A conversation with my boss

Hi everyone,

I shared this at cell yesterday evening and wanted to share with you too the conversation I had with my boss yesterday morning. I hope it will encourage you as much as it has for me.

My boss called me into his room at around 9:30am yesterday to talk about performance appraisal for 2008. Btw, he is a cell leader at FCBC. The conversation started normally and he was telling me how I seemed to be working too hard and spending too much time in the office. He was saying how it was important to have the right work-life balance early on in life, otherwise it will be hard next time on the family since these are habits that take time to change. Imagine your boss telling you to work less and go home earlier! That was not all. We started to talk about how we see work, whether we live to work or work to live. Suddenly, he remarked "work is worship unto God!" I almost fell off my chair as normally people don't openly talk about God in the office, especially between superiors and staff.

After that, he quoted the verse "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all things will be added unto you." He then asked me, "So do you know the Hebrew word for 'first'?" I shook my head. He followed up by saying, "'First' comes from the Hebrew word 'proton' which means 'centre'." Many a times, when I hear this verse, I always think that there is a list of priorities in my life and God wants me to put Him and His kingdom at the #1 position. However, the truth is that God wants us to put His kingdom in the centre of our lives and everything else will fall into place naturally around it. This was such a refreshing revelation! No wonder God says everything that we do (work, play, study etc), it is a worship unto Him. We no longer need to compartmentalize our life into days/hours for church, cell, work, family if we can put His kingdom in the centre of our lives and everything else that we do is integral and part and parcel of seeking His kingdom.

In reality, there is no secular life vs church life if every seemingly secular thing that we do is an act of worship unto Him. For myself, I am asking God in 2009 to help me to use the work that I am doing at EDB as a shining testimony for other people in the marketplace, that this work is part of my ministry that will impact lives around me. I pray that God will impress this beautiful truth upon all of you as well. Before I left the room, my boss reminded me, "Ask God to reveal his destiny for you as you think about our career plans in the next few years." I want to praise and thank God for sending people to speak into my life and reminding me to always seek Him and put His kingdom in the centre of my life.

Cheers, from light* cell member who works for the govt...