My
Work: Extra Inspiration or Unnecessary Perspiration?
By Cara Baker
April 23, 2001
It
was 3 a.m and I couldn’t sleep. My mind reeled with thoughts about an article
I started earlier in the day. Ideas kept coming faster and faster, although I
was only semiconscious. “I’ll remember all this in the morning,” I tried
to convince myself as I flipped over to hide my face from the moonlight pouring
in the window. After five minutes, I rolled out of bed and grabbed a stack of
paper and a pen. I wrote and wrote as fast as I can in the dark, praying that
I’ll remember to get down everything and
be able to read my writing in the morning.
No
matter how tired I am, or how much I would love to go back to sleep, when
inspiration strikes, I must respond because it doesn’t happen often. It’s
like a creative resource from deep within demands I produce—right then and
whole-heartedly. I wish writing felt like that all the time.
I
imagine Adam and Eve knew that feeling because that’s how life was like for
them every day in the garden. God appointed them to tend to the garden and, as
created beings, they had an insatiable desire to create and manage creation.
Whether it was naming foliage, building bridges with rocks across streams, or
running with the animals, Adam and Eve worked with the intensity that comes with
being overwhelmed with inspiration—the kind that rarely strikes after the
fall.
Of
course, the fall of man introduced ideas contrary to God. After the fall, work
became tedious and laborious for Adam and Eve. I can imagine them looking up at
each other through drops of stinging sweat with bent-backs as they till the
ground. They must have wondered why the precious earth was now so hard, the wind
so rough, and the sun so hot, and why their bodies ached with fatigue.
We’re
living in the same world Adam and Eve discovered. We will confront evil and
experience conflict. In the face of this, the key to having a full life, and not
developing an unhealthy work attitude, is to be prepared.
Evaluate
Your Serving Possibilities
I
know a guy just out of high school who turned down several jobs with web design
firms in hopes his church would put him on staff to work on their Internet
media. The church did not hire him because they lacked the budget for another
employee, but of course welcomed his services anytime he could offer them for
free.
Some
people desire and prefer working for the church. There’s nothing wrong with
that, but you should ask yourself if working for the church is in the best
interest of God’s work. “We cannot afford a preference for church work and a
depreciation of daily work,” write Doug Sherman and William Hendricks in Your
Work Matters to God. “Rather, we must do God’s work, wherever it needs
doing.”
The
church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of its non-patrons,
or non-members. Although the church should meet the needs of its members, it
must always focus on being an outreach center and not a self-centered Christian
club. “Avoid the strong tendency to view your church as an end in itself, as a
kingdom you are building for God,” Sherman and Hendricks say. “Your church
need not be big for this to happen… We think we’re serving Christ, but
we’re only worshiping the church.”
Undoubtedly
the church needs its various members to offer their gifts and services. But
don’t underestimate the importance of developing relationships through service
outside the church. “And while serving Christ, as I have indicated, will
likely include some service to and through your church, it should extend into
your daily work and relationships and into your community,” Sherman and
Hendricks say. “You should pursue this broad service to people whether or not
you receive a great deal of acknowledgment for it from your church.”
Be
Prepared
Preparation
takes thinking ahead and examining your life. Ask yourself: What work has God
designed you to do? Answer this by looking at the areas you excel in and enjoy
doing. Most likely, these are the areas you’re most gifted by God. (As an
example: I enjoy writing, editing, graphic design and web production. God has
given me these gifts and has designed me to communicate truths about Him through
specific avenues of publishing.)
Once
you have a pretty solid answer to that question, you need to make sure you’re
prepared to do that work by taking these actions:
·
Organize your prayer
life. The core of everything you do should be centered around prayer.
Without it, you’re powerless and ineffective. Many of us have impaired
prayer lives because we fail to pray for all areas of our lives: personal
life, family, church life and work and community. “God says we need to honor
Him in all five. And because they all impact each other, we cannot arrange
them into a hierarchy,” Sherman and Hendricks say.
