Over the past weekend, I made my third drive to Canada this year to help with the moving process of my mom, and while I drove, I listened to a podcast that was recommended to me by one of our leaders in Togo. The podcast was on the intersection of faith, work, and life, something that I've spent the last twelve years immersed in, but I'm always interested in learning new ways to express the call to work in ways that will resonate.
The speakers introduced a theme of "common work" relating to "common grace," and then linked "saving work" and "saving grace." It really resonated with me, so I'm sharing it with you, with my own spin on it.
One of the things that Christians believe is that there is common grace in the world. By this we mean that God is good to all people, regardless of their beliefs. This includes general blessings like sunshine, rain, food, and water. Matthew 5:45 says, "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
Common grace leads to saving grace. Saving grace is for those who claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior and leads to salvation and eternal life. Common grace points us to an awareness or understanding of the goodness of God; saving grace is when we make a personal decision to accept and follow this God.
Strong's concordance defines grace as "the divine influence on the heart and its reflection in life." I like this definition as it is not just the acceptance of a blessing of grace, but it implies that we are blessed to be a blessing - it is to be reflected in our life.
So how does this apply to work?
God has called us to work. Work is a gift. Work is one of the purposes of our creation. Every person, in every place, works. Not everyone has a job, but there is work for everyone. The work that we do is like common grace - we do our work for the blessing, or for the benefit, of the customer, business, the community, and the nation. We seek to do our best, regardless of how we feel about the customer, the owner of the business, the government leaders. We work for the common good. We are blessed to work, and it is then a blessing for others. That is what we are to do as Christians. We are to do our work as an act of worship - as unto the Lord and not for man. Receiving this grace has an influence on our heart and it should reflect in our life.
But our "common work" can then lead to "saving work." When we do our work with a MISSIONAL goal, to make disciples, we participate in the Great Commission. We help people to know about Jesus, which can lead them to saving grace from our Lord and Savior. People can come to know Christ through our work by being disciples and by making disciples. We integrate our faith and work.
In DML, we often teach a quadruple bottom line (goals): economic, environmental, social, and missional. But maybe this simplifies it to two: work for the common good (which actually would include economic, environmental, and social) and work for the saving good (missional). The work for the common good SHOULD lead people to the saving good or saving grace.
I like the simplicity of this - we work for the common good...but we don't stop there...our goal is to help all those in our spheres of influence - our customers, employees, employers, vendors, colleagues and more - to learn about this amazing, loving, merciful God and Father, and to receive the saving grace that comes through Jesus.
May your work be a blessing for the common good and saving good this week!
