day 280: Godly At Work (redux)

While I am completing my vacation time this week, I will be running some repeats of post from the last year that seem to have resonated with many of you. Thanks and look for new posts beginning on Monday November 16

Thursday, December 4, 2008
day 45: Godly At Work?
I hear it all the time, “it’s so hard to be ‘Godly” at work”. When I hear it from others, I reflect upon my own work life and cringe at the memories of how I handled myself on many occasions and the poor example that I many times set. I also lament that my example might have hurt the cause of someone else who was trying harder than me to be more Godly and then they would see me and feel let down. When we are so emotionally and physically intertwined with other people for the hours we are when we are working we can easily slip into the ways and the words of others. I always marveled when someone senior would come into the company and before long, the words that person used became the words of their subordinates and before long their peers. I once worked with a person whose favorite phrase was, “I don’t disagree” and before long everyone said the same thing. There was nothing outwardly wrong about that phrase (other than it sneaked in a passive aggressiveness into the culture and before long no one ever disagreed outright) but it was a great example of how we become chameleons at work and can find ourselves sharing the words and behaviors that wouldn’t normally be ours. I also know that those words and behaviors from work then creep into home. So, what are we to do? What if we try and try but still can’t seem to keep ourselves above the temptations and the fray? What we have to do is quit trying to go it alone and instead ask God to do His work on us as we go to work. If we allow ourselves to receive the power that God has covered us with then we can find enough of that power to keep ourselves Godly when we are working. In 2 Peter 1:3, we are told just this: "By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life...". Today, think through how you can let God give you that power so that today, day by day, you can find yourself living a Godly life…at work!

Reference: 2 Peter 1:3 (New Living Testament)