How to Get the Victory Over Hard Work

Rethinking the Hardness in Hard Work Requires Rediscovering Faith’s Romance with the Invisible

“I [Paul] planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase [fruit].”

1 Corinthians 3:6

“The horse may be prepared for battle but the victory is the Lord’s.”

Proverbs 21: 31

” …receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

James 1:21

“Faith is the source of good works. The greater the power we employ, the greater disaster we suffer, unless we act humbly and in the fear of God.”

Martin Luther.[i]

When it came time to me to go to high school, my parents sent me to a Christian boarding school. Part of the deal was each student had to work. Everyone had a job. My job was to keep the music building clean and maintain order.  Looking back at those days in the music building, there were just too many temptations. Boys and girls needed to practice their instruments in the little sound proof rooms and this lead to small twists. One day, the principal called me in and said I could go work on the farm or leave school. I went to the farm and it was good for me. I liked it. It felt like real work – “man’s work”. I still got into trouble, but the farm boss, Floyd Shear, liked me and stood up for me and kept me out of reach of the principal. In time I was offered the top job – milking the cows. Every other morning, I woke up at 12:30 AM and milked one hundred Holstein cows finishing around 6:30 AM.

Floyd Shear was a tried and true dairyman. He knew every cow by name and where she came from. On his wall, he had hundreds of pictures of prize bulls and their semen right there in tubes submerged in a dry ice refrigerator. One day, he invited me to witness an artificial insemination.  First he took me into his office and showed me the picture of the father bull, next he extracted the correct vile containing the semen from the dry ice refrigerator. Next he opened a box and pulled out a long plastic sleeve to cover his hand and arm and raising the temperature of the precious bull juice, he went to work on the cow and using the full length of his arm, inseminated her.  It was all very amazing for a 16 year old, a sort of sex education show and tell long before society and schools came around to such things. For a while, we were not sure whether the semen had took. But Shear had a keen eye, and one day he came through the milking parlor with a slight grin and nodding his head he said, “We’re good to go”. He knew because there were changes in the cow’s face and mood.

The question I want to address in this lesson is whether our work, the work in life’s journey we undertake for whatever cause and purpose, is or is not implanted with a hidden spiritual seed called faith and hope in God.  As intangible and spiritual as this question may appear, in the paragraphs that follow I argue that the presence or absence of this spiritual, but very real element in the heart and mind, has profound tangible, ethical, moral and practical consequences, and these consequences in many cases are discernable not only by the wise and experienced, but vividly apparent to all.

Doing our work with faith and hope in God means we are doing it in a way that from beginning to end, ultimately trusts its potency and fruitfulness to an invisible power of blessing and purpose lodged in God. When it comes to the success of our work, instead of putting our confidence in all that we can see, touch and feel, we place our hope and confidence in something unseen. We work by faith and prayer. In the following, I attempt to spin this little work thesis into six contrasts, asking the simple question, “Is a work implanted (literally impregnated) with faith and hope in God, i.e. impregnated with dependence, not human strength and ability to fulfill its purpose and bear fruit, but on the invisible God’s hidden blessing and grace ( for it is hidden grace that gives life) or is this magic spiritual seed absent?

1. THE INTANGIBLES VERSUS THE TANGIBLES

When a person’s work is implanted with faith and hope in God, he trusts the success of the work to intangibles instead of the sum power of the tangibles.

Asked to preach to the Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS) while writing this script, I opened my thoughts with the statement, “dare to do little, apparently insignificant small things for God”. Pass by big ideas and schemes to save the world and take note of the little thing sitting in your lap that might be used by God to make a spot of difference.  In the Gospels we have the story of the little boy with the packed lunch who shifted his focus from the inadequacy of his five loaves and two fish to meet the need of the moment and onto the blessing power of Christ. He measured his little contribution’s potential to help, not by its size but the size of the hidden power in God to bless things big and small. In short, his action was pregnant with faith and hope in God, not in himself or the innate worth of the little lunch he surrendered to Christ.

