Working for God

Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.
Proverbs 16:3 ESV

Moonlighting is frowned upon

Committing sounds a lot like dedicating. Doing one thing for the sake of something else—for the cause of something else. Why does the Lord want us to commit our work to him? It seems important enough to get its own proverb—so “commit[ting] your work” can’t be an empty platitude or something that has no great significance outside of its symbolism. I think it has to mean something—it has to matter—when you commit something to the Lord.

And not just anything—your work.
“I am doing this for you God.” As opposed to what?
“I am doing this for myself,” I suppose.
How about, “I am doing this for my boss,” and I am obviously serving others and putting their needs before my own? Nope. God wants work committed only to him.

All-in with no backup plan

Let’s use the concept of marriage to illustrate this point. If I’m committed to my wife, that means I’m not committed to some other lady that’s not my wife. Makes sense. A successful marriage needs a dedicated husband—one who has decided to spend eternity with the love of his life. Make no mistake—it is a decision. I didn’t accidentally get committed to my wife. Christians don’t accidentally become committed to God. This means putting all my resources in one basket and having no contingency if things don’t work out. I’m not going to be mostly committed to God or mostly committed to my wife. I’m not going to have a side-God in my back pocket or a side-woman in my back pocket, either—you know, just in case things don’t work out. That is not commitment. That’s playing the spread, and Christians don’t do that.

“A successful marriage needs a dedicated husband—one who has decided to spend eternity with the love of his life.“

What sort of commitment does my wife expect from me? Loyalty. Same goes for God, and one way of showing it is through the work we do. We must be careful to not replace the LORD with family or money or success. God (aka the LORD) wants us to declare that we are in it FOR HIM—for the long haul. This won’t be a one-off. This should be our modus operandi from here on out. The way we work or operate is different from what we work or what we operate. Committing our work to the LORD separates how we work from what we do for work. This points towards the underlying principle behind work itself and why it it exists—but more specifically, it seems to indicate that the manner in which we conduct our work becomes its purpose.

God should be our reason for working

Purpose? Yes. It is why we work. We all work for different reasons. It could be for a paycheck or recognition or pleasing others or social status. If we’re lucky, we work because we want to. Most times we work because we have to—because if we don’t, we’ll end up on the street picking through trash cans to feed ourselves. Whatever reasons we originally gave that caused our work to have purpose in our lives—now that we have God in our lives—we must now make HIM the reason for why we work.

Why does God want to be the reason for why we work? He literally created us to do work. Genesis 1:28 says “be fruitful and multiply,” and working is the fruity part of that verse. When we work for God, we give glory to our creator by fulfilling his design for us. We exist to serve God and our work is an expression of our service to him in the truest sense. To work for myself is to take glory away from God and claim it as my own.

“Whatever reasons we originally gave that caused our work to have purpose in our lives—now that we have God in our lives—we must now make HIM the reason for why we work.“

So now we know that we work to glorify God. It would also be good to know that glorifying God is to give honor to him. It’s a form of praise which is a part of worship. It would seem to me that when we commit our work to the LORD, we are worshiping him. That’s cool. Super cool, actually. So, the first part of this proverb is basically telling us to worship God.

A plan that comes together

The second part of this proverb says that after we do the first part, our “plans will be established.” What might those plans be? Maybe this is a reference to work plans? If I plan on finishing a project at work by a certain time or leaving for the day a little early, those plans will be established? So what does establish mean? When I establish something, it means I set something up to remain a certain way, indefinitely. Solidified, like a good habit. No questioning if something will turn out as planned, just count on it because a strong foundation has been laid.

If a plan has been instituted to succeed, then it is a plan that has been set in motion to a pre-known destination. The outcome is already known to be favorable. When something is established, it basically means we are expecting the last domino to fall into place from the moment the first domino was tipped. Everyone loves it when a plan comes together—but this proverb makes it sound like the plan will always come together. That is absolutely true if my plan and God’s plan are the same. That is what happens when the work we do is committed to the LORD.

“When something is established, it basically means we are expecting the last domino to fall into place from the moment the first domino was tipped.“

You know what else? This proverb doesn’t actually say my work plans will be established. It says my plans. So that can be any plan that makes the work I do honor, worship, and glorify God. If I commit my work to the LORD, my plans will come together—alluding to the fact that even though everything is a part of God’s plan, it’s especially true when I am working for God. If I make God’s plan my plan, then the worship that directly results from committing my work to the LORD glorifies him because of its fruitfulness. This is the type of fruit God loves.

Trust the Planner

James 4:13-15 illustrates man’s inability to actually know what God’s plan is. So, in order to avoid sounding like a nut job preaching some sort of prosperity gospel, I need to make it clear that it is impossible to actually know what God is planning day-to-day. The only way to actually make God’s plan my plan is to truly trust God for any outcome. Wholehearted trust in an unknown plan becomes genuine praise for the planner himself. This is the way a child should view their father, knowing their father is looking out for them and keeping them safe.

“This is the way a child should view their father, knowing their father is looking out for them and keeping them safe.“