Serving the Lord Where You Work

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

James 1:17 (KJV)

I want to start with something simple, because I believe it is where the whole matter turns. One of the most important things I learned in all my years of working was this: change your perspective on your job.

Notice that I said your perspective. I did not say change your job. There may come a time for that, and the Lord knows how to move you when He is ready. I have been moved by Him more than once. But most of us want a different job when what we need first is a different way of seeing the one we have.

Here is the perspective that changed things for me. God gave you the job.

I know how you got it. You filled out an application. You sat through an interview. Somebody called you back, or somebody put in a good word for you. All of that is true. But behind the application and the interview and the telephone call, there was a God who opens doors. James tells us that every good gift comes down from the Father. If your job puts food on your table and a roof over your head, then it is a gift, and it has a Giver.

For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

Psalm 75:6–7 (KJV)

The psalmist understood this. Advancement does not come from the east or the west. It does not finally come from a hiring manager or a human resources office. God is the one who sets a person in a place.

Now, I realize this may be hard to accept if your job is difficult right now. You may be thinking, “If God gave me this job, why is it so hard?” That is a fair question, and we are going to deal with it in the chapters ahead. For now I will only say this. A gift from God is not always a comfortable thing. Sometimes the gift is the provision. Sometimes the gift is what He intends to do in you while you are there. Often it is both.

When you believe that your job came from the Lord, some things begin to shift without your forcing them.

You stop treating the job as an accident. You did not just end up there. You were placed there.

You stop treating it as beneath you. If the Lord saw fit to put you in that position, then that position has His attention.

You stop treating it as only yours. A gift carries the fingerprints of the one who gave it. What you do with it says something about how you regard Him.

I am not asking you to pretend that you love everything about where you work. I am asking you to do what I had to learn to do, which is to look at the same job through a different window. The building is the same. The duties are the same. The people are the same. But once you know who put you there, you walk in differently.

Before you go on to the next chapter, I would encourage you to say it out loud, even if you do not fully feel it yet: “Lord, You gave me this job.” You may be surprised at what that one sentence does to a Monday morning.

Take It to Work

• How did you get the job you have now? Can you trace the hand of God in it?
• What would change this week if you treated your position as a place you were put instead of a place you ended up?

Prayer

Father, I thank You for the work You have put in my hands. Forgive me for the times I have treated it as less than a gift. Help me to see my job the way You see it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.