If and when a person’s work is not implanted with faith and hope in God, she focuses all her attention on the size and strength of a work to meet the need that it is in service of.  Without faith and hope in the unseen, one has no choice other than to focus on all she can see, touch and feel regarding a work’s ability to meet the need at hand and bear the fruit that the situation requires. This includes not only the size and greatness of a work, whether it is commensurate with what is needed, but the giftedness and talent of the worker.  All of these and many other tangible factors must become the focus.  Thus conceived, how can one help from pressing a work to a higher and higher level of efficiency in an effort to ensure a work’s success? And once we start down this road there is no resting place until the pinnacle of human acumen is reached. But the history of God is the record of God using little things, little people, weak things, small endeavors and efforts and common people to do His work.

Work driven by the faith dynamic attends to intangibles that mysteriously empower it toward fruitfulness, while work driven by the sight dynamic are totally fixated on the tangible factors that predict successful fruitful labor. There is a mystery at work. It is like a sandwich. Between the labor and the successful fruitful outcome of the work, there is wedged an intangible hidden ingredient. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul points to this intangible element. “I planted, Apollos watered, (maybe Peter weeded because he is also in the picture in this Corinthian situation that Paul is addressing) but God gave the increase ” (i.e. “the fruit) [ii]. Something called invisible God, God’s blessing, grace; something intangible only discerned by faith is in the mix if the work truly succeeds and bears good fruit. Work in and of itself does not guarantee good fruit! Without faith in the unseen, the worker, and more so the employer, become focused and fixated on how much time, energy, intensity, and proficiency are poured into a work. The success or fruitfulness of a work is viewed in direct proportion to all the tangibles. “Sight work” fails to discern the divine sandwich that is alluded to everywhere in Scripture. If a work climaxes in a good blessing, hidden grace precedes, inheres, carries it forward, and surpasses the human work invested in the project.

• The Process versus the Product

Work that is seeded with faith and hope attends to the process rather than the product.

 A proverb from the good book reads, “Cast your bread upon the water and after many days you will find it”. [iii]Work done from inside the faith dynamic must be cast or released from one’s control, released to time, to God, to fates beyond one’s sight and reach; all the while believing that this work will in the mystery and marvel of an invisible hand return and bestow a blessing. But work not done from the faith-unseen dynamic must of necessity by driven by the sight dynamic and therefore the laborer must follow after it and carefully watch over it as if she must see it through to fulfillment and guarantee the delivery of a good return. Without faith, one can never sleep; never indulge any confidence or expectation. She must constantly watch, worry, and babysit her work, lean hard on it, and push it toward a good return. Luther, a hearty German never accused of intemperance, once said something to the effect that while Melanchthon and him were relaxing in the pub having an ale all over Europe, the antichrist was getting a thrashing and the kingdom of darkness was collapsing[iv]. Luther had attended to the task of clarifying and writing out the Gospel. With writings, like Christian Liberty (1520), he cast bread upon the water not knowing what fruit they would bear. Blind to their reach and good end, relaxing in a pub with Melanchthon, he remained confident that his labors would not be in vain. Worry, fret, excessive control, and over functioning grow out of the absence of the faith. Work that is conceived and given birth by hearts and hands of faith is focused on the process, not the product’s success, upon the quality and integrity of the work and also about being a faithful steward of the gifts and tasks one is given. Indeed, we are called to work and then rest. And this rest is rest indeed and includes rest of the mind, spirit and body because the invisible God assures “He that keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper[v].”

• FORCEFUL VERSUS PLAYFUL

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God is playful and passionate rather than overly serious, anxious and forceful.

Integrally related to attending to the process versus the product of a work is another element. When there is no faith silently mixed into one’s work, the worker worries about his work’s future and sets out to insure it will produce fruit. In this worry are the seeds of forcefulness. America, and now the whole capitalistic world, is filled with aggressive work which sets out to force a work to bear much fruit, no matter of its quality or innate value. To no avail we pray, “Forgive us our transgressions” because we have indeed baptized aggression as a simple good. There is no freedom in such work. It suffers from too much control, too much regimentation, standardization, manipulation; too much “math,” that is, too much need and greed for profit from the end product. Forceful work does not believe that a work, like water, will find its true level. It does not believe that the true value and quality lodged in the work will be realized and rewarded commensurate to its presence or absence. America has set the example, not only for Yankee ingenuity and can-do pluck, but also going about their work with a grotesque, enlarged will for success at any price—political, social, and ecological.

