The Transforming Work of God’s Love
Do you love your work? Popular culture suggests that if you just find the right job, a job you “love”, work will stop feeling like work. I saw a coffee mug the other day that read: “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” just one of many T-shirts, posters, and Instagram posts proclaiming a similar message.
What bothers me about this saying is that it puts the focus on finding the right job. It suggests that if you found a role that fit your gifts and interests, paid enough, or introduced you to the right people, you would be satisfied. This saying, while appealing, confuses liking a job with loving it.
But what does it mean to love our work? As Christians, our lives are “rooted and established in love,” a love so rich and all-consuming that it “surpasses knowledge” and fills us “to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:17-18) Take a moment to let this sink in.
You’re filled to the measure–stuffed to the very limits of who you are–with all that God is. Picture that mug I described in the opening paragraph being so full of coffee that with the slightest jiggle, its liquid spills over the edge. Picture God’s love spilling over the edge of your life and onto the roles you fill.
I appreciate how author Steven Garber applies this concept to our work:
“What is the work of our lives? To love what God loves. It is to see what God sees, to hear what God hears, to feel what God feels. It is to imitate Christ with heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.”
Regardless of the roles we fill, our work is to operationalize God’s love in such a way that daily life looks closer to the way God intends it to be. Through our work, we echo Christ’s words in Matthew 6:10, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
When we strive to love what God loves, it transforms our work in three profound ways:
God’s love shifts our motivation: Although he lived in 16th century Spain, the Catholic Saint Ignatius of Loyola penned words that illuminate our roles today: “All things in this world are gifts of God,” he wrote, “Presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.”
Work is more than just the setting in which we do things for God. it’s the context in which we do life with God. Every stressful moment or daunting challenge has passed through the Father’s hands, inviting us to experience His faithfulness and strength. As we learn God’s ways through work, we can offer that same work back to Him in love and worship.
God’s love reorders other loves. Have you ever loved your work a little too much? I have! In our 24-7, always-on world, it’s easy for our jobs to play an oversized role in our lives, shaping our identity, dominating our time, and fueling our anxiety. Centering God and his priorities keeps work from becoming an idol.
God’s love changes the way we work. Love fundamentally changes the way we work, and not in a warm and fuzzy kind of way. The most loving way to handle a situation may lead us to be more plain-spoken, because as one of the best managers I know often says, “Clarity is kind.” It may lead us to challenge the status quo, because the way we’ve always worked may not be best for employees, clients, or customers. Love drives sacrificial choices, if we have the courage to act on it.
Operationalizing love is no small task, which is why we’ve chosen to make it one of the themes at this fall’s Women, Work, & Calling event. Jasmine Bellamy, VP of Merchandising at Reebok and one of Sports Illustrated’s 100 Influential Black Women in Sports, will lead this conversation. I cannot wait!
Joanna Meyer | Women, Work, & Calling Founder