How to Make the Insignificant Significant (Col. 3:22-24)

Aug 17 2022 - Eric Buresh

The way we think as human beings cracks me up. I mainly laugh at myself. But it is also fair to say that after I notice my own comically wrong thinking (or, more accurately, the Holy Spirit shows it to me), I can usually spot the herd I was following. It makes sense. After all, God created every one of us with the same basic desire for meaning, purpose, significance, and satisfaction, and He presents every one of us with the same basic question – how you will seek to satisfy those desires. The herd attempts the same schemes over and over with each new generation believing they have found something new. The herd relies heavily on self-affirming group-speak designed to assuage the emptiness that pervades. The Christ-follower, in contrast, finds Christ as the all-powerful engine of significance that sits at the very center of every area of their life, taking the mundane and trivial and creating from it the monumental and glorious.

Let’s consider an example. Nowadays, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I refer to what I do as my “job.” For too long, I thought of it as my “career.” There is nothing inherently wrong in this word-choice, but the difference between a job and a career was significant in my heart’s posture. And I am not alone. I followed the herd in this area and according to herd nomenclature, a job is disparaged as “a task or duty performed by a person for getting a salary or wages.” A career, on the other hand, “refers to an occupation carried on by a person for his or her entire life to achieve goals such as greater responsibility.” I, like many, believed I was supposed to chase a career. I wanted to achieve goals. I wanted greater responsibility. I wanted to be significant. It sure looked to me like there was a fountain that would satisfy all these desires if I just ran fast enough after my “career.” So, I put on my blinders, joined the herd, and ran as hard as I could. Unsurprisingly, what I found ultimately was a dead end; me and a bunch of other disgruntled fellow herd members regretting lost time and looking to cut back on their “careers'' to provide time for “more meaningful pursuits.” The promise of the herd was unfaithful yet again.

Thankfully, Christ is always faithful. When I gave up pursuing a career as a source of meaning, significance, and satisfaction, I surrendered my “job” to Christ and, as I should have known, I found exactly what I had been seeking. I’m not serving myself anymore. I’m not worshiping myself and my own goals. I “serve the Lord Christ.” Col. 3:24. I can now see the true significance of my work. God brought together a billion little details across the span of time “according to the counsel of His will” to create in me exactly the person He wants me to be and then He put me exactly where He wanted me to be, at exactly the time He wanted me to be there, to do exactly what He wanted me to do with the testimony He wanted me to have. He has monumental and glorious purposes for me in my “job.” His plans transcend my own. I trust His good plans, and I find my satisfaction in knowing that I am fulfilling His majestic purposes simply by dependent and joy-filled obedience that testifies of my Savior right where He placed me. I no longer strive “with eyeservice, as [a] man-pleaser, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever [I] do, [I] do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord [I] will receive the reward of the inheritance.” Col. 3:22-24.

I greatly enjoy the beautifully expressive language of the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon. In one of his many sermons, Spurgeon described the glorious importance of joyful and faithful labor so I will end this post with Spurgeon’s description of serving Christ in our “jobs:”

[The faithful worker] does not preach vocally, but his life is a powerful sermon. He is a standing evidence of the power of religion, an argument which logic cannot overthrow, nor the most cunning sophistry confute. Holy living preaches where the minister cannot enter, it preaches from the nursery to a worldly mother, from the shop to a graceless tradesman, from the workroom to a godless employer. Where [preacher’s] words are denied a hearing, your lives will nevertheless win attention. 

The true way to serve the Lord in the common acts of life is to perform them as unto Himself. God forbid we should maintain, as some do, a broad, unbending distinction between things secular and religious. To a man who lives unto God nothing is secular, everything is sacred. He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him: he sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament; he goes forth to his labor, and therein exercises the office of the priesthood: his breath is incense and his life a sacrifice. He sleeps on the bosom of God, and lives and moves in the divine presence. The sacred has absorbed the secular, the overarching temple of the Lord covers all your houses and your fields.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, November 29, 1874, Metropolitan Tabernacle