Work that is silently impregnated with faith is passionate and playful. As passionate, it waits for the work to bear its fruit, prays for it, and if need be, suffers delay and reversal. Passion is the opposite of force. In passion there is restraint—self-restraint. There is an invisible boundary of encouragement for a work to bear fruit beyond which one must not go. Passionate work is known not by apathy but by its patience and resistance to push a work forward at any cost. It is known for its restraint, a virtue requiring a thousand times more inner strength than the more valorized so-called “virtues” attached to forceful aggression. All forceful labor leaves a trail of casualties and exploitation in its wake, while in passion there may be blood, it will not be that of another.

Passion and playfulness are cousins. By playfulness we find the true value, blessing, and energy in a work. Humans often cloak work with a seriousness that is not necessary or helpful. Humans often want from their investments of time, energy, money and work, not only more than is due, but something different than the investment is suited to bring forth. All true work possesses a mystery. In fruitful work there is a dialectic going on between two different entities, one visible and human, the other hidden and ‘divine’. The playful worker attends to this hidden mystery no matter what the endeavor. Even things and tasks, like the uniqueness that inhabits people, are imbued with a will of their own and possess a mystery. Playful work discerns the presence of this hidden difference, romances it and goes toward a “goal” not fully understood. Like the axiom “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” so the end of a work is often moving to fulfill a greater design and purpose than what is stated or fully known by all the entities or parties involved.

• Success Verses Failure:

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God does not view success and failure as opposites.

Where there is no faith perception, work that does not produce “success” (success measured by the limited standards and horizons of those behind the work) is regarded as a failure. But where the eyes of faith exist, works that “fail” are often caught up into greater purposes. By faith it is possible to say that neither failure nor success is all that it is made out to be. Scripture reads, “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” [vi]Included in ‘all things’ is failure—especially failure! By human expectations and standards, Judas concluded that Jesus’ mission failed. And in some ways it did, else why do we find Jesus weeping for His people at the brow of the hill overlooking Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In Chapter 19:41-42 Luke writes, “When He drew near and saw the city He wept over it, saying, would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” Despite the assurance of the Church and Apostles that the conclusion of Jesus’   earthly mission, ending on the cross, was the game plan all along – “the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world”[vii] – it cannot be gainsaid that in some way, a failure unraveled in these concluding events. Jesus wanted Jerusalem and its leaders and people on board, but they wouldn’t have it. I am not here trying to tackle this mystery, only point to it. Faith believes that success, within a new frame of reference and deeper purpose, is often hidden in failure, and the opposite is also true. Failure often bedevils success, no matter how loud it is trumpeted. It is not possible to see these things unless one is connected to unseen realities, i.e faith, and also time, i.e hope.

If “we walk by faith and not by sight,” at the very least, we will escape falling into despair and becoming nihilistic when things don’t work out and produce the fruit we hope. Or, if they do work out and we are connected to the unseen, we will not fail to believe that invisible grace is at work and deeper, wider purposes involved.

• Working With Versus Working Out Grace Glasses: Caution On the Job Sight Wear Grace Glasses

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God Looks for and finds grace already present at the job sight.

Grace in this little discussion points to where God and Life have already begun a good work, already rearranged and biased a situation for fruitful labor, already provided a wedge, an entry point for one to commence a good fruitful work, already lodged a blessing in the ground where one’s work is to commence, already come to the work site before any worker shows up. While grace in Christian circles mainly refers to God’s free, unearned saving gift in Christ, grace by definition means gift and can refer to anywhere and any way where an unearned advantage is handed to a person. Peter writes of the “manifold grace” of God”[viii]. But it takes eyes of faith to look for and recognize the presence of this unearned advantage that prepares the seedbed from which fruitful work can be realized. In light of the fertility of this grace, in any situation where work is called for, there are two kinds of work and workers. There are those who come to a town, to a project or task, and roll up their sleeves, deploy their resources, and proceed to conquer the challenges and obstacles at hand. These have no depth perception, no antenna or discernment of the subtle presence or absence of a preexisting advantage. They neither look for, follow after, nor integrate their efforts into a preexisting advantage that would lighten their burden and give their efforts wings. They look at the task directly and calibrate their resources to the challenge. This is the direct encounter that lacks faith and Spirit.

