Gospel-Powered Work

Cheers reverberated as we strode across the stage in triumph. We clasped our diplomas and turned our tassels, symbolizing our entrance into a new stage of life brimming with opportunity. We were the next generation of world-changers.

I had graduated in December and landed my first teaching job for the spring. I prepared to transition from my role as a college student to an 8th grade teacher – in a matter of two weeks. Adrenaline ushered me under its dictatorship. Putting on a badge that read “Ms. Presley” felt like identity theft. A study published by the Australian Journal of Teacher Education refers to this apparently common phase among new teachers as “Practice Shock”, defined as “the disorienting and sometimes traumatic identity crisis that often occurs during the first year of teaching.”

Meaningful learning opportunities surge from all sides when you take on a classroom of post-pandemic fourteen-year-olds. This challenge eventually branded one distinct message upon my soul: if I was going to do my work well, let alone joyfully, then I was going to need the gospel – every day. Without it, I would be dominated by a sense of entitlement and my failed expectations.

In hindsight, I now recognize the mindset I possessed at my graduation–that I would swoop in and transform these 8th graders’ lives through my self-effacing service, as if I held the key to meeting the needs of immortal souls in a fallen world. The problem with this perspective is that it made me out to be the hero–not God. 

Not surprisingly, time only exposed the extent of my limitations. I once entertained daydreams of a darling classroom, reverent students, and the magnificent impact I would have on them. While I did have great students, I also faced sporadic episodes of lessons interrupted by their meltdowns, as well as my darling classroom being ravaged by pubescent boys leaping over tables, breaking my pencils, and hurling string cheese at each other. Such behavior sabotaged my picture-perfect dreams, provoking me to retaliate with a lashing tongue, as if that would snatch back the order and peace I craved. Rather than relying on my efforts to control, I needed to surrender to the Spirit of him who is “slow to anger” and “will not always accuse” (Psalm 103:8,9).

I realized that the bulk of my struggle in my job was not in the work itself, but in how it severely wounded my pride–thus exposing my need for the gospel. The gospel calls us to “put to death what is earthly” in us (Col. 3:5), with the help of the Holy Spirit. The reason why this should flood us with hope is that, whenever God calls for death, a resurrection follows.

God mercifully allows exasperation in our work, that we might see how relying on our willpower alone is going to produce nothing of any value (John 15:5). When we are ushered into the discomfort of humility and helplessness, the gospel is exalted. Meditating on it curates greater astonishment in our hearts for Jesus’ sacrifices on our behalf.

We tend to avoid places that are “below” us, seeking the work that we are highly-qualified for, leaving little to no room for what the world would consider belittling service. Yet this is where being “imitators of God’ (Eph. 5:1) radically reverses our perspective.

Jesus himself left behind his majestic position in heaven to take on flesh as a man who “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him” (Isa. 53:2). He did not consider using his status as “something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing” (Phil 2:6-7). As his followers, the Holy Spirit will drive us to imitate Jesus’ example. Aside from this gospel transformation, we will always work to achieve our own glory through the mask of our service to others.

Amy Carmichael, a remarkable caretaker of hundreds of orphans–nose-wiper, diaper-changer, and stain-wearer–shares her dialogue with Jesus about her work in her poem “He Sees”:

Jesus, Savior, dost Thou see

When I’m doing work for Thee?

Common things, not great and grand,

Carrying stones and earth and sand?

I did common work, you know, 

Many, many years ago;

And I don’t forget. I see

Everything you do for Me.

He sees, yes–and he helps. The One who emptied himself gives us his own mind without cost (Phil. 2:5).

In Tim Keller’s book Every Good Endeavor, he explains that, because of sin, our expectation should be to experience regular frustration in our work, even in the right career for us (p. 87). What the gospel does is redeem our expectations for work by recovering what work was meant to be–service in partnership with God (1 Cor. 3:9). 

Although work is difficult, God would not call us to a job that he would not also give us the capacity to do with joy. He promised that our “joy would be full” (John 15:11) only when we set aside our expectations and submit to our status as branches of the vine, attaching ourselves to his stores of life. Any alternative will cause us to shrivel and writhe. 

Therefore, I found joy in my work not by fulfilling my own stubborn will, but by embracing the gospel–that Jesus engaged in a radical role reversal, bearing “the punishment that brought us peace” (Isa. 53:5). I began to pray for patience, joy, and endurance daily. The challenges did not cease, but I did become more aware of gracious moments with which God refreshed my soul by allowing me to watch him work in and through me–a meaningful conversation with a student, witnessing eyes light up with understanding, a moment being seized by laughter, etc. My perspective of work slowly transformed from an impossible, endless to-do list, to an exercise of daily worship and trust in God.

Let not our culture–imprisoned by self-sufficiency–deceive you. The gospel is essential for everyone, and certainly my generation. We are the next generation of employees that will shape the world with excellent work, solely possible through our moment-by-moment dependence on God. A letterboard above my bed displays a paraphrase of Isaiah 50:7, reminding me as soon as my eyes open and my anxiety begins to stir that, “The Father helps me…and I know I will not be put to shame.”