The Beautiful Gift

Last updated on: June 27, 2016 at 9:50 am by Adrian Crawford

The Beautiful Gift 2016-06-27T09:50:13-04:00 Adrian Crawford

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3 out of 33 constitutes roughly 9%. Only 9% of Jesus’ life was dedicated to “ministry”. This 9% is what we spend the majority of our time focusing on when we look at the life of Jesus, and understandably so. However, we must not take this to mean that the remaining 91% of his life was insignificant. Before Jesus died for our sins and before he dedicated 3 years to ministry, Jesus was a carpenter. Basically, he was a subcontractor. Knowing what we do know about Jesus from the scriptures, it is safe to assume that he took his job seriously and worked with excellence as if working unto God Himself. The majority of his life was work; the majority of the lives we live is work. How much should we value work? We have turned work into a non-spiritual thing. I do not believe this is the example our savior left for us to emulate and and I believe that thinking as such is a huge mistake and a missed opportunity.

Every moment in the life of Jesus was significant. Jesus came to set the standard, and he was the embodiment of what we should aim for and how we should live. This is not limited to his ministry; if it were, the implications would be that only 9% of our lives matter. Jesus spending roughly 20 years of his life working, is not a minor detail, it is a bold statement and a clear standard. Why is work so often treated like an obstacle to overcome to get to what we are really called to do?

Work is a good thing. We were made to work. Don’t believe me? Look at Genesis 2:15; the Lord put man in the garden to work it and to keep it. Form what we know about the character of God, it is not like Him to just give us “busy work.” There is something significant about a command from the Father.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, Confessions of a Revolutionary, I am a bi-vocational pastor by calling and choice. Work is a very meaningful thing for me, and more and more I am realizing how much of a meaningful thing it is to God. “But isn’t work cursed because of the fall? Look at Genesis 3:17, how can it be a good thing?” Work is not a curse, it is a gift from God, but the strife, drudgery and pain that now come along with it, is a part of the fall. Work is now hard, but this does not make it any less a gift, and this truth is very important to fulfilling our calling as Christians on the Earth.

Everyday, if you are a salesperson, clerk, entrepreneur, agent for the state, engineer, bus driver, or whatever it is you are doing, you are doing what God has created you to do – WORK. So now that we agree that work itself is what God has created us to do, here comes the beautiful part. Work isn’t just a command, it is a gift. The reason it is such a beautiful gift, is because it allows us to commune with God in a way that nothing else can. Working connects us with our creator. I believe it allows us to tap into something eternal. When we build with him, we act as his representatives and his chosen people; We learn about God when we get involved with the things he has called us to do. “There is no way that God has called me to work where I do. The people I work with are nothing like God, in fact, they make it even more difficult for me to serve God.” If this is your situation or if you are not getting paid what you think you deserve, or you have a horrible boss and terrible co-workers, this is still a gift! In fact, it should stir up the desire for eternity even more. It should make us hope more and strengthen our faith that Jesus has made good promises, real promises and promises that are coming soon.

As you work and create, you tap into the very heart of God, the Great Creator. When God began to create, things were void, there was nothing (Genesis 1). God created us in His image and it is safe to assume that we have the heart of a creator. Let’s bring this down to scale, if you are a baker and you bake cupcakes, you connect with God. If you are a writer and you write, you connect with God. If you are a teacher and you teach, you connect with God. As we connect with God and suffer under the curse, we can grow our faith and our hope that in the days of the new heavens and new Earth, our work will be restored to what it was originally created to be. I look forward to working for eternity in a way that the curse is lifted. For me, I can liken it to when my father would let me help him scout a basketball game. God wants to bring us to work with Him in this same way, to share what He is doing with us and for us.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, Colossians 3:23. This applies to those of us working exactly where we should be and to those of us who are not. If you find yourself right now working in a place that you feel is not your ultimate purpose, just something in the interim, this should not stop you from experiencing the bigger gift of work. Timothy Keller does an incredible job explaining this concept in his book Every Good Endeavor. Another great book is by A.W. Tozer entitled The Pursuit of God. One of the lines read, “Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.”

I will end with this, “WORK IS SACRED”. Like the great theologian Rhianna says, “work.work.work.work.work.”

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