And shouldn’t it be just the same for us? After all, we don’t spend the majority of our time in church or with our house church, we spend it working. Whether it be as a hairdresser, mechanic, teacher or mother. Therefore if this Gospel is such good news, and Jesus truly is King, then wouldn’t that affect more than just our Sunday church service and morning devotionals?

Here we are going to look at a couple of practical ways in which we can apply the truths (discussed during the message) to our lives. How the gospel of Jesus Christ changes:

• How we work
• How we use our work, and
• What we value

Work is good, and God uses our work, although for many of us we can get caught up on what we should do. 

Ultimately, God is calling you to work hard, and glorify him in whatever you do.

Which is to say that it isn’t so much about what you do, it is far more about how you do it.

Ephesians exhorts us to work with a sincere heart (v. 5), not just when it is beneficial to us (v. 6), and to work with a joyful attitude as if we are serving the Lord (v. 7-8).

A couple of practical things to consider:

Pray for Your Work

Not just your workplace, but your actual work. That you would do it in such a way that brings glory to God. Afterall, if we live by the power of the Holy Spirit, ask him to empower you to work well. To be patient, creative, innovative, disciplined and attentive to detail. 

Work Hard

Seems obvious right… but work hard. Not for your benefit, but because we are working for the Lord. Find ways to be self-motivated and diligent, even when the supervisor isn’t around.

Create Culture, Don’t Just Submit to it

A joyful attitude towards work means not grumbling about arduous or annoying tasks and not gossiping about that colleague. Instead, be someone who creates culture. Speak highly of your colleagues to their faces and behind their backs. Respect your boss, and pray for ways to support them if you can’t. Encourage those around you, and lead them to work the same.

Work with Integrity

Work fair, truthfully, honestly and humbly. Seek every opportunity to live with the integrity and humility that Christ has displayed for us (Phil 2:1-11)

Your workplace may be the most important mission field you ever travel to, and you go there most days. Are you overlooking it?

Those people that we spend most of our lives with may be those whom we have the greatest opportunity to share the gospel with. Yet often we separate our ‘spiritual life’ from our ‘work life’ and become two different people when we are in each. 

Instead, we want to be ordinary people, doing ordinary things, with Gospel intentionality.

So:

Pray for Your Colleagues

Yes their needs and their families, but also pray for their hearts, that they would come to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Invest in Others

Your work can be a great way to invest and build into other people’s lives. How can you be a blessing to someone else; either at work, or through your work?

Let Your Work be a Witness

How you work, discussed above, can be a witness of the grace which you have received in Christ. I wonder if Christians who are captivated by the Gospel and worked as if they were serving the Lord in all that they did, would be such a light in a dark world that it would cause people to ask questions.

Share the Gospel

Get uncomfortable and invite a colleague into your home or out for lunch, and share the Gospel with them. Seek an opportunity to tell them what you believe and why you believe it.

In this passage, Paul points our attention and our affection back to Christ in all that we do. These instructions ultimately teach us to avert our attention from what is fickle and fleeting, and instead to place them on what is steadfast and eternal.

Which is interesting because our work, or our career, or our children can so easily become just that to us… OURS. Whereas they were never meant to be, they were meant to be tools in which we glorified and exalted Christ.

This means that we don’t work to gain wealth, position or status, instead we use any wealth, position or status, that we may be blessed with to have to glorify God and serve others.

How can you exalt Jesus in your work?

Be good at it!

Work hard to be as hardworking as you can… and be as good as you can at whatever you do.

Dorothy Sayers in a famous article said – 

“The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

So whatever you do, do it well, and do it for the Lord. 

Make money

What? Really Joel… yes really. As with the above, it is important that we don’t seek these ends selfishly. I.e. we dont make money to gain wealth or seek to be good at what we do so that we can be glorified. 

But there is nothing wrong with making money. In fact, some of you are really good at it. So do it with integrity, seek to glorify Christ and then use what God blesses you with to help and love others.

Make money, and be generous with it.

For those who seem to be specifically gifted in this area, you don’t need to set aside your gifts, but you do need to steward them wisely. Understanding that there can be a deadly trap in wealth, so ensure that you use it to exalt Christ, and serve others.

I pray, that as a community, as we continue to set Christ at the center, he would be glorified and adored above all else. 

Blessings