Work is a Godly Assignment
This week’s teaching felt heavier than usual. I sensed from the Holy Spirit an urgency to convey two things:
That believers should embrace their vocations in the marketplace, and do them with a spirit of excellence, so that we can…
Generate wealth to build systems of growth and resilience for the kingdom.
We came from Colossians 3:23-24:
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Most of us walked into adulthood believing real spiritual work happens behind the pulpit. Everything else—the cleaning crew, the cubicle, the contractor estimate, the marketing deck—is what we tolerate to pay tithes on. We’ve drawn too strong a line, too great a divide between the sacred and the secular. And we’ve been bleeding all over ourselves spiritually as a result.
Monday Carries the Same Weight as Sunday — At Least, It Should
Picture the believer whose Monday morning carries the same sense of meaning and purpose as Sunday. Picture going to work feeling like an act of worship—an act of service—and recognizing some holiness about the very thing God has placed us to do. That’s the aspirational anchor. It’s not glamorous. It’s not the testimony that goes viral. It’s you and I walking into work everyday recognizing that it is God, ultimately, that is giving out the performance reviews — and the raises.
What does that actually look like? It looks like skill development as spiritual discipline instead of career hack. It looks like taking a promotion without losing ourselves and staying in a modest role without feeling second-class. It looks like no longer burying our talents because the risk of trying feels too high. And it looks like being able to name how the job serves God, and his kingdom, beyond the paycheck.
The paycheck matters, of course — but the work itself is doing something too.
Quietly Written Off
The data does not look good, though.
Roughly half of Christians say their church has never given them concrete teaching on integrating faith and work.
80% of the global workforce is not engaged at work.
Vlad Savchuk has done a thousand sermons and never preached on work. A thousand.
Tim Keller said nobody trains pastors to disciple people for work.
So we’ve built an entire religious framework that quietly writes off the place where we spend most of our waking hours. We treat work as a necessary evil. We treat business and entrepreneurship and wealth-building as taboo conversations. And then we wonder why our churches are living “check-to-check”, and why children of God have less ownership than the children of the world.
Push comes to shove—economy falters, ground shifts—and very few of our ministries can say,
“We have land. We have businesses. We can sustain our flock through hardship.”
Hard truth:
Our misconceptions about work have cost us dearly.
The Narrowing of Calling
Underneath the surface diagnoses—pulpit silence, career as identity, fear of failure—sits one upstream cause: we’ve narrowed the word “calling” until it only means full-time ministry. It used to mean any God-assigned life.
Bezalel was a craftsman. God specifically gave him the gifts and abilities to build the tabernacle—not to preach, but to work with stone and metal. C.S. Lewis was a Cambridge and Oxford professor, not a minister, who blessed millions through fiction. David was anointed by Samuel and then went right back out into the field with the sheep. Each of those was a calling. None of them was the pulpit.
When we shrink “calling” to mean only ministry, we devalue the carpenter, the engineer, the landscaper, the accountant, and the cleaning crew. We tell them their spiritual life only happens on Sunday. We hand them a quiet message that the other six days don’t count. And then we’re surprised when their faith doesn’t show up in those six days either.
Three Godly Assignments
Renewing our minds on work means committing to three things in the same breath.
First, the work itself is a godly assignment. Not all work—there are kinds of work that aren’t. But doing the job God has placed us in, faithfully and with a spirit of excellence, is a godly assignment. There is a godly assignment in every season if we submit it to Him.
Second, generating wealth is a godly assignment. It is God who gives us the ability to gain wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18). He gives it for a godly purpose: to pour into the kingdom, to build grocery stores in our communities, to invest in small businesses, to set up schools and hospitals. Wealth isn’t the goal. What we build and sustain with that wealth is.
Third, stewarding the gifts is a godly assignment. Not just the gifts we celebrate in church—the prophetic word, the song, the tongue. The craftsman gifts too. The engineering gifts. The supportive gifts. Imagine if every person in our church had a second thing they could do—even small—to bring more meat into the storehouse. Imagine what that does over time.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them"
— Ephesians 2:8–10
We were saved by grace, not by works — but those works do count for something. The full picture isn’t “go to church on Sunday, endure work the other six days.” It is “worship God every day—in His house, in your Sabbath rest, and in the marketplace.”
The scripture started with “Whatever you do” for a reason. Not “whatever you preach.” Not “whatever you teach.” Whatever. The pulpit is one assignment among many. So is the cleaning crew. So is the CEO’s chair. So is the side hustle. The work we’ve been quietly writing off is the work the kingdom needs most right now.
What is your current heart posture towards work?
And how might the Lord be looking to use your work to bring you into greater alignment with the Kingdom?
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Thank you! This was very enlightening and thought-provoking. I recently retired, and due to many circumstances, I developed a “oppressive” view of work. My passion is teaching and writing. This post resonated with me to stay focused on my heavenly mission when I enter traditional work life again.