We Work For God

We Work for God
In a recent discussion with my wife, we both came to realize who we truly work for. We work for God. In the world today, many of us are defined by what we do for a living. If you think about it, what is just about the first topic that comes up when you meet someone new or see someone you haven’t seen in a while. It usually centers around their jobs or careers. If you ask someone to tell you about themselves without asking about their work, it will frequently come up first. Most of us work for someone, meaning we are not self-employed. This means we have a boss. It also means that if we do not keep the boss happy, he/she might ask us to find employment elsewhere. For those of us who have been through that experience, it can be very frightening, humbling and life-changing.

I once had a job where I was so underutilized by my managers, who happened to be the owners of the company, that I was frequently frustrated; and it showed. The frustration was from the fact that I thought in order to make a difference at that company, I had to put my professional experiences and talents to their full use. I felt that way because I wanted to be appreciated and stay gainfully employed. The frustration I felt came just about every day when my ideas for bettering the company fell upon deaf ears. I was being paid a healthy amount of money to run at about 50% of my professional capacity. Things that were obviously sub-optimal were tolerated and my attempts at bringing positive change to the company were usually met with fierce opposition.

The reason my frustration showed was mostly due to my fear of not being worthy of my pay and my pride. I once read in a book by Pastor Robert Morris that fear is at the root of pride. My fear was a fear of insignificance. My pride was a defense mechanism against people seeing me as being just another executive who has an opinion. While my fear could have been a healthy one, it was terribly misdirected. My fear should have been fear of God. I should have feared not pleasing God and representing him to the best of my abilities at my place of employment. God gave me that job to be a light in that mostly darkened workplace. But since my fear was of rejection, I produced a defense shield of pride that preceded me each time I entered the room. Even on the days where I was willing to be corrected or overruled, I had so set the precedent of pride, it was already in the minds of my coworkers.

The Word tells us to go be lights to the world (Matt 5:14-16). As believers, that is our job and God is our ultimate boss. If we act as fools when we should be acting as those who have the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22), God will either take us out of that environment or allow us to suffer through the consequences of our prideful actions. If you believe that everything in your life comes from God, then the job you have comes from Him and we are there to do His work.

Eventually for me, the Spirit made me deal with my pride. God gave me a different job after a several month bout of unemployment. He let us go through all of our savings and He gave me my new job the exact month that our cash ran out. It was not a fun lesson to learn, but learn it I did. The enlightenment I received was that it was up to my managers to use me to my fullest potential. It was not up to me to “enlighten” them. They hired me to perform the job they want me to perform, not the one I think I should be performing. My job is to serve them as best I can, share with them my experiences and support their decisions with gladness. That is the light that God wants us to be. We must resign ourselves to the fact that God has a purpose in our lives and we will be employed when and where He wants. Our jobs are to be the best light we possibly can while we are where He puts us. That means an absence of pride and fear when things don’t always seem to go as we think they should. After all, we work for God and He is the best boss any of us could ever have.