Coram Deo ~

Looking at contemporary culture from a Christian worldview

God Loves Your Work: Discover Why He Sends You to Do What You Do by Larry Peabody

God Loves Your Work: Discover Why He Sends You to Do What You Do by Larry Peabody. Wipf and Stock Publishers. 194 pages. 2022
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This helpful book is written by Larry Peabody, who for the past eight years has taught classes through the Bakke Graduate University on what God has revealed about our work. The book helps the reader to begin to build a biblical foundation for the work you do between Sundays and helps you to discover a whole new level of motivation for whatever it is you do.
At the end of each of the relatively brief chapters, the author includes a helpful “Discussion” section with questions that make this a good book to read and discuss with others. In addition, at the end of each chapter is a “For more” notation that offers a reading suggestion that will provide further material on the subject.
Throughout the book, the author gives us many reasons for Christians to get up and go to work. He tells us that the discovery that God has many purposes for sending us to work makes getting up and going to work a great deal easier. Among the many subjects that the author addresses in the book are that from the beginning of the Bible we see that God reveals himself to be a worker, work carries honor and dignity, seeing your work as an offering, resting from our work, workaholism, calling, serving as God’s property manager, shining God’s light in our workplaces, the blessing of work, work as a way to obey God, the so called “sacred-secular divide”, workplace ethics, money, and providing for others.
This is an easy-to-read helpful introduction to the value of our work and how to integrate our faith with our work, no matter what that work is.
Below are 10 of my favorite quotes from the book:

  • All legitimate work, whether with hands or head, paid or unpaid, carries honor and dignity.
  • God will use our work to form us spiritually.
  • Work blesses those who do it. And they in turn bless others through their work.
  • For most people, the perception of God’s calling comes through a growing understanding of who and where they are.
  • Our primary reason for getting up and going to work—paid or unpaid—will be to obey him.
  • Neither in the Old Testament nor the New Testament does Scripture even suggest that some work is “secular” in the sense that it has little or no significance to God.
  • Only if Christians see their work as carrying God’s agenda will they see the kingdom importance of what they do and the way they do it.
  • Have you ever thought of your ordinary, daily work as an offering? As an activity that can be offered in worship God gladly accepts?
  • Obsessive workaholism turns work into an idol.
  • Sin robbed joy from work.