Dear Christian who hates their job,You may have been at your job for a month, 2 years or even 25 years, but one thing is certain you hate your job. It makes you miserable. It makes you cranky. It causes you great anxiety. It leaves you exhausted. You may have some legitimate reasons why you hate your job. The pay may be unfair for what you are expected to do. Your boss may be a total jerk. The job may be boring and mundane. Maybe the compensation is not good because there are no health benefits or vacation time. Maybe your boss is great, but the people you work with are mean.
What might fuel your hatred towards your job, is that this is not what you envisioned you would be doing and it is preventing you from have the lifestyle you want. What might make it even worse for you is that your peers have jobs they enjoy. They have a job that pays them well, gives them good hours and takes care of them. They have a big house, a nice car, and go on trips whenever they please; while you live in a crummy apartment, drive a beat-up car which you can't even afford to keep on the road, and farthest you can travel too is the grocery store. The reality is you are not the only one who hates there job, I have hated some of the jobs I had, and their others who hate their job, even if they are afraid to admit it.
My purpose of writing you this morning is to help you change your perspective on your job so that you might see that the greater purpose of your work is not to make money, but to make much of Jesus in the workplace. First, I want you to see that God has you right where you are meant to be, at least for a season. It may be a very long season, but God has placed you at your work for the glory of his name and the good of those you encounter. It maybe flipping burgers, pouring coffee, making dog food, cutting hair, working on the production line or picking up garbage, but God has sovereignly placed you there so that you would be a beacon of light in a dark place. Your job may be boring and mundane, the people may suck, along with the pay, but it is not meaningless because the Sovereign Lord has placed you there.
I believe there are three things God wants to accomplish in all of us through the work he has placed us in. These three things are actually all connected. God has placed you in your work so that he may be glorified, that we would testify about Jesus, and that he would use our workplace to sanctify us. Put another way, God has your where you are so that he would glorify himself through the testifying of Jesus at your workplace and the use of your work in your sanctification. You work where you are so that you may testify about Jesus. Jesus says at the close of Matthew, "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth! Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world." (Matthew 28:18-20).
This does not necessarily mean we stop the production line so that we can stand up and preach about Jesus, but it does mean that we take every opportunity afforded to us to talk about Jesus to our co-workers and customers; and that we allow our faith impact how we work and treat others around us. We have been made new in Jesus and that is to impact everything about us, especially our work and how we behave at work. We can be sure that we don't need to do this in our own power, but we can do this in Jesus' authority and power because all authority has been given to him by the Father, and he assures us that he is with us wherever we go because he lives in us through his Holy Spirit. You may say that it is hard to talk about Jesus where I work or there may not be many opportunities to talk about your faith. Pray that God would give you opportunities and that he would help you be bold in talking about your faith and the gospel. You may be thinking, why can't I just live out my faith at work instead of talking about it? Primarily our faith and the gospel is shared through our words, while our actions and behaviour demonstrate how our faith applies to our lives and provide us with opportunities to talk about the reasons for our hope in Jesus (1 Peter 3:15).
God not only has you at your work to testify about Jesus, but he places to use your workplace to sanctify you in the faith. God uses the circumstances of our work and the people we work with to address our hearts. We may not think we wrestle with jealousy and bitterness, but that begins to show when your co-worker who has been with the company only for a short time, but got promoted to a position that you feel that should have been rightfully yours. God will use that moment to reveal your sin so that you can address it and work through it with Christ. You may not think you wrestle with anxiety until you have had a few meetings that created a lot of unknowns for you. However, God is giving you an opportunity to address your anxiety and trust the unknowns into his hands. May you make much of Jesus at your work and submit to the process of sanctification. God glorifies himself in your testifying of Jesus and your sanctification. When you desire to glorify God, it will lead you to testify about Jesus at work and submit to God using your workplace to sanctify you.
Secondly, I want to help change your perspective by helping you see that your purpose is not found in your work, but that you are to bring your purpose to work. I have found that when I am trying to find my purpose and happiness through what I do, I find myself resenting the job more and more. I think this is one of the consequences of sin that God told Adam in Genesis: And so, the ground will be under a curse because of what you did. As long as you live, you will have to struggle to grow enough food. Your food will be plants, but the ground will produce thorns and thistles. You will have to sweat to earn a living; you were made out of soil, and you will once again turn into soil (Genesis 3:17-19). In one sense God is talking about the struggle we would have with working the land, but ultimately he is talking about the struggle and toil that will come with work. We will be tempted to find our hope and comfort in our work and the money we make, but it will be an endless pursuit for us because there will be always something else we can do and there will always be more money to make.
Without even realizing it, our work can become an idol and worship it like a god. However, we are not to find our hope and joy in our work because it is temporal and it can be taking from us in an instant. Instead, we are to find our hope and joy in Christ because he is our purpose. We are meant to live for Christ and glorify him in everything we do, and that includes work. Christ goes before us in our workplace and he goes with us to work because he is within us. When we grasp this, it transforms how we see our work and how we act at work. No longer will we try to find our purpose in our work instead we will come to work with purpose because we are to make much of Jesus and tell people about him. I don't care if you work at a button factory or clean toilets, be the best button maker and toilet cleaner you can for Jesus because you don't work for man, but for the King of the universe: Do your work willingly, as though you were serving the Lord himself, and not just your earthly master. In fact, the Lord Christ is the one you are really serving, and you know that he will reward you.(Colossians 3:23-24). As you work for Jesus, tell others about Jesus whenever you have the opportunity so that they may believe in Jesus and live for him too.
Lastly, I want to encourage you to pray for your workplace and the hatred you have towards it. This is something you may find yourself having to do on a regular basis. You can pray for different aspects of your work everytime you pray for it. You can pray for your boss, your supervisors, your co-workers, the clients, the success of your workplace, and pray for opportunities to share the gospel, along with the salvation of your co-workers and employer. As you pray for your workplace; your heart will begin to soften towards your workplace and the hatred you had for your job starts to dwindle because you are beginning to enjoy the job and the opportunities you have to make much of Jesus. On top of that, through your prayers and the power of the Holy Spirit, God enables you to trust that he will provide for you and take care of you regardless of your status and wage so that can focus on making much of Jesus at your work.
As I close this letter, I want to leave you with a benediction to send you out to your workplace: Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time[h] and now and forever. Amen.
Blessings in Christ,
Josh Dorey
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