If you work 40 to 50 hours a week and work 50 weeks a year for 40 years, you will spend between 80,000 and 100,000 hours working. For the Christian, the Bible gives five ways to worship God through your work, which we will learn today and tomorrow.
1. Since God works, work is godly. To be godly means to follow God and His example. In Genesis 2:2, we read, “on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done”. God had a seven-day week, with six days of work and one day of rest. To be godly is to work hard and rest hard like God.
2. Work is now cursed. God created our first father Adam and gave him work to do before sin entered the world. Once sin entered the world, a curse came into effect that now makes work toilsome (Genesis 3:16, 3:17-19). Subsequently, our work is never done as something is always breaking in our broken world. If not checked, this can lead to burnout and workaholism seeking to defeat the curse.
3. We should work from our rest. The problem for most modern workers is that they start with work as their first priority, and then only take a day off or vacation if there is time left over. In a fallen world, it is impossible to be all caught up. So, God has architected life to give us breaks before we break. This includes a day off each week to Sabbath (Exodus 31:15). This also includes starting each day with rest. In the opening few pages of Genesis, we read that God counts a day as evening and morning. To this day, devout Jewish people consider a day to begin at sundown and not sun-up. Why does this matter? Because, in the ancient world devoid of electricity, when the sun went down, you went home to rest. Problems happen when we do not rest first and then work from a healthy place made possible by rest.
How is your work ethic? How is your Sabbath rest? What changes need to be made so that your work and rest rhythms are godly and healthy?