Don't Miss It!

by Charles Ligon   

 

Early in my career I missed it! While working for a large public utility in Virginia and I didn’t see what was before me. Some would say it was “hidden in plain sight”. My dad would say, “Had it been a snake, it would have bitten you”. Let me explain…I was spending 60-70% of my waking hours in the “largest mission field in the world”, the workplace. Roughly 7 of 10 people around me were unchurched and/or didn’t have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Yet, In spite of all that…I still didn’t see my place of work as a mission field or a place of calling. I totally missed it! I failed to integrate my faith in the very place where I had the greatest opportunity to influence others for Christ.

For years, I lived by faulty thinking, with an incorrect theology that led me to compartmentalize my faith; separating the secular from sacred. For way too long, I defined ministry as “that which was fulfilled within the four walls of my local church”. My mindset rendered me useless in fulfilling my workplace calling. You see, the enemy desires to render all Christians useless at work. His strategy is to deceive us into believing that our work is unrelated to God’s plan for our lives and that our workplaces are simply the means to earning our paychecks.

However, there is a biblical mandate to live our Christian faith every day of the week. Exodus 20:9 says “six days you shall labor and do all your work”. Created in God’s image, the Christian has a responsibility to labor unto the Lord six days and rest on the seventh. God is a working God and we are his image bearers (Genesis 1:26-27). What’s more, the root word for “work” in Hebrew (avodah) is derived from the same root word as “worship” and “service”.  Therefore, our work is intended to be an act of worship and service to others. 

Your workplace challenge is to consider how you view your work and your workplace. Have you failed to see the ministry opportunities in your workplace? Have you failed to see your workplace as ministry and a calling? Billy Graham said “I believe one of the next movements of God is going to be through believers in the workplace.” Indeed, God is working and He wants to use you to be part of what He is doing in the workplace…for His Glory.