In our church fellowship we recently taught
from Col. 3:18-41. This passage contains
Paul’s exhortations with respect to wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves
and masters. We tied all of this to Col.
3:17: And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. In addition, we made a connection to Micah
4:5: For all people walk each in the name of his god, but we will walk in
the name of the LORD our God forever and ever. Our homes and the workplace provide prime
opportunities for us to declare to the watching world: Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:11).
In my
preparation I came across a couple of quotes.
We will let Chuck Swindoll (my apologies but I don’t remember the
source) and Howard Butt (from his book, The Velvet Covered Brick) provide
today’s post.
From
Swindoll, entitles “Monday Morning Pulpits.”
Two
things bother me a lot when the subject of Christians and their work is
mentioned. First, how few are genuinely
happy in their jobs. Second, how frequently
I hear about Christians who are poor workers on their jobs. Some employers have even told me that they
prefer to not hire Christians.
Wow … That’s quite an indictment!
As I probe for reasons, here’s what is said. These are actual statements
I’ve heard:
They
tend to be presumptuous – they take advantage of a Christian boss…
It’s
the old problem of attitude. I find them
negative, critical, resistant to change …
Incompetence. It seems to me that the last several I’ve
hired simply could not (or would not) do the job …
They
are often preoccupied with other things – witnessing, church, whatever …
Frankly
… I can’t trust them when I’m not around. The last one I hired was just plain
dishonest …
Okay,
so these may be the exceptions … so this represents a very small minority. I’m still bothered. For every “exception” there’s a host of
offenses and a lot of hard feelings created.
A minority apple can still spoil a majority barrel … it if’s
rotten. Show me a lazy, irritating Christian
on the job and I’ll show you an office or store or customer or shop that isn’t
interested in his message. Like it or
not, the world watches us with the scrutiny of a sea gull peering at a shrimp
in shallow water. The believer at work
is under constant surveillance. That’s
our number one occupational hazard. And
when we speak of our Savior and the life He offers, everything we say is
filtered through that which has been observed by others.
The very best platform upon
which we may build a case for Christianity at work rests on six massive
pillars: integrity, faithfulness, punctuality, quality workmanship, a pleasant
attitude, and enthusiasm. Hire such a
person and it will only be a matter of time before business will improve …
people will be impressed … and Christianity will begin to seem important.
* * * * *
(Howard Butt
is speaking of an employee.) He has been asked repeatedly to perform a
routine ordinary job in his line of duty.
These requests he has consistently ignored. … But one consequence is
inevitable. His refusal to follow instructions
does not give him power in the organization – just the opposite – his power is
diminished. … My wife has more power with me that anyone else on earth. She influences everything from the way I cut
my hair to the shoes I wear on my feet.
She influences my decisions, my time, my recreation, my habits, my work,
my thinking, my actions. Who gave this
particular brown-haired woman such authority with me, such power? God gave it to her through her
submission. She does what I want her to
do. I don’t understand perfectly how
this works. But the results are
inescapably obvious to us all. The more
my wife submits to me the more influence with me she has – her power is in her
submission.
Conventional wisdom has thought of power as flowing from the top down. In all of our organizations we think about authority as the man who’s ‘got it in the bag’ on top: authority is the big bag on top. Jesus came to give us a better way to think. He came down. He came down to show us something new, something we hadn’t thought of: authority from the bottom up.
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