I wrote this blog a few weeks before I made the decision to commit to the World Race. It was a time in my life when God was working heavy on my heart to abandon the pride and self-worth I found in my job, money and relationships. It was a humbling process and one that, in part, led me to this journey. Anyone seeking to develop a more obedient heart might benefit from reading this.
Job titles are an interesting thing because on a surface level, what do they really mean? If I call myself a professional at something, am I? I don’t know. Are job titles only credible when they were given to you by a leader or an established professional? Can you create your own title if you work hard enough to fulfill it? A lot of questions arise. Even still, I find myself asking folks all the time, “what do you do?”, as if their initial response will make any sense to me at all.
“I’m a financial advisor. A digital media manager. A web developer. A marketing specialist. A graphic designer. A CEO.”
Don’t those sound powerful? Like they really mean something?
Well sure they do, and there is inherently some level of nobility and achievement in a job title. People want a title that’s packaged up nicely with words that boast skill and ability. It shows what you’ve worked toward. What you’ve achieved – a professional name tag of sorts.
Ultimately, the title is an extension of the talents that God has blessed you with and at the root of every fancy job title, there is one title that far outweighs them all:
Servant.
In order to truly discover what it means to have a servant’s heart, we must recognize that there is no real power in the worldly statuses we achieve if that’s all you feed on. What good are you as an “account manager” if you aren’t using your talents in that role to serve the Lord and elevate His name?
Sure, you might make a ton of money, but are you graciously tithing?
Yeah, you’re a leader in your company but are you leading in a way that reflects your relationship with God? (You don’t have to preach to your co-workers in order to do that, either. Actions go a long way).
What are the benefits of a rewarding job when you lay them out before the Lord? Do you think that God is impressed merely by the plaque that sits on your desk?
Spoiler alert: Your proud job title, the one that allows you to justify controlling others and being self-righteous, is a meager and pitiful excuse for a name when you stack it up to God’s title. You might create beautiful work on Earth but God freaking created Earth – and you and everything you’ve ever known.
You want to really impress God with your talents? Then use them in a way that serves Him above all else – after all, He’s the only reason you’ve got them to begin with. In trying to understand how to be a more obedient servant myself, God revealed a beautiful illustration to me last night during a worship experience at my church.
To give you some back story, my roommate and I started a bi-monthly gathering at our duplex called the 1308 Breakfast Club – 1308 being our physical address. Every other Saturday, we invite a bunch of folks into our tiny duplex to enjoy delicious breakfast foods and good old fashioned fellowship. A majority of the folks who attend are on staff/volunteer at Elevation Church. My roommate is also an associate campus pastor at the church. That being said, I spend a lot of time with Elevation people outside of Sunday morning. I know these people in a social setting. I know their personalities, their quirks and their interests. I also know their job titles – mostly creatives. As a creative myself, I thought I had some grasp on what they did, even if I didn’t really understand the thick and thin of it all.
So back to last night’s worship experience. The event was a live recording of Elevation’s fifth worship album – Nothing is Wasted!
If you want to feel the unrivaled, awe-inspiring presence of God like never before, listen to Elevation Worship music and prepare your face for the ground – the place it will inevitably fall.
So I’m sitting there in my seat waiting for things to kick off and I begin looking around and noticing many of these Elevation volunteers and staff members – my friends – at work. They’re behind video cameras, taking pictures, setting up equipment on stage and orchestrating giant light and audio boards. Why? To prepare the way for a two hour, all-out celebration of Christ Jesus through worship. In that moment, God completely took over.
I see these people throughout the week in a social setting that doesn’t necessarily allow me to see their professional talents played out first hand. And even though I know them as a, “this or that” for Elevation Church, I don’t fully know what it means because job titles are worthless without spiritual representation. While I visually paced the room for maybe five minutes or so, going back and forth between these young people who were living it up in God’s name, I was greatly humbled. To be honest, it made me a little emotional.
Are you serving the Lord in your place of business? Are you using the God given talents entrusted to you for Him or for something far less meaningful? I know I wasn’t using my skills to serve the Lord and He spoke very clearly in my life about it. Success isn’t built on things that we do for ourselves. Not any type of success that I want to claim at least. We are successful when we focus on a single mission – serving Him – and even then, we are never ultimately perfect because we are all sinners.
Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel. (Philippians 1:27)
