Give us this day our daily work (part 2)

It is Monday and Mondays get such a bad rap! This complaining that we do about Mondays is tied to this lie that we maintain that work is drudgery. However, work is not drudgery. Sometimes it may feel like drudgery for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that we need an attitude adjustment and correct thinking about work.

What if we were to speak the truth about Mondays? Here is my list of things that are true about this day for me:

• I said YES to too much last week. I was tired, perhaps exhausted is a better term because I got myself into a position that was not good.
• I have not been sleeping well or enough (part of this is due to the first item on this list and part of it has to do with anxiety and lack of trust that God has my back)
• I procrastinate tasks that frustrate me. I put them in that paperwork stack and forget about them until, on days like this, I have to confront them and somehow deal with unpleasant or mundane details. (Notice that I am actually spending my time blogging and not really confronting the stack;) 
• Details such as these can exhaust me.

How can I learn the truth about work today with all of these realities? What would it take for me to see work as good, as a gift from God, and as what I do in partnership with God to bring about good in our world?

As I talk with God about all of these details, I often hear his encouragement to hold onto things loosely. I do what I can and release all other matters into His tender care. For instance, I listen to His voice in, through, and beyond the requests that others make of me. God helps me discern those tasks that I am inclined to say YES to in a hurry to either please someone else or to rescue them from poor planning on their part. As I listen for His voice, I may also discern that there are tasks that I am inclined to say NO to in a hurry from fear or because I want to make life difficult for the one asking. If a particular task does not fit into either of these categories, then I will ask God to show me whether that particular thing is really mine to do. If it is something that I am happy to do and have time to do, then I ask God to show me what it looks like for me to do that task in partnership with Him. If imagining the task and the process is easy and if it will bring glory to God, at that point, I say YES.

If I find in retrospect, like this last week, that I have accidentally said YES to too many things, then I realize that even in the midst of no sleep and chaos, God has a way of bringing good. In the midst of too many tasks, I pray without ceasing and rely heavily on the power of God to fill in all the holes left by my busyness. I also remember during these times that asking for help from others is not a sign of weakness, but a good way to include others in partnering with God. They may not even be aware that you are inviting them into seeing what God is able to do with those who let them have it all.

A final thought is that Monday is a fresh day brimming with ways to partner with God. Like any other day, we can use it as a day to reboot. We have the power to prioritizing our tasks in life. We can begin the week by asking God to show us what we need to see in our work. We can be honest with God about that which is not going the way we had hoped. We can invite His care into our lists of tasks, into our e-mail correspondence, and into our meetings with others. Monday = a day to meet God in our work.

Give us this day our daily work (part 1)

Imagine the tallest pile of paperwork that you have ever seen on your own desk. If you hate paperwork piles and systematically deal with paperwork as to prevent such things, maybe you can imagine the paperwork pile on the desk of a co-worker.

This one afternoon in March almost ten years ago I had a breakthrough. The paperwork pile was at an all time high. It was the very end of the month which meant that the dreaded and inevitable e-mail would be in my end box. "Please turn in your monthly stats, I am waiting on them." The sender of the e-mail had also caught me as I tried to slither past her desk as I was entering the office complex. I saw the look on her face and I heard it in her voice. That look on that day was the beginning of a breakthrough in my thinking, attitude, and operating regarding work.

On my co-workers face I saw that I was causing more than a simple inconvenience. I began to imagine all of the ways that my late paperwork would impact her life. She often stayed very late and came in very early. She was not in good health and that meant that a lack of rest might cause sickness. Her hours away from work were spent with her teenage and young adult children. Turning in my paperwork late would mean that she would have to sacrifice that precious time with family. Instead of that smile that she offered me as I passed her desk, there would be a look of disappointment or maybe even a snarl.

The stack of paperwork had to be done. It was drudgery! My mind was flooded with questions: How in the world could I do it all in the two hours before it was time to leave for the day? How in the world could I survive two straight hours of paperwork and remain sane? I was desperate, so I prayed.

Praying about paperwork had scarcely crossed my mind before. Even then, it seemed strange to me. It seemed strange to pray for paperwork and it seemed strange to me at that time that I had never really considered praying about paperwork before.

During this season of my life, I was learning a lot about how to live in responsive obedience to Jesus in all arena's of my life. It was clear that I had a lot to learn. I felt like a beginner in the discipleship process when I had often perceived myself as anything but that. In fact, I had made a decision to follow Jesus almost twenty years prior. God called me into the ministry. I studied the Bible in the original languages and had graduated from college and seminary. All of this, along with fifteen years of serving as a pastor and in other various ministry roles, and now, in my everyday walking with Jesus life I felt like I was in kindergarten again.

Jesus welcomed the children and challenged his grown men disciples that "unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." It is a humbling place to be: kindergarten at age thirty five. It was sometimes a painfully stretching and clunky process, but I was assured day by day that my living Lord was with me and in me. He was my teacher in everything.

Praying for my work, starting with this pile of paperwork was difficult at first. I prayed about how difficult it was. I pleaded with God, "Please, show me why praying for this paperwork is so difficult." I also asked God to show me how Jesus would do my job if he were me.

In my imagination, I tried to get a visual of Jesus doing my work. AHA! That was it. At the core of this trouble with paperwork was this subtle lie that I bought (and probably, unknowingly perpetuated). I really didn't think Jesus would do my work. It was too small. It was too insignificant. It was too secular. Having been a professional Christian for years, I had bought the lie that work that was not overtly Christian was not Jesus' kind of work.

Prior to this breakthrough, I would not have admitted that I thought my work was too small and too secular to be a Jesus sort of job. However, that idea had ruled my thinking and had been spoiling my attitude about my work. This thought was a lie. The reason I was having trouble praying for my paperwork was that I thought somehow it remained outside the realm of the kingdom of God.

The truth is that work is good because it was instituted by God. In Genesis 1:26-31, it states that both the man and woman were created to tend the earth. We are given work to do with our whole beings. Work was a gift to the first humans and their work was to bless the created world that God had made. Fundamentally, work brings good to the others. It is necessary, but not intended to be a drudgery. Notice that there is no mention of human sweat coming from work until after sin enters the world. Drudgery at work is often what we feel when we do not embrace work as a gift. It is also our attitude when we see it as somehow outside of what God is doing in the world.

The daily nature of work reminds us that when Jesus was instructing his disciples about prayer, he places right in the middle a request for daily bread. It is a reminder that we all are dependent on our good Father to give us what we need. God designed our daily work to bring blessing and good to the world. We do our work as responsive obedient children.

We do our work for Jesus, in the manner of Jesus, with Jesus' resources, and for his glory. This is precisely what Paul means by this exhortation in Colossians 3:17: "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

(This is a draft of that which was published by Light & Life magazine, May, 2017. I'm posting it here for those of you who want to read stuff that I right who do not generally get the magazine. I would recommend getting it, though, it is an excellent magazine and I am super excited to be published there. It can be found online at: http://fmcusa.org/lightandlifemag/give-us-this-day-our-daily-work/
In addition, I'm going to continue to write about this subject so being able to trace the thread will be helpful.)