“We must restore the biblical understanding that all work is a divine calling, and that all types of work are integral to fulfilling God’s purposes, and are crucial for building a flourishing future.” Mergon Foundation, February 2025
God Calls Us Into the Workplace
The great majority of believers live out a good portion of their lives within the context of their workplace. Apart from a very small (and ever lessening) number of individuals who work in full time ministry, most of us go to work most days.
In decades of working with young people, very few asked for me to pray for them to get a great job or to make a lot of money in order to take care of their families one day. Youth pray for different things: They pray to live their lives with an abandonment to Jesus’ call and that they would find His purpose for their lives. They pray that their lives will be used by God to make a difference.
And then, they end up at work. By God’s design.
Work is a Platform for Touching Lives, Not a Barrier From Doing So
It is simply impossible, then, that our work lives are actually disconnected from the God we all prayed to when we were young, passionate and “on fire.” The Bible is clear that He has called us to follow Him into becoming “fishers of men.” (Matt 4:19) The call to “go and make disciples” is not unique to any group dependent on their professions apart from their profession to follow Jesus. (Matt. 28: 18-20) The writer of Proverbs makes it crystal clear that “he” or she or anyone “who winneth souls is wise.” (Proverbs 11:30)
So what does one do when they are required to live out these callings within the world of cubicles, spreadsheets, jackhammers, and bakery aprons? Remember that, if you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Helper that Jesus promised you as His disciple, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is within you. His glorious Presence is a treasure that we have within jars of clay. How could the life of God that could use a rough handed carpenter or a rough tempered fisherman to turn the world upside down not use you too? He can. He has promised that He will. Jesus said in John 14:12 that, “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.”
So How Do You Do It? How Do We Start?
This does not mean that we are to continually talk about Jesus at work. It actually means that we are to follow Jesus into becoming so good at our work, aided and guided by His supernatural power, that our supervisors, our coworkers and our customers are helped. It means that we can follow the Holy Spirit into His power and creativity leading us to build new things - technology, medical solutions, innovative products - that will change the world. It means that we can lead people, both one to one and in all different sizes of work groups, with integrity, empathy and care in ways that help them grow and become what they would otherwise not be able to.
The secret to finding God’s life and purpose within your work life is as simple as learning to discover His Presence and hear His voice across each day. The fact that God is invisible has absolutely no impact on the fact that He is there with you through each moment of your life. It was God who created you with all of your unique talents and passions. It is God who provided you with this job and it is God who has gone to almost unimaginable lengths to prepare this job and the people it draws you into contact with for you. Learning to perceive His life and His Presence, to hear and respond to His voice in the middle of your work day is called faith. Faith is a muscle that, the more you use it, the more it grows.
Learn to Detect God What God is Doing and to Join Him In It
Dr. Alan Roxburgh, a Canadian leader who helped write the book, “Missional Church,” wrote during the pandemic that, “We are all watching a bit of an unraveling of the way things have worked for so many years, not only in the Church but across the world and across society. The way it was ten or fifteen years ago, is not the way it is today.
At the same time, so many of us are seeing a bubbling of instances of God moving and acting all around us in everyday ways and things. Where most of these things seem to be happening are in the local. God appears to be moving and inviting us to join Him in what He is doing in the ordinary spaces of our local communities.”
Bible teacher and author Henry Blackaby famously pushed an entire generation to “Watch and see where God is working and join Him,” in his Experiencing God book and curriculum. One of the greatest ways we can help each other connect into the purposes of God within our professional lives is to encourage, exhort and push each other to keep our eyes open for where God is at work across our days.
