How Can a Business Person Glorify God in Their Work?
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Would there be any specific counsel you would give a business person about glorifying God in their work?
You must have heard a talk I gave earlier today. I gave a talk to the Christian businessmen's group downtown today on how to glorify God from 8 to 5.
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The first thing I want to say is that I totally believe in secular work, meaning non-church work. We are all ministers, we are all priests-priesthood of the believer. I'm not drawing that kind of distinction. I'm just saying, as far as the office goes, your priesthood may be at a computer company, or in nursing, or as a doctor, or in carpentry or whatever. And my priesthood happens to be in pastoring.
So I'm totally there, and I believe the Bible says we should be staying generally where we are. Only if God leads in a clear way should we leave the job we are in when we are saved.
So the counsel I would give is to seek to do your work in such a way that Christ looks more important than your work. Seek to make and use money in such a way that Christ looks more important than money. Seek to have relationships with people in the work place such that Christ is more important than those relationships.
Now, that doesn't imply that relationships go down in effectiveness and importance. It means, in fact, that they go up! Because if Christ is infinitely precious to you, you will now have resources for the relationships and for the work that you wouldn't have had otherwise, if those relationships were god.
If they are god, you are drawing strength from them and eventually people are going to feel that. "You are using me. You may be really really interested in me, and you may want to spend time with me. But I'm starting to feel drained by you."
Whereas, if Christ is all, and he sends you into that relationship with resources, then the feel should be, "I like being around you because you are ministering to me. You are not taking from me."
So whether it is people, whether it is money, whether it is activities, we do them all. We are very good at them. We should be creative and industrious and excellent in all of our work in order to adorn the gospel and do it in a way that Christ is shown to be more valuable than any of those things.
The chapter in the book Don't Waste Your Life called "Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5" is where I'm getting all that stuff.
