When you meet someone, what’s the first thing
you do?
Well, you look at them, of course. But then you start
talking to them. And you start asking
questions, right? You want to know more about them. You probably start out with the most basic
thing--their name. And then you might ask if they’re married, if they
have kids, where they’re from, that sort of thing. But at some point, the
chances are that you’re going to ask this:
“What kind of work do you do?”
We just kind of assume that everyone is doing some kind of
work. And the fact is, just about everyone is. Most people have jobs. But even if you don’t, you still do some work.
Most retired people I know either work part time or do volunteer jobs or have
productive hobbies or something. If
you’re unemployed, you still have a kind of work you do, even if you’re not
able to do it right now. And even so, the chances are you’re not going to
just sit around doing nothing--you’re still finding a way to make productive
use of your time. Even kids have some
kind of work they do--school work, or chores at home, or something.
Pretty much everyone has some kind of work that they do.
So I’d like you to think about something. As you do
your work--whatever it is--as you do your work every day, how often do you
think about how your work serves God?
The answers will vary, obviously. There are probably
some of us here who think about that a lot. There are probably others who
think about it once in a while. And
there are probably some who never think about that. There may be some
here for whom it’s never occurred to you that your work might serve God.
But we all should. And we should think about it a lot
more than we do. Think about what the Apostle Paul says in the last verse
of our reading for today, verse nine: “For we are co-workers in God’s
service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
Now, maybe you say, well, but Paul was talking people who
are focused on bringing people to Christ. And yes, he was. But I don’t think that’s all he was talking
about. Remember, Paul himself was not
always a full-time evangelist. He had a trade. He was a tent-maker. And while he was on his great missionary
journeys, that’s how he supported himself--he made tents and sold them.
And I’m pretty sure that, while he was making tents, Paul was thinking about
how that work might serve God. Paul
thought of himself as being in service to God in everything he did. And
you and I should do that, too.
Because the fact is that every good work that anyone does
is in service to God in some way. Whatever our work is, when we do it we
are using talents and abilities that God has given us. And that, in and
of itself, is pleasing to God. That’s
the reason God gave us those talents and abilities, after all--so we could use
them. God is happy about that. In
fact, God’s happy when we use our talents and abilities even when we don’t
actively think about how we’re serving God by using them.
But being aware of it--thinking about how doing our work,
using our talents and abilities serves God--helps us make better use of
them. It helps us serve God better.
For one thing, if we think about how our work serves God, it’s probably
going to inspire us to do a better job, right? I mean, obviously,
we should always try to do our work as well as we can. But it’s one thing to try to do a good job for
ourselves, or for our boss, or for a customer. But if we think of our
work as something we’re doing for God, well, that has to be more of an
inspiration, right? We’re not just doing
something for a paycheck, or for a promotion, or to build up our business.
We’re doing it to serve God. And when we
think about what we do as working for God--when we think of what an honor and a
privilege it truly is to be allowed to work for God--that ought to inspire us
to do the absolute best job we can.
But the other thing is, when we think about how doing our
work, how using our talents and abilities serves God, we’re also likely to
think about more ways we can use those talents and abilities. We’ll start
actively, positively, thinking “how can I take what I do, the talents and abilities
I have, and use them to serve God?”
And I know a lot of people here already do that.
There are people here who’ve put in countless hours in service to the
church. There are people here who’ve put in countless hours in service to
the community. There are people here who’ve put in countless hours in
service to their neighbors. Sometimes that’s done by working through an
organization, sometimes it’s done just by seeing something that needs to be
done and doing it. Sometimes it’s done just by being there for someone
when they need us. There are all kinds
of ways in which we can use the talents and abilities God has given us to serve
God.
And again, when we do those things, we’re serving God
whether we think about it in those terms or not. But here’s the
thing. If we don’t think about it in
those terms, then we’re simply doing something to be nice. We’re doing
something to be kind. We’re doing
something to help people. And don’t get
me wrong, I’m all for being nice. I’m all for being kind. And I’m all for helping people. I’m pretty sure God’s all for those things,
too. We should all be nice. We
should all be kind. We should all help
people. Most of us--definitely including
me--should do a lot more of that kind of thing than we do.
But if we do these things with an awareness of serving God,
we can take it farther. We can take another step forward. We can go from just being nice and being kind
to seeing what we do as a chance to share God’s word and show God’s love.
We can do use our talents and abilities to bring people to Christ.
I can’t tell you exactly how that will play out for
you. But I’ll guarantee that it will.
If we do one thing. If we
pray. If we ask God to give us chances to bring people to Christ. If we ask God to help us do our work with the
awareness that we are serving God, if we ask God to help us see how we could
use that work to bring people to Christ, and if we ask God to give us the
courage to take advantage of the chances that God puts in front of us to bring
people to Christ.
God tells us that we can pray for just about
anything. We can go to God with anything--whatever’s on our minds and in
our hearts--and God will be there for us. God will give us what we
need. But I have to think that one of
the prayers that pleases God the most is when we pray, “God, give me chances to
serve you. Give me the chance to use the talents and abilities you’ve
given me to serve you. Give me the
chance to use those talents and abilities to bring people to you.”
The reason I think that prayer pleases God is that any time
I’ve prayed anything like that, God has answered that prayer almost
immediately. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that to sound like I’m
bragging. I don’t pray that way anywhere
near as often as I should. And there are
many times when I’ve failed to follow through on the answer God gave me.
But the point is that if we pray that way, God will answer. And the chances are that answer will come
pretty quickly.
But be careful. When we pray that way, we need to
mean it. Because while God will answer, that answer may come in a way we
don’t expect. It may come in a way that takes us out of our comfort
zone. And when we get that answer, we
may be tempted to say, “Um, God, that was not exactly what I had in mind.
Can you give me some other way to serve you?”
And that’s where trust comes into it. If we really
trust God, if we really consider ourselves to be working for God, then we need
to be okay with whatever way God comes up with for us to serve. We need
to be okay with it even if it’s not the way we would’ve chosen. We need to be okay with it even if it makes
us uncomfortable. If we’ve asked God to
give us chances to serve, and God gives us those chances, we need to be willing
to do what we can to follow through with it. God will understand our
reluctance, and God will forgive us for it.
But God does not want us to make excuses.
All of us have work to do. But when we think of our
work as being in God’s service, it puts our work in a whole new light. It
inspires us to do our work better. It
inspires us to look for new ways to use the talents and abilities God has given
us. And it inspires us to ask God to help us use those talents and
abilities to bring people to Christ. And
bringing people to Christ is probably the most important work of all.
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