God-Centered Living at Work

My friend Doug Wolter is a pastor at Oak Hill Baptist Church and is preaching through Colossians. He invited me down to preach on Colossians 3:22-4:1 yesterday, and I preached on what it means to do our work unto the Lord and for the good of others.

This also involved laying out a bit of a Christian doctrine of work from this text, since what the Bible has to say about our work is so often overlooked these days. You can listen to the message here.

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March 19, 2012 | Filed Under Vocation | 2 Comments 

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2 Responses to “God-Centered Living at Work”

  1. Loren Pinilis on March 20th, 2012 10:36 am

    Great stuff, Matt. I love your emphasis on how we should strive to enjoy our work in and of itself, instead of begrudgingly toughing it out.

    One question I’ve always wondered about the doctrine of vocation:
    It makes sense that we glorify God by serving others – customers, bosses, associates, etc. It also makes sense that we glorify God by being a witness and a testimony in our vocation.
    But what if no one knew we existed? What about a hypothetical situation where you were on some island away from civilization with no contact with anyone else. Let’s even say that you knew you would never be found, so you weren’t living for the hope of some future witness.
    Would your work (something like hut-making, hunting, and gathering) be bringing glory to God? Would it have the potential to be just as glorifying as being an influential pastor?

    In short, what’s the relationship between community and vocation?

  2. Matt on March 27th, 2012 11:15 pm

    Loren,

    I think it would be glorifying to God, because it would still be reflecting his attributes of diligence and creativity and so forth. It would glorify God just as all the fish that live deep in the ocean that people never see glorify him, and all the stars that we can’t visit glorify him.

    However, I think work that serves others glorifies God more, because it is “not good that man should be alone.” So working in community and for the sake of people is more valuable than only working for ourselves and by ourselves. This also follows from the fact that our joy in God is doubled when it overflows in gladly meeting the needs of others.

    Matt

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