Scattered ServantsÀpẹrẹ

Your Everyday, Ordinary Life  

“So, here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” (Romans 12:1 The Message)

Take your everyday, ordinary life and live it generously, radically, expansively, creatively, courageously, compassionately, redemptively. Live it gloriously. Live in His story. Live out your story. Live, knowing that God is with you, He’s for you, and He is in you. 

God ordains your ordinary. Yet there remains a tendency to separate the miraculous from menial. When that happens, our life at work becomes divorced from our faith. This is dangerous because when we fail to see the story of God at work, we miss the opportunity to partner with God at work and other commonplace contexts. We begin dividing work into sacred and secular: jobs that release the kingdom and jobs that resist the kingdom; the important and irrelevant; regular employment and kingdom assignment.

God invites us to rethink everything we are and everything we do through the lens of mercy. The vision of expansive grace infiltrates our everyday story. Gripped by mercy, we slowly understand that God’s mercy is everywhere, for everyone. Gradually, instead of colliding, our faith and work connect. Instead of wrestling with the dilemma of quitting our jobs to pursue kingdom ministry, we realize that our job is kingdom ministry.

A couple of years ago, large numbers of people in our community came to faith. Many came as a result of catalytic evangelists who spent their time on the streets helping people say yes to God. Initially everyone applauded and soon they wanted to be involved too.

What ensued was a wonderful reorienting of lives “beyond ourselves,” but the subtle shift that accompanied this was not healthy or helpful at all. People began to believe that the real work of the kingdom was only happening in the streets. It wasn’t long before some began questioning the relevance and significance of their lives at work. It felt mundane rather than meaningful. After all, “nobody ever tells stories from stages of spreadsheets  … of cleaning  … of work done well.” (Neil Hudson Imagine Church: Releasing Whole Life Disciples)

Scattered servants are not stolen from the workplace. They are sent to the workplace. The kingdom is not an escape from real work; it is an engagement with real work. Kingdom carriers are jewelers and gardeners, carpenters and bricklayers, shopkeepers and engineers, lawyers and doctors, architects and designers. 

If we are to fulfill our mandate of bringing life to everything everywhere, we must see our involvement in institutions and industries and workplaces as kingdom work. We must reject the idea that kingdom work happens mainly in services, on stages, or on street corners and respond to God’s invitation to join Him in His work of reshaping the world in ordinary places like shopping centers, farms, factories, and offices.