Prayers for Workers: Joy When Your Work is Fruitful
God’s grace is at work in you today as you do your work. Can you see it?
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Leadership Prayers: Psalm 142
There are times in leadership when we find ourselves isolated. Sometimes we find ourselves there of our own making. We’ve had to make some hard decisions with which everyone else strongly disagrees, and we feel alone. Sometimes it’s the result of others’ actions. We find ourselves marginalized politically or even have our organization “right-sized” out of existence. Where once we had colleagues and superiors who supported us, we now find ourselves isolated. As the Psalmist prays in today’s text: “Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life.”
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Prayers for Workers:
When People are Attacking You
God’s grace is rich beyond measure. God’s grace is there for you in every circumstance. God’s grace is there for you right now.
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Prayers for Workers: Serve the Lord of All
By your grace, Lord, may I serve you with reverent fear in all that I do, whether I work for compensation or as a volunteer, whether I’m a CEO or a brand new intern, no matter my position or salary, my fame or obscurity.
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Leadership Prayers: Psalm 141
I have spent much of my working life trying to develop “covenantal” business relationships. The word “covenantal” implies a focus not merely on the economic transactions of the relationship, but on the well-being of the other person or institution. While there is considerable interest today in forming strategic business partnerships, those partnerships are usually dominated by, if not exclusively concerned with, matters of business self-interest. But what if self-interest were supplanted by—or at least augmented with—a real interest in the common good made possible by the relationship? One such relationship that I experienced started well. Our business counterparts shared many of the same strategic interests and cultural values as our company did. We built a mutual business relationship rooted in figuring out what made business sense not only for ourselves but for the other. But, over time, things changed. For a variety of reasons, our business partners began to treat the relationship like any other. From their end, the business relationship had devolved from a covenantal one to a transaction-oriented one. We were faced with the question: How should we respond?
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Prayers for Workers: A Prayer for Fruitfulness
A Note from Mark:
If you’ve been reading Life for Leaders for a while, you know that Friday devotions are usually drawn from the Psalms. In fact, last week I just completed one whole lap of the Psalms, drawing my inspiration from Psalm 150.
Today I want to start something a bit different. For a while, Friday devotions will still be based on the Psalms, but the format will be new. Rather than reflecting and then praying, I want to share a prayer right up front. This prayer will be explicitly connected to work, both paid and unpaid. My intention is that this approach to the Psalms will help you to pray in the context of your own work, whether you labor in a kiosk or a kitchen, a shop or a studio, a field or a factory, a boardroom or a bodega, a classroom or a church.
My hope is that this series of prayers based on the Psalms will help you go deeper in your workplace discipleship. May you discover God’s presence right where you work and find new freedom to offer all that you are to God in workplace worship.
Where Are Those Green Pastures?
When I travelled to Israel some years ago I went looking for the green pastures (and the girls with bonnets) that I envisioned from the Christian bookstore posters I had seen growing up. But the time of year that I went to Israel was quite dry, as it often is, so the wilderness was rocky and arid. I had to be reminded that the work of a shepherd was most often not an easy one. Not only did he (or she) have to fight off wild animals looking to feed on the sheep, but the topography of the land might not be advantageous to easily keeping them alive. A good shepherd not only had the heart to provide abundant pastures to feed on, he had the skills to find enough food to keep the sheep alive. God is portrayed in Psalm 23 as a generous shepherd whose sheep have had their fill to eat. They can lie down because they’re full. They’re resting because they’ve feasted abundantly on what the shepherd provided.
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Life Without Lack
Believing that God offers a life that lacks nothing might be theologically simple for some, but for everybody there comes a time when our daily lives clearly don’t feel like a life of abundance. We get a cancer diagnosis. We lose our sobriety. The investment doesn’t work out. A relationship sours. Depression comes back. Our leadership is criticized. A rumor spreads. An unjust rule hinders us. When life seems to crumble, where is this “life without lack” that Psalm 23 offers?
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Great Reasons to Praise God
Each week millions of Christians throughout the world gather together in order to offer praise to God. Moreover, we praise God in our private devotions and, in many cases, throughout the day as we celebrate God’s goodness to us. I figure that I have spent almost a half year of my waking life speaking or singing praise to God.
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Being Present
God is a present help to the downtrodden, the broken-hearted, and even to those of us who are in discomfort. Often our troubles make us feel isolated, and sometimes the only remedy is the power of God’s presence. Even if he doesn’t do anything, we were built with an internal longing for God’s nearness unto us.
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Leadership Prayers: Psalm 140
There are different kinds of enemies and different sorts of violence they seek to perpetrate. In the world of work and leadership, there are personal and impersonal enemies. As an example of the former, some people see others as obstacles in their ascent to or retention of power, and therefore seek to undermine the others’ roles and work. As an example of the latter, market forces can create competitive situations where one organization effectively seeks to destroy another in the quest for customers and market share.
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Worship and Justice
God’s justice includes more than punishment of the wicked. It also includes treating people rightly, caring for the poor, and seeking freedom for the oppressed. Remember the call of God through the prophet Micah. What God requires of us is “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Worship in prayer and song must be matched by worship in justice and mercy.
Read ArticlePraising God Playfully
I often write about how we can worship God through our daily work. This dimension of worship has been ignored in many of our Christian communities and deserves plenty of attention. But, today I’m impressed by the possibility of play that praises God. Surely we glorify God when we use our abilities to do good work. But we were also made to play, to run and jump, to dance, and to laugh. We too can glorify God when we play, delighting in his creation, offering ourselves to him in all that we do, in work and in rest, in prayer and in play.
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Leadership Prayers: Psalm 139
The Hubble Telescope is an extraordinary invention. With it, we can see from unimaginable distances some of the farthest reaches of the universe; and simultaneously we can look back in time to see stars and galaxies as they were thousands and even millions of years ago. Perhaps the Hubble serves as a useful analogy for God’s ability to see from far away what is going on in our lives, and to look back through our personal history even to our formation in the womb. But, unlike the Hubble, which passively gathers information from a long time ago and from galaxies far away, Psalm 139 reminds us that God knows each of us personally. Extraordinarily, God sees, not from a vast distance, but up close and in person.
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God’s Blessing and Human Work
So, as we celebrate God’s provision of wheat and other natural blessings, we also remember and celebrate God’s choice to provide through our work. What we do matters, not only for ourselves, but also for others who are beneficiaries of our efforts.
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