God and work

The phrase ‘discover your strengths’ was made famous by researcher Marcus Buckingham in what’s referred to as the ‘Strengths Movement’. It calls us to stop focusing on our weaknesses and name and develop our strengths – which reflects God’s design. God didn’t say, ‘Moses, your craftsmanship skills are weak. Let’s have you stop leading this people for a while and try to become more like Bezalel’ (see Exodus 31:1-5). The Bible speaks of going ‘from strength to strength’. And a strength is an activity which, when you engage in it, makes you feel strong. Certain activities will thrill and challenge you; others will bore and drain you. Once you discover this, you’re not simply engaged in ‘career planning’, you’re acknowledging God’s handiwork and your own core strengths. It matters that you do this, because the single little patch of creation you’re responsible for stewarding is your own life. Dorothy Sayers said: ‘Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.’ What if your job doesn’t fulfil your need for purpose or utilise your God-given gifts? Sometimes necessity requires that. That’s why the Bible says, ‘Whatever you do, do well’ (Ecclesiastes 9:10 NLT). In the meantime, pray for opportunity, prepare yourself, and volunteer in an area that utilises your strengths. Sometimes people who don’t enjoy the work they do are miserable, and they make everybody around them miserable too. But God expects better from you!