Is your work the enemy? Praying on the job.

By Nathan Combs

Did you know that the average person spends more time with their co-workers than with their own family? Did you also know that the average boss doesn’t really care? If you are like me that information doesn’t sit well. I would much rather be at home with my wife and kids, spending those hours that I will never get back, with them. I would also rather stay home, sleep in till about noon, have a huge bowl of cookie crisp and then play on line scrabble till the kids come home or I fall back asleep, whichever comes first. Of course I can’t do that, yet. Someday maybe. If my wife has anything to do with it I will work steadily without lapse for another 30 years. Ugh, that makes my reflux bubble! At the rate I am going, I won’t make it another 5 years.

What can I do about it? Knowing that my family is my priority and God can use me in any job, I need to rely on Him and trust His plan. I like to think of work as my own personal mission field that God has called me to.

In this personal mission field there is a considerable difference in my day
when I pray for my co-workers, bosses/ managers, and the business itself. I
don’t mean a shallow prayer like “Lord help me not to strangle someone
today, Amen” as you are walking in the door to clock in. What I do mean is
taking the time each morning to pray to God for each person at my work. I
am amazed at the new way I look at the people who I spend more time with
then my family.

What my prayers used to consist of on my way to work were
statements like, “Lord help my attitude” or “Lord help me control my
tongue”. The prayers were always focused on me, I admit that I still
include these statements but I precede them with something that I believe
changed my outlook on my day and the way I looked at people. I never ever
before this past year even considered praying for my co-workers by name,
until I tried it. Instead of just faces and names, they became God’s
children, brothers and sisters in Christ.

God has called you and I to be like His son Jesus Christ, see 1 John 4:17.
If we are to be truly like Jesus and be a representative for Him while we
are working at our jobs we should do like He did. Jesus took the time to
pray for the people that He spent most of His time with from day to day. In
the gospels Jesus went away by himself and prayed, see Mark 1:35 and Luke
5:16. I have to assume one of His top priorities was praying for his
disciples. If He did why shouldn’t we?

When I share these thoughts with others they say to me “Well, of course we
should pray for people, it’s an essential!” I also know those same people,
just like me; need to be reminded of the essentials. At times work would
seem to be the enemy. Work is taking us away from our families, stressing
us out and very demanding. Those sound like very nasty characteristics.
Well to combat that, what does Matthew 5:44 say? Jesus Himself tells us
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Sounds harsh huh?

To call the people who employ us the enemy, well sometimes that’s how it
feels. When we add that verse to Philippians 2:3-5, which states “Don’t be
selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble,
thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t think only about your own
affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing.”

A whole new light is shed on praying for those people we work with and for.
I am challenging you to be different for Jesus. Let’s just accept that God
has called us to the jobs we have. He has us there for a reason. We may
never know what that reason is, much like the missionaries who are called to
other countries but we know that God is good and He is faithful. Read what
Philippians 1:6 says “And I am sure that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again.”

Let’s say the average age of a person is 77 and we retire at 62, God
willing, then we will spend on average 128,480 hours at a job. (That was
almost too hard to write!) Why not make the most of those hours and
remember our co-workers and bosses in prayer, its just one small step in
making our workplaces our own personal mission field.

Copyright 2005

Nate Coombs