Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Your Work Matters to God, Part 3 of 45

IDEA: Christians find inadequate ways to bridge the gap between their worship and their work.

PURPOSE: To help people evaluate how they see their Christian faith applying to their work.

Do you think most of us have thought about how our Christian faith and our daily work relate to one another?

There are ways in which people try to bridge the gap.

Listen to this layperson in church: “The pastor in my church never talks much about my work. Frankly, I’m glad he doesn’t. I don’t think he really knows what the workplace is like. He’s always saying that the good is the enemy of the best. I’m not sure what that means. I wish my choices were that easy. I have to deal with what is the worst consequence or what is the least worst consequence of the decisions I make at the office. I take my Christian faith seriously, but I sometimes wonder if it isn’t all too ideal. In the practical dog-eat-dog world, what the pastor preaches just simply can’t work in my office or in my industry.”

Now listen to a fragment of a sermon: “God wants you to give yourself to Him. He wants you to think seriously about where you spend your time and where you spend your money. As you know, we desperately need people to teach our junior high boys, and it would take several hours a week. Many of you are so busy about work that you don’t have time for God’s work. We need money to fix the roof of the church. Many of you are so busy making money, but you don’t find money to invest in the house of God. I’m not scolding you. I’m simply asking, ‘Are you so busy working and making money that you push God and the church out of your lives?’”

I. Work and faith don’t matter too much to each other.

The pastor won’t mess with my work life, and I as the worker will support the pastor and the programs of the church.

What is preached on Sunday morning seems like an impossible effort in Monday morning’s world.

The workplace itself is often antagonistic to faith. [Wall Street Journal article].

II. How much of this is valid, and how much is invalid? Should work and faith matter to each other?

The pastor really cannot anticipate everything in the workplace, but the worker needs the Christian faith to give significance to work.