come up against cheaters and liars and thieves. What would Jesus have done? By the Holy Spirit, get courage and confront with all gentleness, humility, authority, and love. I know it’s not easy. What’s harder is letting fifty years go by to realize you could’ve done it all along.

God Has Put You On Mission in the Middle of Babylon

Daniel and his Israelites friends were kidnapped from a comfortable life in Jerusalem into the moral chaos of Babylon, where they were forced to learn the culture and language. Imagine the shock of such a sudden life change. No one really had a first day at work like these guys. It would be like you taken prisoner to Iraq and being put to work while learning the Iraqi language, their customs, traditions, and religion. But Daniel and his friends, even after given new names and indoctrinated into Babylon, managed the tension of serving their earthly boss while also honoring their true God. If you read closely, they never quite forgot: Love God, love people.

Part of your calling is to establish God’s kingdom and righteousness wherever you might be to the best of your uniquely wired ability. That can be simple, like buying your boss a cake, like organizing a party for your co-worker’s new baby, like writing encouraging cards and emails to your staff. It can be harder, like getting involved with a tragedy in the office, lifting up someone in their depression, or convincing your staff not to lie about numbers and progress. Regardless, you must know your job is not your job. Profit is not the bottom line. You are the hub of spiritual exhortation. You are there to relationally edify those God-created people. How you speak, act, move, think, and decide will point to Christ, or will not point to Him.

If the Christian life is following Jesus and becoming like him, then you are the extension of Jesus in your workplace. God specifically designed you into your birth year, your build, your face, your talents, your voice, your personality, your co-workers, and your boss so that you’d be the Restorer in that building. Whether you’re the janitor or assistant or caller or driver or vice president, you have two options: to bring life or to bring death. I pray that even when difficult, like Jesus, you’d choose to bring life.

Next: Secular Vs. Spiritual, Part 2 — Creative
“A Counterculture for the Common Good”