If there's an Internet signal, people will always have access to God's Word and for that I'm profoundly grateful for the technology and people who've made this access to life-giving words possible.
For various reasons, when people engage the Bible, they don't see very readily how it relates to their work.
The Bible reminds people that the whole of Scriptures addresses the whole of our lives, including our work. We need to be reminded of this every time we open the Bible, so that we experience the hope and power of the gospel in our work every day.
The often-surprising truth for many people is that we all integrate faith into our work, but most of the time we're completely unaware of what faith underlies our attitudes and responses to our work.
Many people functionally share this belief that work has no greater meaning than the paycheck it provides. A natural consequence of this faith commitment is the belief it's okay to do mediocre work so that in your free time you can enjoy your true passions.
There's something very noble about bringing home a paycheck to provide for oneself and one's family. However, there's so much more to work than just a paycheck. This is unfortunately a very common view which I believe accounts in part for the statistic that approximately 70% of people are disengaged at work. Think about the loss of meaning and productivity and the staggering economic implications of that statistic.
The gospel changes how we view and work with others in a way that both humanizes our interactions with them and empowers them to work well.
We may get a paycheck, but over time what we sense is the dying of our souls.
We were created for a purpose and when our underlying assumptions don't reflect this deeper purpose, we begin to whither as human beings.
The fast paced nature of our technologically-driven world seems to create issues that would appear to be foreign to ancient civilization.
One reason why people find applying the Bible to work so difficult is that the world of Scriptures seems so distant from our modern world today. Many established realities we encounter daily, like non-profit and for-profit corporations, did not exist in the ancient world.
So much is wrapped up in our work and each book of the Bible points to Christ and the good news of what he's done that impacts the whole of our lives and the whole of our world. When our eyes are opened to see how each book of the Bible points us to the gospel, the relevance to our work and the need for this good news to enter into our work becomes increasingly evident.
When we think about our work it deals with our motivations, our desires, our sense of security, purpose, and status. Our work deals with a whole host of relationships. Work impacts the flourishing of individuals, communities, and nations.
Our work is connected to much larger structures and systems that can be influenced and changed to align with God's intention to bring order and fruitfulness into the world.
