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My first job out of college was in technical sales for a large Fortune 500 company in Raleigh, N.C. They gave me the title “sales engineer” (after a year in their training program) and asked me to cultivate and maintain a list of customers in a specific territory who would be required to buy at least a certain amount of our company’s products every year. I was a relatively new Christian at the time, and I remember looking up to one of my coworkers who was overseeing a neighboring territory. He was older and more experienced than I was, and he was also an outspoken Christian. For obvious reasons, I found myself gravitating to him at sales meetings and even calling him for advice.
Not long after I arrived in Raleigh, however, my new friend was fired by our company. His customers had complained that he wasn’t, as they put it, “just one of the guys.” They didn’t like that he wouldn’t go out to bars and other clubs with them and that he wouldn’t tell or laugh at off-color jokes. They didn’t like that he didn’t constantly use bad language or speak in demeaning ways about women. My guess is that they were convicted by his presence. They were looking for someone who would do all the same things that they were doing, and they didn’t want to be reminded of their sins or to feel guilty in any way. So they had my friend fired.
Most of us can tell stories like this. There are, to be sure, many thorns and thistles in the workplace for Christians, regardless of our occupations. The temptation to compromise our convictions to get ahead or to be accepted is perhaps the biggest of them all. It manifests itself in different ways, from the temptation to “be one of the guys,” to work on Sundays, to do unethical things, or to look the other way when others are doing unethical things. Sometimes—especially if we resist these temptations—we will be attacked. Most frequently, this will take place behind our backs, as it did for my friend, but it could also happen to our faces if our coworkers or our customers are openly hostile toward Christianity.
There is also the temptation associated with poor leadership in the workplace. This can frequently lead Christians to cut corners at work or to give less than our best. It provokes us to say, “Well if that’s the way they’re going to treat me . . .” and then to rationalize any number of behaviors that are less than Christian. Besides this, there is the normal frustration that comes with working with and for other people. Inevitably, decisions will be made that we disagree with, and things will be done that we think are wrong. This can easily lead to pride, which can manifest itself in exasperation, in complaining about others and their decisions, or in tearing others down.
How is the Christian to respond to these kinds of thorns and thistles? How can we endure them or, better, rejoice and give thanks in the midst of them (1 Thess. 5:16, 18)? Here are six things that we can do to respond well to the challenges we face in the workplace.
1. Pray without ceasing. Prayer is the first thing that we must focus on when we are dealing with temptations and difficulties at work. We can “roll” our burdens onto the Lord in prayer, knowing that He will sustain us and will never allow the righteous (in Christ) to be shaken (Ps. 55:22).
2. Work hard. As 1 Corinthians 10:31 states, we are to do everything in our lives in a way that makes God look significant in the eyes of others. That applies not only to our eating and drinking, both of which Paul explicitly mentions, but also to the work that we do and to the way that we do it. Christians ought to be known for our exemplary work ethic and for our gracious and humble approach to those with whom we work.
3. Be dependable. This really is an application of 1 Corinthians 10:31 and of what it says about the way that we do our work. Christians should be people of our word, always striving to do what we say we will do. We ought to show up on time, to meet our deadlines, to be honest and aboveboard, and to strive to exceed the expectations of those around us.
4. Be approachable. The more approachable we are at work, the more people will gravitate to us when they have problems of their own. They will notice that we are gracious people and good listeners, and they will seek us out. They will notice that we do not recoil in horror when non-Christians act like non-Christians, and they will ask us to speak into their lives—especially when they see us working hard (number 2) and being dependable (number 3) and selective (number 5).
5. Be selective. One of the main reasons that so many of us bring difficulties on ourselves at work is that we don’t know how to be selective in speaking to others about Christ. We may even develop a reputation for forcing Christianity on our coworkers rather than being more thoughtful about when and how we can best approach them so that they will be most likely to hear what we say.
6. Find joy in Christ. Workplace thorns and thistles become far less prominent and painful in our experience when we are finding our joy in Christ rather than in what people think of us or in the way that we are treated at work. It is only when we “count everything as loss” compared to “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8) that the temptations to compromise or to complain will fade into insignificance in our experience.