Work Brings Profit by Yeap Chee Seng, Guest Writer Monday, May 20, 2008

23 Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!
Proverbs 14:23 (NLT)

I suspect this is the least popular topic among Christians. Many of us want to avoid work as much as possible. Some may even see work as a curse, a result of Adam’s sin. One of the reasons many of us want to get rich is because we want to be free from work. In this article, we shall study in depth the role of work in our lives and attempt to benefit from it.

The first question, is work a curse? Let us look at the beginning of work.

27 So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
Genesis 1:27-28(NLT)

The moment after God created man, He gave him works to do. Adam’s jobs were:

1. Be fruitful and multiply.
2. Fill the earth and govern it.
3. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground

This tells us that work is a part of our design. We are designed to work. Adam’s job was to reproduce and govern over the whole earth. So, work was not a result of sin. Work is a creation of God to be a part of us.

“Can’t I choose not to work if I get rich enough?”

Of course you can. However if you look at the super rich people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, they are still working. Why is that so? Are they greedy? Will they go broke the moment they stop working? No, they work because they want to. Work is a part of our design. This means work is a part of the equation for living a fulfilled life.

We may be happy to go for holidays, do nothing other than having fun. However, when it become a daily routine for months, we will lose our initial joy and feel like missing something. That “something” is work, specifically productive work.

The term “work” is not just limited to things we do to earn money. If you are retired, your “work” can be helping out in your church or charity organization in distributing food, talking to people or any things you are capable of. If you have attained wealth so great that you don’t need your job anymore, your new work can be in the form of looking for people or organizations to give to. The bottom line is our works must help people in some ways. Only then we can profit from it.

In the above verse, God is telling us that our work will bring us profits. If you are really interested in becoming rich, start working. Please note that God did not specify what type of works. This means any legitimate work that creates value for the society can bring us profit. It does not matter that the job does not appear to have good prospect. As long as you are working wholeheartedly on it, God will ensure your prosperity. I don’t know how he is going to do it. I only know he will because he never breaks his promises.

If you happen to have lost your job. God wants you to keep believing in him. He will provide you with the job you like. In the meantime, God wants you to take on any legitimate job you can find. It does not matter how bad the pay is and how lacking in prospect. Trust in God. As long as you are doing your part in doing this job wholeheartedly as though you are doing for the glory of God, God will do his part to send you prosperity.

The second part of the verse tells us that mere talk leads to poverty. There is nothing wrong with talking about what we want to do but we have to make sure that we do the things we talk about. Otherwise, we will never be rich.

In conclusion, we need to focus on doing our jobs well for the riches of God to flow into our lives. Our prosperity is dependent on the integrity of God and not on the nature of our natural jobs. Make sure you start doing what you talk about.

Yeap Chee Seng has a very popular Weblog here

The Auction (Friday, April 25, 2008)

THE AUCTION

The upstate NY man was rich in almost every way. His estate was worth millions. He owned houses, land, antiques and cattle. But though on the outside he had it all, he was very unhappy on the inside. His wife was growing old, and the couple was childless. He had always wanted a little boy to carry on the family legacy.

Miraculously, his wife became pregnant in her later years, and she gave birth to a little boy. The boy was severely handicapped, but the man loved him with his whole heart. When the boy was five, his mom died. The dad drew closer to his special son. At age 13, the boys’s birth defects cost him his life and the father died soon after from a broken heart.

The estate was auctioned before hundreds of bidders. The first item offered was a painting of the the boy. No one bid. They waited like vultures for the riches. Finally, the poor housemaid, who helped raise the boy, offered $5 for the picture and easily took the bid. To every-one’s shock, the auctioneer ripped a hand written will from the back of the picture. This is what it said: “To the person who thinks enough of my son to buy this painting, to this person I give my entire estate.”

The auction was over. The greedy crowd walked away in shock and dismay.

How many of us have sought after what we thought were true riches only to find out later that our Father was prepared to give us His entire estate if we had only sought after His Son alone?