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Nursing
is my profession, my daily work. But it is also an important
way I worship God. For me, work and worship have become
like two blades of a scissors; one is useless without the
other. I now see that work is a ministry performed before
God.
In Leap
Over a Wall, one of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson,1
tells how Saul, God’s anointed leader, decided to take over
the responsibility for God’s sovereignty and do things his
own way. Saul started off beautifully, being chosen and
anointed by the Lord, but soon proved that he was not interested
in doing God’s work God’s way. He became more and more absorbed
in doing the work itself—whether it was defeating the enemy,
sacrificing to God or distributing the plunder.
Saul
did not do anything wrong in and of itself, but he treated
God merely as a means and resource for what he wanted to
accomplish, forgetting to consult the Lord. In 1 Samuel
15, Saul offered sacrifices to the Lord when it was not
his place to do so. He let the people keep the best animals
plundered from the Amalekites to present them to the Lord,
instead of destroying them completely as the Lord had instructed.
He wanted to worship God on his terms rather than on God’s
terms.
Somewhere
along the line, God’s anointed work became Saul’s responsibility.
In other words, he worshiped to make his work prosper. He
tried to manipulate God, and this had serious consequences.
Similarly, if we work in our own strength to make our worship
look good and draw crowds, we will have the same results.
Worship
and work should never become two different things. We worship
when we work and we work when we worship, especially when
our work is derived from God. It tells us in Genesis that
in the beginning God went to work, and what he created was
for his purpose and glory. In the second scene we see that
man and woman were placed in the garden as workers responsible
to God for both fellowship and work.
In Luke
4:18 Jesus announced in the synagogue, “The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” In
Scripture, anointed means being given a job by God. It means
he has assigned us a certain task, and his Spirit enables
us to do it. Do you believe that you have been anointed
by the Lord to be a nurse? Anointing connects our work with
God’s work. He does his work through us. Through God’s actions
we know who he is, and through our work people know who
we are.
Peterson
says, “When we are working well and doing good work, we
are truly God-like.” However, problems arise when we begin
to think that we are in control and think of ourselves as
gods of our little universe. If we are gods, then we don’t
need God, or at least we don’t seem to think we need him
much in our everyday work world. That’s when we begin to
draw lines between what is secular and what is sacred.
Having
a good job doesn’t mean we will do it well. Having the right
role in life doesn’t mean we will be righteous people. The
key to living as God-called people is doing our work
his way whatever the circumstances. Work reveals something
essential about us. Through our work we express our values,
articulate our morals and act out our convictions. By the
same token, we can conceal our real identity through our
work by using it as a front to advertise what we want people
to see or believe about us.
Seeing
with New Eyes
At the beginning of each new year, I make a New Year’s resolution
before the Lord. Last year my desire was to get to know
God better than ever before. I planned to accomplish my
goal in several ways: (1) intellectual knowledge, by intense
study and thinking, (2) emotional knowledge, by meditating
on God’s goodness and love toward me and (3) spiritual knowledge,
by praying and reading Scripture. Eventually, the thought
struck me that these are all private areas of my life where
no one else goes. The big question was How do I measure
up in my public life—in the community, workplace and church?
I can feel close to God in the privacy of my own home, but
the moment I step outside, I’m consumed by my role with
other people. My relationship with God seems to slide into
the background.
At work
I am surrounded by unbelievers, and I sometimes wonder what
I should be doing. Actually, most of them know where I stand
on several issues, but it’s almost as if we live in two
different worlds. They know where I stand and I know where
they stand, but no one seems to be building bridges to reach
out to the other.
Our
society seems to become more and more hostile and negative
each day. Everyone focuses on what is wrong, bad, ugly and
destructive. We are engulfed by attitudes of cynicism and
mediocrity. People seem to want to be average and “just
get by.” Few seek excellence. Most people choose not to
change their current lifestyle, even if it makes them unhappy.
You hear people say, “Why rock the boat?” “If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it.” “Go with the flow.” “Who cares?” and “Whatever.”
Too often we find ourselves getting sucked into thinking
and living this way.
As I
asked God to help me get to know him better, I realized
that unless I lived every area of my life in direct obedience
to him, my knowledge of him was going to be incomplete and
mediocre. I prayed that I would be consumed by God and not
by my work. I also prayed that I would be as Christ to everyone
I meet during the course of the day, and that I would see
Christ in them (Mt 25:45). I fervently asked that my identity
would come from being in Christ and not from being a teacher,
a nurse or a friend, spouse, mother or any other role.
