Your Work as Worship thursyda

As you enter your Decade of Destiny, it is important that you understand your work can be an act of worship to God. In fact, if I want God to bless my finances, I must make my work an act of worship.

What I'm saying is that no matter what you do - sweeping the streets, running a corporation or the work of a stay-at-home mom -- your job is more than a job. The Bible says while you are here on earth, you should use your work as an act of worship.

This means whatever you do, you are to do it with enthusiasm. If your heart is not in it, you are in the wrong job. If you are not working with all your heart, you are sinning. I didn't say that, the Bible says it.

Why work with all your heart? Because you are working "as though you were working for the Lord and not for people." No matter what I do, if it is to prepare a meal, if it is to sign an invoice, if it is to do an analysis, if it is to close a deal, if it is to make a sale, if it is to make delivery -- whatever it is, I am to do it as if I'm doing it for God, and so it becomes an act of worship.

Pa Ta Rick wrote:Why work with all your heart? Because you are working "as though you were working for the Lord and not for people."

Essentially, everything we do in our lives is for God. When we don't do things whole-heartedly to our full potential or to our very best, we're not giving God what he deserves. The work we do in our lives can symbolize an act of worship. If we're willing to do things with all our hearts, then we're displaying what God deserves, and in a way we're worshiping Him. We express that we understand who He is, what God is worth through our work and actions.
Furthermore, sometimes I personally feel that the work I do is insignificant, and has an intensely minute impact overall for God. However, God sees the effort that we put into our work, and how much of our hearts are being applied to it. God sees this all genuinely, and he sees it truthfully. Even though the things I do feels insignificant to me, I know that God will be able to see the basis of my intentions and hopefully will be able to see my effort and the "heart" in it.
Also, when we do things, whatever it may be (homework, sports, doing chores, etc.), we have to remember that it's all for God only. He's the only one who can judge our true intentions and see our hearts truthfully. We should let all our hearts be directed towards God and poured in for the work that we do for Him.

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20

31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31

There is no real joy in a job unless you find a way of worship in your heart.
"If you are not working with all your heart, you are sinning."
Man, that is harsh! I just wanted to point that out since that really grabbed my attention when reading that...I guess if it's not for God, then serving for a different purpose is a sin.

Our lives need to constantly be filled with God. Our attention gets diverted sometimes and we forget who we are doing this for. In all that you do, do it whole-heartedly and remind yourself who this is for. Do things for the right reason and give it your all...you can feel him smileing at you.

~Audrey~

It's important to understand that this applies to us too even though most of us currently don't have actual jobs. The 'jobs' for most of us are being a student and a praise team member. Even so, we still need to use our work as an act of worship. Leading praise being an act of worship is pretty obvious because we're literally worshipping God, but we need to worship God in our daily lives too- not just on stage where people are watching. It may seem hard but its actually simpler to honor and worship God as students than you think. We sorship God at school through not swearing, not gossiping, respecting our authorities and obeying them even if you don't like them and showing kindness to every single person whom you associate with throughout the day. Just take what the bible says and apply it to you school life. Simple in explanation but really hard as far as execution. It can be hard not to be sucked into gossiping or being disrespectful, especially as a teenage girl or guy. What I'm trying to say is that we should do all these things for God, because when we do, we are worshipping him.

This was a short message, but what I got out of it is that everything we do, even simple everyday actions such as eating or doing homework can be worship to God if we do it with all of our heart as if doing it for the Lord. It's something I heard in Sunday School from early in my childhood, but I never really understood how such insignificant actions can be worship towards God. The devo explained this to me, it is our attitude and heart that allows us to worship God through our work or daily activities. When we have the mentality that we are doing these things as if doing them for God, then it becomes a form of worship towards Him.

It's funny that this comes along because recently, my friends found out I spend a lot of time on Facebook playing poker, and whenever they tell me about how they lost everything, or that they gained everything or something happening, actually ANYTHING happening, I tell them "Pay respect to Lady Fortune."(It's a joke/serious/satirical comment) The basic concept is that there's one variable that we can't possibly understand or anticipate to a perfect extent and that we must pay our dues to it.

In a more serious practical sense, God is our variable.

He outlines a lot of things in a practical sense, but what he outlines is only a Bible out of the infinite amounts of wisdom He has.

Really, within any work we do, we should pay respect to God, much as I would "pay respect to Lady Fortune." We have to acknowledge that he plays an ACTIVE role within making the universe function, along with acknowledging that no matter how *correct* we think we are, we'll never be certain alone. Only through God's consistency can we achieve consistency. Only through God's grace can we receive ANYTHING, really. So whatever we're doing, whether it's a gamble, or something you'd think is certain:

PRAY that it'd be part of God's will for whatever to be fulfilled.

Because it's only through His grace.
So "Pay your respects."

This reminds me of something I heard from a former student and now staff of University of Tyndale. He said that he was at the time working in a job where he and his team would disassemble computers and such.Most other groups were disassembling about 50-100 computers a day, while his team was disassembling about 300 a day (i forget the exact numbers but the point is he was working really hard). His supervisors eventually wondered how and why this particular person was working so hard every day, and he replied with something similar to what is mentioned in the devo, about working for the Lord.

Whatever we do, even if it really doesn't seem like it can benefit the Kingdom of God, we must do it with our everything and remember who it is we are truly working for. When we work in this way with all our hearts, we are worshiping God by giving our best to who we work for.