Rethinking Work as Worship

Most of us have had a job we couldn't wait to get out of.

For me, it was a summer in college spent cleaning up after fires, floods, and sewer backups. Then later, when I first started pastoring at a small church for 7,000 dollars a year, I took a side job building grain elevators on a farm. I'm a city kid. Up at 5 a.m., out the door, working until 5 p.m. in conditions I wasn't built for. I didn't like it. I wanted out. I could have had a better attitude. But it was a means to provision for me.

Maybe you've got a job story like that. Or maybe you're in one right now.

For some people, work is just a way to make money, and life starts at 5 p.m. on Friday. For others, it lacks meaning. Some are jumping from job to job, hoping the next one will be the one. Others are grinding through with a tough boss or a toxic team. There are issues of work-life balance, ethics, fitting in, and burnout. The list is long.

So, with all of that to manage, is there another way to think about our jobs?

Work Was God's Idea

Right from the beginning, work was part of God's design. After He created humanity, we read this:

"God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" (Genesis 1:28)

Humanity is made in the image of God, and God is a worker. Creation itself is His project. So He hands part of that project to us. From the start, work is purposeful and collaborative. A partnership with God.

When sin entered the picture, frustration entered work, too. We read after Adam and Eve sinned:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life... By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food." (Genesis 3:17-19)

The brokenness we see in modern work, exploitation, idleness, burnout, dysfunction, is a product of that curse. But work itself wasn't the curse. The frustration around it was.

Your Job Is Your Calling

The Bible has a lot to say about how we work. But if I had to pick the one thing Scripture emphasizes most about stepping into greater professional health, it would be this: see your job as your calling.

And here's where it gets interesting. The calling isn't really about what you do.

Paul wrote: "Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). And he expanded it later in his letter to the Colossians:

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." (Colossians 3:23-24)

Notice three repeated words. Whatever you do. Whatever means anything. Everything. All things. In absolutely everything you put your hand to, good, bad, hard, easy, you do it for the glory of God.

The primary nature of your calling isn't what you do. It's how you do whatever it is you do.

The word vocation comes from the Latin vocatio, meaning summons or invitation. Your job is your calling, but the calling itself is not job-specific. It's God-specific. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it for the Lord.

That means your work isn't simply an occupation. It's an offering. It's not just work. It's worship. Not merely a paycheck. A prayer. Not just going into the marketplace. Going and taking up your post on mission.

The Compartmentalized Life

For most of us, this is a different way of thinking. We tend to compartmentalize. Spiritual life over here, on weekends and in small groups. Work life over there. The two rarely intermingle.

Most of us don't wake up Monday thinking we're about to give a gift to God or be a gift from God to others. We wake up thinking, "Is it Friday yet?"

If we do think about our jobs spiritually, it's usually in terms of emotional survival. We pray for help getting through hard situations. We pray for guidance with ethical issues. That's good, and God does help with those things. But seeing your job as a sacred act of worship, something offered up to God, is a concept many of us have never really considered.

Earlier in that same chapter, Paul says it again: "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Colossians 3:17). Another translation puts it this way: "Whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus" (NLT).

The heart of your calling is not to a something. It's to a someone. When you work, you don't just do it for your employer. You do it for God.

Henri Nouwen put it like this: we may know how to fold our hands in prayer, but we need to learn how to make the work of our hands into a prayer.

Whether you're a welder, paramedic, teacher, lawyer, accountant, nurse, service worker, or anything else, all roles, all jobs, all tasks are to be offered as worship to the Lord. Performed with excellence, integrity, and devotion. Your work is more than a means to an end. It's meant to bring glory to God in all you do.

A Cathedral and a Broom

There's a story from the Middle Ages that captures all of this.

A traveller from Italy went to the French town of Chartres to see the great cathedral being built. He arrived near the end of the day, just as the workers were leaving. He stopped one of them, a man covered with dust, and asked what he did. I'm a stonemason, the man said. I spend my days carving rocks.

He asked another. I'm a glassblower. I make slabs of colored glass.

A third. I'm a blacksmith. I pound iron for a living.

Then he wandered into the unfinished church and came upon an elderly woman with a broom, sweeping up the chips and shavings from the day's work. He asked her the same question.

She paused, leaned on her broom, looked up toward the high arches, and said, "Me? I'm building a great cathedral for the glory of Almighty God."

That woman understood vocation.

Your calling isn't about what you do at any juncture in your career. It's about how you do whatever it is you do. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.

Go into work tomorrow with a new sense of why you do what you do. You're not just selling, building, planning, healing, teaching, or serving. You're building a cathedral.