After
that prayer, I discovered that my attitude of worship grew
as I committed each person and the circumstances of each
day to God. The quality of my work did not change nor did
my dedication to it, but I changed in the way I reacted
to the daily grind, the crises, the interruptions and the
disappointments. The way I prayed for and treated people
changed. I realized I had never prayed for some people I
saw every day of my life. That quickly changed. God did
something in me I never thought possible after so many years
of doing the same thing. I looked forward to each day as
a new adventure with him. He gave me many opportunities
to minister, to share my faith, to give a reason for the
hope that was within me, to lift burdens and to encourage
others. I was made wiser, richer and stronger for it.
Don’t
get me wrong. I failed and fell many times, but I discovered
that if I wanted to influence people, I needed to have an
attitude of worship every hour of the day, then stand back
and watch things change. The humdrum routines of my job
no longer seemed boring. The circumstances and people at
work did not annoy me as before. God blessed abundantly.
In the
monotonous assignments of everyday living, God can take
something routine and dull to use as a platform for his
significant work. People watch us carefully and begin to
see the difference. They see that we have something they
don’t have, which opens doors of communicating the love
of Christ to them. For example, when you say you’ll pray
for someone, do it and then follow up on the answers (sometimes
people do not recognize answers when they get them). I found
this to be a powerful witness and tool for sharing my faith.
It is
also exciting to see God’s faithfulness to answer prayers
for those we are trying to reach. Frequently my colleagues
will ask me to pray for them—for everything from serious
family and health problems to mundane concerns like the
weather. Every time the prayers are answered, it not only
strengthens my faith but is an awesome display of God’s
personal involvement in the affairs of our lives. My friends
often say to me, “God hears you, so you pray.” I tell them,
“It’s not my prayers but the God I pray to that’s important.”
They believe in my prayers but not in my God, but the day
will come when God will make himself known to them also.
In his
book Holy Sweat,2 Tim Hansel
tells the story of some body builders on a television talk
show. They were showing off their muscles when the host
asked, “What do you use these muscles for?” One man answered
by flexing his muscles in one of those body-building poses.
“No,
you don’t understand me,” said the host. “What do you use
these muscles for?”
The
body builder answered, “I’ll show you,” and flexed again,
posing another way.
“No,
no, you still don’t understand what I’m asking. What do
you use them for?” and the guy posed again.
Many
of us are like that. We attend church, go to seminars, conferences
and Bible studies and keep building our spiritual muscles,
but we do not use them for the reason for which they were
created. We end up like the body builders, with well-defined
muscles for show, just to look good, but they are good for
nothing.
Jesus
said, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free” (Jn 8:32). When we participate and experience
this truth, we make it our life story. As Hansel puts it,
“Your theology should become your biography.” We learn to
mesh our beliefs into everyday reality. Although it sounds
simple, it actually is one of life’s greatest challenges.
We seldom understand that God is not just asking us to be
spiritually committed to him. He wants our total commitment—every
fiber of our being. We use every dimension of our being
when we work, so we worship him as we work.
As Christians
we find our basic identity in Christ but seldom consider
what this means. We are more inclined to dwell on what we
do and who we are—the urgent and the superficial. Our identity
in Christ is once and for all established when we put our
faith in him, yet many of us don’t consciously dwell on
this profound reality. We simply go about living our lives,
rather than thinking about our significance in Christ, thus
blinding us from knowing who we truly are. We develop this
sense of identity and security in Christ as we spend time
with him in prayer, offer our conscious praise to him and
give him credit for all we are and have. The more of his
Word, the Bible, we put into our lives, the more aware we
become that he is our prime motivator. When we simply take
God at his word, we find he is utterly trustworthy and creates
opportunities for his Spirit to be manifested in our lives
and work.
Psalm
90:17 says, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work
of our hands!” It’s my prayer that you will see your work
as significant and view that significance in the light of
God’s favor and plan. The Westminster catechism says we
are created for one great purpose only: “To know God and
glorify him forever.” Let’s do that in our work! JCN
1Eugene
Peterson, Leap Over a Wall (New York: HarperSanFrancisco,
1997), 27-28, 33.
2Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat (Dallas:
Word, 1987), 26-28.
Kamalini
Kumar, RN, MA, education instructor for Samaritan
Health System, Clinton, Iowa, does staff development and
continuing education programming in obstetrics and pediatrics.
She teaches medical careers at Clinton High School, besides
speaking and serving on numerous organizational boards.
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