act of worship

Every Little Thing Matters

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it” (Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba’s Embrace).

That’s it.

As Mother Teresa once said, there are no great acts, but rather only small acts done with great love.

To put it another way, when done out of the right spirit, out of a genuine and abiding love for Jesus, everything you do and say can become an act of worship. Even cleaning toilets or scrubbing floors. All those menial tasks that don’t have much inherent value can be living prayers if they’re done as an offering to Jesus.

That makes all the difference in drudgery and delight, between surviving and thriving.

Maybe you’re not exactly in the high-profile career you thought you’d be in by now. Maybe you’re not pulling down the big bucks.

Then again maybe your job is to make a difference in the lives of those people in your office. Maybe your best gift is to be quite possibly the only positive light to someone who otherwise only exists in darkness.

Maybe you don’t have to go to seminary and get ordained to have a ministry. Maybe your ministry is you showing up every single day and giving your absolute very best for eight hours.

Maybe if you’re faithful in the little things over time, God will entrust you with bigger things down the road.

Or maybe you’ll get to the end of your life and realize that all those little things done with great love really were the big things after all.

 

More Good Conversation

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

I was talking with a friend of mine at Kairos tonight.

We’d both gone through long stretches of unemployment.

Both of us expressed how before we had days where we might tend to grumble and complain and gripe about our jobs and possibly even “mail it in” (meaning give less than absolutely 110%) on a given day.

If you were to poll the average American worker, the vast majority would probably say they don’t like their job. Most would say the only reason they show up to work each day is out of the daily necessity of paying bills and mortgages and putting food on the table and supporting families.

My friend and I have a different perspective now. Both of us know what it’s like to not have a job. Both of us know what it’s like to feel purpose-less and discouraged, wondering if we truly have anything the job market wants.

I’m working another temp job, but I’ve purposed in my mind to make it my act of worship. I’m going to show up and do my very best, as if I’m working directly for Jesus. Because in a sense, I am.

The Bible says that whatever you do, you should do it to the glory of God. That means writing songs and presiding over large corporations as a CEO. That also means cleaning houses and toilets, punching in numbers into a computer, organizing and filing massive amounts of medical files.

Whatever you do, do it as if Jesus were watching. Do it because you want to please Jesus because He gave so much for you. Do it not because you have to, but because you get to. Do it because someone else may be watching you and you may be the only Bible they will read all day.

Make your job your ministry and your mission field. Do whatever you do whenever you do it to the best of the abilities God has given you and leave the results to God.

See if that doesn’t change your perspective.