What does God know about my job? It’s nothing to do with church …
A couple of weeks ago we visited Mogán, which, like many of the coastal resorts in the south of Gran Canaria, is surrounded by rugged volcanic rock hills. Whilst looking up from the port towards the hills, I kept hearing ‘on this rock I build’. It took a minute or two before I found a cross on top of one of the hills overlooking the port.
On the flight back home I listened to a podcast which was based on the same passage (Matthew 16 verses 18-20). Jesus called Peter a rock on which he would build His church. Where are we called to be rocks for Jesus?
In Ephesians 4 verses 11-12 – some are called to be apostles, teachers, evangelists and ministers to help build up the body for ‘skilled servant work’ – or in other words for the ministry where God has placed you, where you are in your workplace as His representatives of the Church … His calling on your life may not be Church-related, but in the workplace, living a Christian life.
Romans 12 verse 1 says ‘So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.’ (The Message)
So is God interested in what we do ‘outside Church’? – Yes! He is interested in what we do 24/7 – our lives as His followers are not just restricted to Church activities. He has chosen you to do your daily role wherever it is.
Does he know about your job? – Yes! Perhaps we restrict our thinking about God. ‘Have we made our God too small, He made the heavens and earth and He reigns on high – Yet He’s got the time for you and I’ (song by Doug Horley) – God after all made
the world, so He also knows about things we do to help maintain His world, even those things we consider man-made or science.
I know within my own work that I have been blessed by God and received his guidance and inspiration. One particular instance was When I was helping to develop the safety case for a new system – in the middle of the night I was woken to the words ‘write this down’ and through the Holy Spirit, God provided me with the complicated calculations to prove the system would function correctly – the end result … safety case approved!
God uses us as rocks, to underpin in His name the things we do in our workplace where we are called and gifted to do our ‘skilled servant work’.
Andrew Lawford
