Work and Prayer

This post by Neil Womack is the second post in a series on the doctrine of work. See the first post: We Are Made to Work.

Our work is meant for the flourishing of creation and the development of the latent possibilities in our world.  We wake up every morning and go through our routine in order to prepare for the day’s demands. We probably feel confident that we have the necessary skills and experience to meet those demands and, if not, we may ask God to help us with a specific task or burden. “God please help me today with (insert project/person/need here).” Prayer for our jobs in this regard is not unfamiliar to us I will assume (the prayer requests on Sundays say as much), but I am not saying that these prayers are wrong or insignificant. What I want to explore in this post is simply this: should we be praying for more?

This is a blog post and not a book (there are plenty of books and I suggest we read all of them), so I will not call forth a waterfall where a stream will do. Safe to say, I have had a weak view of work since I can remember. Work was what you did when you got out of school and parents stopped paying for your gas and groceries. Work was what gave you freedom – you could spend your “hard earned” money how you wanted to. I think of a scene in “Kicking and Screaming” with Will Farrell where he looks at the little kid playing soccer and says, “I can eat a box of cookies for dinner if I want.  Can you do that?  No, ‘cause you’re a fart-faced kid.” That’s the kind of liberty I craved!  Work was a necessary evil to be endured in order to have fun. 

Over the last year I have come in contact with a vision of humanity’s purpose in scripture that has changed my opinion of work. In the post We Are Made to Work, Brandon mentioned that men and women were created to co-operate with God in His working and that our identities are image-bearers of God, the Great Worker, necessitate that we work. I want to speak about prayer in light of those truths.

 

Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and refuted the Pharisees by saying that he worked because his Father is “working until now” (John 5.17). In Genesis 2.2 where it says that God “finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” it is not signifying there that God just sat down and did not interact with his creation any more—it doesn’t take more than a few glances in the Old Testament to disprove that notion. God “rested” in the sense that He had established the earth and all that was in it or would be brought out of it.  Nothing new has truly been “created” since God “rested” here. All we do now is mold, shape and bring out the potential of the creation, but it is still God who is working through us to bring these things about (Is. 28.24-26, Phil 2.13). All of the advanced technology that we enjoy is simply man using natural materials (or synthetic, which is just moving already-created atoms around to form plastics) to make other natural materials do things.

A further reading of Genesis 2 will show mankind in his unfallen form. Genesis 2.5 has an interesting little phrase that I think gives a lot of insight: “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.”  What this is basically saying is that God had not caused vegetation to sprout because He had not created man yet to grow the vegetation. This is remarkable. It shows the beautiful marriage between God’s work and man’s work.  Man was created to bring about the growth that God provides (Gen 2.15, 1 Cor 3.6). Later in Genesis 2, notice the ordering of the events—it is only after God places man in the Garden that “he made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and is good for food” (2.8-9). 

Human work is a cooperative experience with God and with others (Gen 2.18) and therefore should be laden with activity and prayer.  Humanity’s efforts after the fall are broken to be sure, but that does not mean that God has forsaken His original purpose to work through mankind to cultivate the earth and the raw material that He placed there. Notice how even Cain, the brother-slayer, is not forsaken. We see that from his line comes many cultural achievements that are in themselves “good”—city building, husbandry, music, and metallurgy.  Remember that it is not the creation itself that is inherently evil, but that it can be and is taken by sinful man in evil directions. By casting Cain out and having him wander, God is ultimately pushing humanity to fulfill his initial mandate—“to fill and subdue the earth” (Gen 1.28). 

The definitive display of God’s faithfulness to his creation is Christ and the cross. God loves the creation and will have it redeemed, even when it takes the cross in order to redeem a people who will now fully carry out the original design for humanity. This is where we find ourselves—back in right standing with our Creator and the Great Worker who is not yet finished with His creation. He has called to Himself a people who are now under the Final and True Adam, who are now to carry out the original purpose of working the creation in the power of the Spirit.  Look at the way Paul tells those in Ephesus to live now that they are redeemed:

“Put off the old self (also translated “man”) which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self (again “man”), created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”

 (Eph 4.22-24).

Notice the last bit—put on the new man created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.  Sound like anyone you've read about in Genesis 1 and 2? That’s why the Bible uses phrases like “redeem,” “restore,” “renewal” to describe the work of Christ—He is bringing us back to what we were meant to always be, back to full humanity. But this return to our complete humanity is not merely a return to the original Eden. 

Growing up I thought that when God re-created the earth it was just going to be a time machine to take us back to pre-sin Eden where we would grow and garden with a reversal of the technological advances that sinful man had created. But the language of the Bible is, at least for the contemporary readers of the times, “modern.” The terminology is relatable to the people—it talks about cities, streets, mansions, etc.  I am not saying that all the things that are present in the world today (or yesterday or in 1000 years) will be exactly, or at all, like we see them.  I am saying that technology is not an evil thing, but it has been taken in many directionally evil ways. Everything will pass through the fire of God’s judgment and will come out pure—some things will be altered and some consumed altogether.

We are not left to our own to hope and guess what will be purified and what will be destroyed. God has not left us to ourselves, but instead has given us the Spirit and prayer. How often do we beg God to use our time and efforts at work in ways that build his kingdom? Do we simply pray for opportunities to speak the gospel (a critical component of everything that God is doing in the world) yet do not pray that God works His good design in the material world through us? Jesus told us to pray, “Let your will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.” God is not simply keeping us for heaven when he sustains us each night and gives us breath each day, for if He was, why not take breath away?!

We are called to work during this time, and I think the parable of the ten minas (Luke 19.11-27) is good evidence of this truth.  In the parable, with a prelude that gives the impression Jesus told it to dispel rumors that the Kingdom of God would appear “immediately,” a king gives his servants ten minas and tells them to “engage in business until I come.” The parable then proceeds to explain the rewards for those who used the minas for gain, to the honor and riches of the King, and the punishments for those who squandered the minas/rejected the King entirely. Just as with any parable, there are multiple layers and meanings (although some are more in line with the truth than others), and this one is no different. The one layer that I want to expose is simply that there is an expectation of work and improvement until the King returns “having received the kingdom.”

Pray that God would open your eyes through the Spirit to see why He has you in the particular situation you are in—not just in the sense of the people around you that need to hear about Jesus, but what your work can be doing to make Christ and His blessings flow “far as the curse is found.” If you are a lawyer, how can you be instilling and executing justice for the oppressed? If you are an accountant, how can you help your clients be good stewards of their money, thereby helping them promote further good in the world by their work? If you are a customer service representative, how can your interactions with disgruntled customers fulfill the social and communal designs of our Creator? Ultimately, it is the Creative Spirit that uses the skill that God put inside of you (Ex. 28.3) to bring about the good designs of God through our labors (Hag 2.4-9). That being said, we should not deprive our work of prayer and petition.  Ask for leadership from the Spirit (Neh 7.5, Mark 1.12, Acts 8.29, Acts 11.12…actually just the entire book of Acts), and trust the written Word that says the Spirit “dwells in you” (Rom 8.11).  I think sometimes we can alternate between the two extremes of mysticism and deism where we either think that it’s all a matter of doing the right “spiritual” things to make God work, or we think that it’s all up to us and God is waiting at the finish line. Like most things, the truth falls in the middle—we are to work with all our might, as if working for the Lord (Col 3.23); but we also work knowing that it is God who is at work in us (Phil 2.13).