You’re reading ACTS: LESSONS IN FAITH, by Eric Elder, featuring thirty inspiring devotionals based on the lives of the very first followers of Christ. Also available in paperback and eBook formats in our bookstore for a donation of any size!

Scripture Reading: Acts 18

A friend once asked me, “Do you think God wants everyone to quit their job and go into full-time ministry?”

I thought it was a great question, because the answer can affect your view of ministry―and of work in general.

First, there’s no doubt that God wants more people to go into full-time ministry.  When Jesus was going from town to town, preaching and healing people, the Bible says “when He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field’ ” (Matthew 9:36-38).

Jesus saw the overwhelming needs of the world and asked His disciples to pray for more workers.  Many of those disciples themselves had heard Jesus’ call to “Follow Me,” something which often required them to leave their profession, whether fishermen or tax collectors.

On the other hand, God has created, gifted and skilled each of us to to do meaningful work, whether it’s in full-time ministry or not.  Work is a blessing from God, not a curse as some people think.  Even before the first man sinned, the Bible says that God put him in the Garden of Eden with a specific task in mind:

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15).  

Of course, after Adam sinned, God did tell him that from then on his work would be very hard, with much sweat and toil (see Genesis 3:17-19).  But the work itself was not a curse.  God wanted Adam to work the land from the very beginning and to eat the fruit that came from it.

The Apostle Paul seems to have grasped both of these aspects of work.  He applied himself to both jobs God had called and gifted him to do:  at times doing the spiritual work of preaching and encouraging people in their relationship with Christ, and at times doing the practical work of making tents, a profession that met his own needs and the needs of those around him. In Acts chapter 18, we read that Paul went to the city of Corinth for a year and a half, staying with some fellow tentmakers there named Aquila and Priscilla:

“Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks” (Acts 18:1-4). 

Even though Paul was free to earn his living from his preaching (as he wrote later in 1 Corinthians 9), he was also free to earn his living from making tents.  It wasn’t the source of his income that directed Paul’s work, but serving the Lord in all that he did.  As Paul wrote later to the Christians in Ephesus, some of whom were slaves and some of whom were free:

“Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free” (Ephesians 6:7-8). 

The truth is that everything we have comes from God.  As King David said in his prayer of thanksgiving to God:  “Everything comes from You, and we have given You only what comes from Your hand” (2 Chronicles 29:14).

A friend of mine, who started a business in a country that doesn’t officially allow Christian missionaries, says that his work is 100% business and 100% ministry.  I think that’s a good way for all of us to view our work, whether that work is seemingly secular or religious.

Be open to God’s call to ministry.  The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  But also be open to using whatever gifts and skills God has given you to meet the life needs of those around you.  Whatever you do, work as if you were serving the Lord.  You’ll be rewarded when you do.

Prayer: Father, help me to hear Your call on my life and to follow it with my whole heart wherever it leads. In Jesus’ name, Amen.