·
Find teaching that
addresses specific workplace issues. If your local church doesn’t offer what
you need, look for other resources and learn to extract truth from the Bible
on your own too. “Whether or
not your pastor or adult education teachers do all they can to speak to your
issues, you as a layperson still have responsibility to allow God’s Word to inform
your work,” Sherman and Hendricks write.
·
Form a small group. A
popular trend in churches today, people are founding small groups that are
highly effective in providing accountability, prayer and emotional support.
Get together regularly with the same group of fellow Christians and engage in
discussion, dialogue, and prayer about your lives and careers.
·
Write a career strategy. Putting
your dreams, goals and desires into writing is a powerful tool to help you
stay focused. Sales guru Pat Tracy states that 70 percent of goals are
achieved within one year when they’re written down. Unfortunately, most
people¾over
90 percent¾never
write them down.
·
For a vision statement,
write your life dreams in broad terminology. What do you want to accomplish
and why is it important?
·
For a mission statement,
explain how you will achieve your goals using your unique gifts and talents.
·
Write an activities section
in which you identify long-range and short-term goals. Be specific.
·
Assess your constraints and
resources. What obstacles will you face when meeting your goals? Who, what
and where can you go to find help achieving your dreams?
Quality
of Life
In
college it wasn’t uncommon to find me in the newspaper office at 2 a.m.
writing, editing, sending email, studying or doing homework. With a full load of
classes, an internship and being the editor of the student-run newspaper, I was
always busy. My mind constantly swarmed with deadlines, stories, homework,
papers and computer problems. I got little sleep during that period, as most
college students can identify with.
Friends
would pop by the office and tell me they’re meeting for dinner in an hour.
I’d tell them to save me a seat; I’d try to make it. I rarely did. I felt
guilty if I wasn’t working. There was always something to do. I could never do
enough. I became a martyr to chronic busyness. Sometimes I worked before and
after church on Sunday nights. On those days, you could guarantee my mind was a
galaxy away from what was happening in the service. Looking back, I realize how
unnecessary a lot of that stress was and see where delegation and better time
management would have freed my schedule for at least a day of rest.
God
designed us to need rest and leisure. Still, the only way we’ll have
fulfilling rest is if we trust God with the results of our labor. If you’ve
done the work, then rest in knowing it will be effective and create prosperous
results. Don’t work overtime and become chronically busy to ensure and
solidify your work’s results. If you’re over-working, you’re failing to
give attention to equally important areas of your life.
My
calendar includes both work and non-work appointments, although the personal
engagements are disproportionate with the work deadlines. Writing in an
appointment to spend an evening with your mom and dad seems silly, but how often
do they get put on the back-burner when something more important, like
entertaining an out-of-town client, comes up? But when it comes down to it, who
is more important?
Achieving
a better balance between your work and personal life requires communication and
participation, writes Sue Campbell Clark in “Work/family border theory:
A new theory of work/family balance” (Human Relations, June, 2000).
Communication to help balance your life includes “sharing some of the
challenges and successes at work with family members, and telling co-workers and
supervisors about family events and happenings. Support is more likely to come
from order-keepers who understand and are informed about other-domain
happenings.”
Participation
at both work and home helps attain better balance by:
·
Developing relationships with others¾you
talk to your spouse/best friend/roommate as much as you did to the guy in the
next cubicle today.
·
Becoming expert in work and home responsibilities¾like
learning to balance your budget at home as well as you do at work.
·
Making work and home more integral parts of your identity¾you
are a wife, sister and mother to the same degree as you are a lawyer, teacher
or designer.
Bridging
the gap between your work life (secular) and your personal life (sacred) will
help eliminate unhealthy work attitudes and unnecessary distress. In the
process, you’ll become a more effective witness and fulfill your calling to
engage the culture as the salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16).
Next week: An
e-Panel of Professionals Tackle Big Career Questions.
ninetyandnine.com
ã
2001, Cara Baker
--------
Associate
Editor Cara Baker is now Associate
Editor of Publishing Development at Providence House Publishers in Franklin,
Tenn., where she struggles for inspiration and
a good night’s sleep.
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