Discovering God @ Work (part 3)

The biggest challenge most of us find in our work is to bring Christ into such a secular environment. Right? Wrong. Lesson 3 in my discovery that God Is indeed @ Work is that this attitude I’d had before was wrong-headed and in fact rather arrogant. I can’t take Christ into the workplace for one very simple reason. Not because the workplace is a secular space where religion (and therefore Christ) does not belong. Not because I’m not holy enough or clever enough or knowledgeable enough of the Bihle. Not because I’m not equipped to be an evangelist. No, it’s much simpler than that.

I can’t take Christ into the workplace because he’s already there! Think about it! If the Kingdom of God is truly here, then it is present throughout the world. Not fulfilled yet, but still in development. If Christ is Lord of all, then He is Lord of the workplace every bit as much as He is Lord of the Church. So it isn’t just that He’s calling me to take Him to the heathen at work (in itself a rather objectionable approach, particularly since the people I work with are in many ways more godly than I am!) Rather He is inviting me to join Him in the work He’s already doing and planning – a privilege indeed. If I have a mission – a “sending out” – then it isn’t so much that He sends me from the safety of His presence to a godless place, as that He sends me from the safety of my own comfort zone with Him, to the discomfort of an alien place but still with Him.

So my prayers had to change. I used to ask God how I could represent Him, reveal Him, carry Him to people I worked with. Now I ask Him to open my eyes and show me where He is already there, and how I can get involved with what He is already doing. Mind you, I have to keep asking Him, because it really is hard to see sometimes without the Holy Spirit’s illumination. How is God in our struggles to make payroll every month? How is He in the personal tragedies of our staff? But I’m learning that’s just where He is, once I start to see just a little from His perspective.