The Context of Work

There are some who look at working for God and get frustrated. They say, “I can’t work for God. I’m stuck paying off debts for the rest of my life.” Or some are required to care for children. Or others are forced to work where they don’t want to. Some are incapable of working at all because of a disability of some sort. These might be frustrated, because they long to work for God, and find it almost impossible to do so. There were many in the early church who were in the same situation. There were wives, who were trapped in their social role to do very little for the people of God. There were slaves, forced to do their master’s work, but none of their own. Even so, some of us feel trapped by our work situations.

However, Scripture is clear that even if you can’t change your job situation, that doesn’t mean you can’t work for God. What you do for God is certainly important, but your work environment is what matters the most in working for God. Perhaps you may think that your work environment is completely godless, but that’s not true—because YOU are in it.

Whether we are working for God or not depends upon the context of our work, and that context is created by us. It is what we bring to our work that makes it a work of God or not. If we bring deceit to our work or laxness or hatred, then God cannot be in our work, no matter what it is. But if we bring love and faith and purity to our work, then even if we are doing a seemingly senseless task, we could be working for God. The Scripture says again and again that the work that God acknowledges is work done in faith and love and self control—and that is what really matters! (I Thessalonians 1:3; Galatians 5:6; II Corinthians 8:7; Colossians 1:4; I Thessalonians 5:8; Revelation 2:9; II Timothy 3:10; I Timothy 4:12).

The Basic Context
Faith and Love and Purity are the most important matters, but that doesn’t mean God’s work is all attitude—as if the work itself isn’t important. The work matters quite a bit as well. In our work we need to follow these principles to work for God:

We must do the work, not just be willing to do it
Just like the son in the parable that Jesus told (Matthew 21:28-31), we need to not just want to do God’s work—we have to actually do it. To do God’s work is to work hard and willingly.

Work to meet your basic needs
When we work, we need to have at least part of our work be providing for our basic needs (Ephesians 4:28). This doesn’t mean that we need a job, but we should be providing for ourselves with our work, and not just sponging off of someone who doesn’t really want to support you. If we work, we work to meet our basic needs and wants. And if we have a family, we must work to provide for them as well (I Timothy 5:8).

Do the Work God Tells You To
There is some work that is evil before God, no matter how good of an attitude you have. If your work is to make pornography, loving your co-worker doesn’t absolve you from working evil. We must never work evil, and, if we have any choice, we should seek God as to what work we should do, and obey him in that.

Faith
When the Scripture says that we need to work in faith, it is saying that in our work we need to be devoted to God, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. To love God with our whole selves means that everything we devote to work—our intentions, our desires, our thinking, our abilities, our labor—all of this needs to be devoted to God. It is like what Paul said, “In whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.” (I Corinthians 10:31).

Do what God says in our work
To work for the glory of God means that we are thinking about how to obey him in our work (Heb 4:11-12). We need to be constantly focusing on God’s word and how that word can be fulfilled in working (II Timothy 3:16-17). Perhaps it is how you do the work (for instance, with dillegence) or it could be something you do in your work (for instance, singing to the Lord—Colossians 3:16).

Commit your work to God
When you are working—and before your work—commit it to God, and acknowledge it is his. (Proverbs 16:3) If we are looking toward God in all of our work, seeking his direction in it and his power through it, then it will be his work we are working, and not our own. (Psalm 127:1-2)

We look for God's blessing on our work
Throughout our work, we are seeking God’s blessing on it. This is a part of our devotion, because we are acknowledging that our work is only fruitful if God makes it so. So we seek out the Lord to make the work worthwhile. (Job 1:10)

Self-Control
To have “self-control” means that in your work you won’t let your desires get control of you, so you do whatever you want, even if the Lord doesn’t want that for you. It is allowing the godly part of your self have control over the part that just will do whatever it wants. If we are to work for God, we need to be under control.

Purity
First of all, in our work, we need to be pure from evil. This means any area in which God has condemned—hostility, hatred, evil desires, and more. (II Timothy 2:19-21) Our work should be a pure, holy offering to God, without our flesh or evil side getting in the way.

Submission
Another area we need to control ourselves is allowing ourselves to be ordered by others. More often than not, in our work, we are told what to do and how to do it by others. If that is the case, then we need to control ourselves to be submitted to that leader. (Colossians 3:18-24) That doesn’t mean we agree with everything that person says or obey them in everything in our lives, but if we have leadership above us, in the area they are a leader, we do what they say. Another part of submission is to not make it difficult on the leader, but to give them no reason to hate their work (Hebrews 13:17)

Love
If we want our work to be worthwhile at all, we need to do it in the context of being concerned for others. Paul says that even if we do great works for God—fantastic miracles and saintly deeds—if we did not do it for the benefit of other people, then our work was pointless. If we do not work in love, then we do not work for God. (I Corinthians 13:1-3)

Edification
To work in love is to “edify” (Romans 15:2; I Corinthians 14:12, 26). What is meant by that is to build up, like a tower toward Christ. To edify is to help others be strong in Christ, to encourage, to exhort, to draw one up toward God in speech and action. No matter what we do, we should do it in a way to remind others that we are working for Christ and that Christ cares for them, and wants his best for them.

Patience and Humility
In our work, we often need to deal with many difficult people—sinners, fools and jerks. But with all of these people, we need to show patience as we work. If we do this, we are showing that the Spirit is working in us, giving us the ability to deal with situations that we could not handle on our own. We should also place other’s needs before our own, displaying that we care for other’s before our own welfare. (Galatians 5:22-23; Philippians 2:3-4; Ephesians 4:2)

Helping the Needy
In every work we do, we gain something from it—often it is money, but sometimes it is something else. In whatever we gain, we must do one more work—help those who are in need. It is in this way that the Lord will bless our work—if we do not help the needy, he will not bless our work and cause it to be worthwhile. (Deuteronomy 15:10; Ephesians 4:28)