Ambition & Your WorkSample

Is It Ok to Work to Make Money?

Today’s reading is from blogger J.B. Wood, a business executive who writes about the challenges of integrating his professional life and his spiritual life. Here, he explores whether making money in business can be a way of serving God.

“The problem I encountered as a young Christian was that I often detected a quiet disapproval coming from the church when it came to having an interest in pursuing a “secular” career. I felt a gnawing sense that any desire to earn a solid income was somehow the antithesis of spirituality, associated instead with selfishness, materialism and worldliness.

Growing up, the…church taught me that the only ambition God was truly pleased with was the passion for making disciples, missions, or leading others to Christ. So if you had a sincere spiritual desire to seek out God’s plan for your life, then by default your primary vocation was going to be a disciple-maker. Just like Jesus (the missionary Jesus, not the working-for-the-family-business carpenter Jesus).

But what if I am not “called” to that? What if my gifts, talents and personality are better suited for business pursuits? I struggled with this for years as I developed a career in management consulting.

Thankfully, scripture makes it clear that God applauds (not just allows) working to earn.

The Bible teaches about using money:

1. To meet your own personal need for support.
2. To care for the needs of your family.
3. To have enough to share with those in need and help meet the needs of the world.

Greed can be dangerous, but as High Calling blogger Larry Peabody has put it, ‘So can hammers, horses, and hot plates. Any of them can be properly used—or misused. The Bible warns us that wanting to get rich sets us up for a tumble into a snare. And it calls loving money “the root of all kinds of evil.” But with sound teaching and right hearts, believers can live by faith even as they earn their incomes and use the money in God-approved ways.’”

Video

Watch this short clip “Is your work a vocation?”