Do you wonder if your job matters to God?

Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide

Bleach and Ammonia

Milk and Red Bull

Grapefruit Juice and Medicine

These things just never seem to go together. On their own, they are both excellent, but mixing them together it's a tough sell. For years, this was kind of how I viewed my job in the marketplace and my Christian faith – just keep them separate.

I was, on the one hand, with my work, focused on my next promotion and the bigger office. And my faith was, well, more of a Sunday thing, sprinkled in with a Tuesday night small group thing, and maybe a prayer with the kids at night thing. And, for me to "integrate," my Christian faith was reduced to… "just being a good person at work." It certainly wasn't inviting God into my meetings or going to him on the decisions for my next marketing campaign, and the idea of sharing the Good News of Jesus with a coworker was never on my radar. Simply stated, my faith was in one compartment, and my work was in a totally separate compartment.

I'm not sure if I decided this consciously or if this was just the stream of culture, but I had no idea what integrating my faith with my life at work meant for years.

We spend so much time at work. The average person will spend 88,000 hours at work during their lifetime, which is overwhelming compared to the 8,000 spent at church. From this perspective, people spend ten times as much time at work as they do on spiritual pursuits. If we are not living out our faith at work, we are not really living out our faith.

However, this would only be a problem if the church was the only place that God could be found. God's presence and plan are everywhere; we can be devoted to Him and follow His will no matter where we are. In our culture, the motto for work seems to be performance at any cost. Cultural perspective sees the purpose of work as making money. But God calls Christians to a different perspective on work; we are called to do everything we do for the glory of God in service to others – including our work.

When we rethink how we think about work and see it from God's perspective, we understand what work is really all about. Discovering God's purpose for your work will transform your leadership and change the way you work forever. Your job is as much about your connection with God as the volunteer work you might do on Sundays. You are already God's employee and can serve Him every day at your workplace—no matter where that is or what you are doing.

We can use work's day-to-day demands and frustrations as opportunities to show God's work in our lives and make a difference. You don't need to be in ministry to do God's work; your everyday work already is God's work.

So, if you ever wonder if your job matters to God? The answer is: yes, it matters!