What happens when as Christians, our to-do lists often go unchecked in these few days under the sun? Answer—something is amiss with what we believe.

Or put differently, what happens when we make a habit of staying at the office late at the cost of everything else because we are afraid we won’t measure up? Answer—we will find a fickle identity in what we do.

It was reformer Martin Luther that clarified, “God doesn’t need our good works but our neighbour does.”

It’s by now clear, the places we spend 90 percent of our waking lives is where the battle of self-denial and serving others is likely to be fiercest.

I, for example, realize I don’t like working in open spaces, because somehow people get to tell whether you are really working or checking out your cousin’s Instagram at 11am.

And yet a Christian ought to spend themselves working not in the “eye service” (Eph 6:6) of his boss, but to the glory of God, as a city on a hill.

Christians are always working in open spaces—before God. Like Tim Keller author of “Every Good Endeavour” puts it “God is the only boss that will be here a million years from now,  after all the managers are long gone – work for him.”

Yet here is the thing that bothers, many like me who call on the name of the Lord rarely care (or care too much) about how we steward our 9-5pms.

Hours chide away as we join in water-cooler conversations and toying along with the world, we invigilate social media profiles and show nothing at the end of the month – except our contract (and maybe the relative that hired us)

On the other end, we give too much to our jobs, burdening them with expectations of identity, meaning and destiny. Business cards become identity cards, as working hard turns to man-pleasing.

We barely think of Monday mornings as opportunities to redeem the time, (Eph 5:16) – or opportunities to suffocate the growing weeds in our Jesus identity.

When we work hard, we are tempted to think our salvation comes from the number of checked to-do lists, and when we work less, we are indulging in order to escape the cursed (and hard) traits of work. Both attitudes ignore the Saviour.

When our jobs serve our neighbour and we don’t work well, we disobey the command to love our neighbour. And when we stay past 6pm to make “a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:1) —our Babel will soon come down.

Believer, Applying yourself to your job is ultimately not from inside you, you are only able to work because “it is God that works powerfully within you. “(Phil 2:13) . And when you spot evidences of grace in promotions or staff bonuses, it’s important that you don’t let your job enslave you.

Because like author Keller still reminds “When you make your job your identity, success will go to your head, and failure will go to your heart.”

Redeemed people cannot afford to stay silent about these extremes, no wonder 18th Century British writer Dorothy Sayers saw this and wrote.

“In nothing has the Church so lost Her hold on reality as Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious or at least uninterested in religion…. But is it astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?”

In a digital age where job opportunities show up per second, It is important to remind ourselves to do what’s in front of us for that is what God calls us to do well, (without fantasizing over dream jobs) as we terribly execute what he has put in our hands. And Like Sayers reminds again,

“ No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth.”

If we redeem the time because the days are evil, then to waste time will be to secede our mandate as children of the light, to a dark world.

Yet if we also play along to the you-are- what-you-do card, we will end up empty, because only in Christ do we find our true self—as sinners desperate for grace, and only in him do we “move live, have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

 (Image/ Nesabymakers / Unsplash)

Excellence or faithfulness first.

The New Testament promise is that good stewardship, not just mere performance is the key to fruitfulness. (Luke 16:10) only the worldly trample over each other in pursuit of excellence as identity, a privilege Christians already find in Christ.

In a fallen world, what we put our hands to is not always going to produce blow-your-mind experiences. Staying power and a long run commitment to non-glamorous tasks is what faithfulness often looks like. we are better off sticking in.

As Believer in pursuit of excellence, you should keep on, but watch the temptation to define yourself by output because the day your body is unable to give more (which is only inevitably human fate) your soul will shrink. Because we are not made in the image of our organization and we are led by the spirit, not by the salary.

Indeed, staying late at work may be a red flag about what we are worshipping but the sadness that springs out of idleness should also remind—we have a mandate to accomplish, in loving our neighbour through what we check off our list daily.

This side of the cross, there are still many enemies to conquer, lust and laziness being prominent— diligence and discernment urgent.

For now, how about you pass this on to your mulokole workmate? For the glory of God and the good of us all.