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Presented by Lisa Bishop
Does your faith make a difference in your job? Have you ever considered God has purposefully positioned you to proclaim the gospel at your workplace? Now before you picture yourself standing on your desk with a bullhorn or sitting on a Zoom call shouting scripture, don’t worry, that’s not what I mean. You aren’t necessarily called to get out your megaphone and shout the gospel like a street preacher, but you are called to proclaim the gospel with your life. What does that look like? We will examine five ways to live our faith at work and to be on mission at our workplace.
We tend to think of pastors, church staff, or men and women who get sent to foreign countries as missionaries. But have you ever considered your workplace as the place God has placed you to be on mission? Well, the truth is, God has placed you at your job for a purpose, and whether he has you there for 12 months or 10 years, how will you live with a heavenly perspective?
As a follower of Jesus, everything we do is for the glory of God, and when we live on mission, we live on purpose for the purposes of God.
One way to live on mission in the workplace is by checking our attitudes and minding our disposition. What is your mood at work? How would your coworkers describe your temperament? Are you easily angered, argumentative, impatient, or dismissive of people who disagree with you? Divisive with your words or demeaning with your tone? Or are you approachable, personable, and peaceable? Do you give other people credit instead of keeping it for yourself?
Your behavior with your coworkers will be the litmus test to your credibility as a follower of Jesus. I was having lunch with a woman the other day and asked her how she was doing. She proceeded to tell me how she’d fallen into some poor behavior habits at work. Displaying impatience, irritation, and getting sucked into gossip circles; at times, she was the instigator of dragging down people’s character with her words. She knows she is not putting God on display when she behaves that way. If you take an honest inventory of your personality at work, do you point to Jesus? I am not saying we will perfectly represent God; we are human after all. But do we purpose our interactions at work to point to him?
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23).
When the power of the Holy Spirit is evident in our lives, we are a credible witness to our coworkers. We live on mission and proclaim the gospel with our lives when we behave in a way that produces good fruit.