Coram Deo ~

One of my favorite new books is Scott Sauls’ Irresistible Faith: Becoming the Kind of Christian The World Can’t Resist.  You can read my review of the book here.   
Scott writes that Christians operating with a sense of joy, purpose, and mission in their work are integral components of irresistible faith. Here are 13 great quotes on work from the book:

• Because Christ worked tirelessly and joyfully for our rescue, restoration, and renewal through his life, death, burial, and resurrection, we now have the greatest reason to work toward the rescuing, restoring, and renewing of God’s world.
• It is important for Christians especially, to view work as central and not peripheral to our humanity, and especially to our life in Christ.
• It is no small thing that when God identified work as essential to the human experience, he did so before the fall and the curse happened, not after.
• Work, all productive activity apart from rest and play, contributes to our fulfillment as God’s image-bearers. It is one of the primary ways we have been invited by God to participate in his mission to redeem, restore, and develop the world.
• Because we bear God’s image, work is necessary for our flourishing and also for the fulfillment of our calling as God’s workers in God’s world.
• What if, in the spirit of Scripture’s vision for the integration of faith and work, Christians became known as the bosses everyone wants to work for, the colleagues everyone wants to work alongside, and the employees everyone wants to hire (Ephesians 6:5–9)?
• We cannot and will not fully flourish unless we become personally invested in the universal Christian job description—to use our time, energy, imagination, and resources to leave God’s world better than we found it.
• We are wired to mirror God through creation and restoration, and in so doing to leave people, places, and things better than we found them.
• It is essential to see that every kind of work that creates something new or enhances something broken or lacking is glorious because of how it intersects with God’s ongoing creative mission in the world.
• Any kind of work that leaves people, places, or things in better shape than before—any kind of work that helps the city of man become more like the City of God where truth, beauty, goodness, order, and justice reign—is work that should be celebrated as good.
• Every vocation is a calling from God to nudge the Garden toward becoming an irresistible, life-giving City that we have been made to inhabit.
• As the image of God, every time we participate in work that creates and restores, we also participate in God’s work of leaving people, places, and things better.
• In the gospel, just as every person is equal in significance to other people, so every vocation is equal in significance to other vocations.