Will Work for Jesus

I am self-employed, except I am not.

I left behind salaried work last year. Becoming self-employed means decoupling yourself and your finances from a single, repeatable, steady paycheck. The temptation is to become fixated on billable work, and to be ever calculating how much income can be earned in the current month. The concern is not wrong. Our work needs to deliver value, and income is the point of a business. But giving into the temptation to inordinately focus on the income creates needless mental churn and gets in the way of doing the work imaginatively and joyfully, and therefore well.

Two things helped me. Two notions or teachings have given me peace in self-employment and the nature of its cash flow. One was a gift of the Holy Spirit and one came from scripture (which means it also ultimately was a gift of the Holy Spirit).

Here is the first:

Last summer, on a family vacation to New Hampshire, we swam near a small private dock close to the house where we were staying. It was quiet and beautiful. Once when I swam far out from the dock, my mind no doubt full of all the changes I was making to my livelihood and my work, I felt the sudden confidence of a thought placed in my mind: “God will decide how much money you make.”

That’s it. The abrupt reminder of how much he is in control gave me peace.

In no way did I remain at peace thereafter, about money or anything else. We are anxious beings; I am particularly so. But that simple memory remains with me, and I can remind myself of this principle and bring myself nearer to the certainty of it whenever I need this anchor.

(I will illustrate this post with a photo of that dock. One of my favorite places in the world. God was out in the water.)

The second point that helped my peace is a teaching from scripture:

Don’t work for what perishes. Work for what is eternal instead.

This comes from (among other places) John chapter 6. Though I have pored over Jesus’ words in John 6, this statement from that chapter recently landed with me more poignantly than ever before:

“Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you....” —John 6:27

“Food that perishes.” When I become focused on money, I am thinking about food, meaning groceries, but I also think about far more than this. In addition to providing sustenance, money is a bulwark against calamity; a wellspring for luxuries; a status marker relative to others; a means of my measuring my sense of value. Groceries perish, but at least they give the strength and health to live and do good work. All those other uses of money wither much faster! None of them answers the worry, avarice, or insecurity I seek to satisfy with them. In fact, the money responds to these conditions of the heart so temporarily that it makes each one of them even worse.

But if instead I work for Jesus, everything aligns. I am self-employed, except I am not. Jesus is my boss. More than that, Christ—the living and active creator of the world—is my co-laborer in the purposes and relationships he has given me to serve. The income is not the point, and I needed God to give me the clear and confident reminder that the income is his prerogative and his decision, so I could turn my attention more completely to the actual point. The point is the work, but more than this. The point is the service, but more than this. The point is Jesus Christ, and his presence to be found in the work. The point is the Lord, the way he made me, the work he has prepared for me and crafted me to do, and his joy in doing the work with me and through me.

The line from the movie Chariots of Fire remains perhaps the very best concise description of finding God in our pursuit of the way that God made us. The main character, Olympic runner Eric Liddell, says in the film, “When I run, I feel his pleasure.” Where do I feel the Lord’s pleasure?

To work for perishing food alone is to work for death. All we have at the end of the effort is that which has perished, which is going or gone, which falls between our fingers.

But to work for the food that lasts is to have life, and an experience in this world of some fractional sense of the life eternal. Meanwhile, the groceries do come, and where I have the feel of doing the work God has given me, I care less about money’s other fleeting uses beyond this.

Jesus provides a line of teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that I think we assume to be abstract or aspirational, but as I go, I increasingly believe it to be concrete and practical. He is speaking of the concerns about what we will eat or what we will wear. He says:

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” —Matthew 6:33

I do imagine the response, Easy for you to say.

That is, I imagine someone reading this post saying: You know what work you do, you know what you are good at, you have managed to find the work people will pay you for and the people who will pay you. Not everyone has this!

True. Though the nature of the struggle varies, work and employment are areas of struggle for nearly everyone.

I respond to the imagined reaction this way:

The points I am offering here are not, in fact, easy for me to say. I am not a very strong or faithful follower of Christ. There is no principle I have offered here, on which I have found peace, that I am not apt to throw away in the future in the face of some coming failure or reversal that incites my fear or tramples on some aspect of my pride. I can imagine a future version of me who will scoff at the ideas I have offered here and resist them as fully as the italicized paragraph above.

But when that happens, I believe I will find my way back. Not because I am so wise, nor good, but instead because he has reached out to make the simple truth known.

I need to have stated to me the simple, obvious point he gave me in the water.

You might not need things presented so simply. I hope he gives you the way to joy in the terms that are clear to you.

Ask him for this.