Jesus talks about a “burden that is light, a yoke that is easy”[ix] and one of the reasons for this “ease and lightness” has to do with tapping into and aligning oneself with the preexisting grace that one’s situation is pregnant with. What makes hard work hard? And why are we in America so infatuated with “hard work” as is evident by our bragging about the American work ethic? What we need is to find the grace that is already in the work and task that we take up. And when and where we cannot find this grace we best take a step back. Aggression in work exhibits a lack of wisdom and discernment of a subtle preexisting grace present in a given situation. This does not mean there is no intensity and determination or tiredness in and from our working. It means rather that these accrue from and are inspired by an energy and possibility that have come into our horizons from elements that have surprisingly met us and inspired us and lifted our endeavours and empowered them.

The spirituality of the language employed here to open this truth can be misunderstood. It can price the whole venture beyond the means and reach of most of us mired as we are in the mud and dirt of this world’s realism. Sometimes the grace advantage in a given situation is discovered on the other side of losses, reversals, and failures experienced in the journey of life. Not a few persons have found a field of fruitful work on the other side of a reversal that has been, or would be endgame, for others going through a similar plight. For instance, through loss one experiences grief but this grief is also a spiritual teacher because when mixed with the grace of God’s Spirit and help it provides a distinctive experience and understanding not available to us any other way. Experience places insight within one’s reach something that can be comprehended almost through no other means. For instances in loss all too often we have to go on without something or someone we relied on before when we were more or less whole. The going on requires not mere time and healing but the formation of a new kind of spiritual strength given to us and taught to us via the Spirit often through another. Henceforth one sees and knows something she didn’t know before she experienced a particular loss. Henceforth, when she looks around and sees others passing through events and struggles of a similar kind that she has passed through she is able to respond. And this response is, in truth, at an elemental level, ministry -‘service’ ( cf The Wounded Healer – Henri Nouwen). Here freedom to serve another is not merely dictated by a divine imperative to serve and the presence of need but a new possibility and motive to help. This is new possibility to do good work, i.e. serve God and another derives from the underbelly of grace and ‘accidentally’ bears good fruit.. And the grace described here for the sake of finding a concrete example if it has one face, has a thousand. It is, as the good book states manifold (1 Peter 4:10) .

Faith looks for and finds grace, then works; while work driven by naked sight, presses on to conquer all obstacles like Goliath.

• Time: The Short versus The Long View

Work that is seeded with faith and hope in God looks beyond the short run of things to the big picture.

Modern proverbs remind us where we have gone amiss. Take for instance the saying “do not get your exercise jumping to conclusions.” And then there is the reverend Yogi Berra who divined “it’s not over till it’s over.” One view of work is fixated on immediate results that reveal themselves in the short term. Another invests its labor of love for the long haul and is pregnant with faith and hope that good fruit will come along. The work and working of the first group is not implanted with faith and hope. Time tests what we are made of and the spirit and form put into our work—the spirit we infuse into it. “Cast,” the good book tells us, “your bread upon the water and after many days you will find it”.[x] But the modern spirit in its relation to work has lost all such faith and hope. And this shadow of nihilism infects work in the modern world in many fields of endeavor. Take for instance agriculture and animal husbandry. These fields of endeavor and many others in the modern world serve to magnify what has gone wrong with work. Chickens must lay more eggs faster, cows yield more milk more often, and calves readying for the veal slaughter must mature quicker, and the diseases that result from these practices cured faster. The spirit that infects modernity cannot wait for the harvest from their high-tech, artless labors; they must have more fruit with less labor, all with less time and money expended.  Work seeded with faith and hope in life (a faith and hope, while perhaps not exactly the pure strain written of in Scripture, at least reflecting something of its spirit), believes in and waits for the fruit without quickly seeing the fruit. And in this patience of hope, if need be it suffers defeat, believing and waiting even if the sun sets,  it knows that life is not ultimately fickle nor is God unfaithful.

In one story in the Gospels, a Gentile centurion came to Jesus imploring him to come home with him to his house and heal his child. Rather than follow the centurion as asked, He simply announced to him that the child was going to be okay because by his word he had already accomplished the matter despite his physical absence. The man took Jesus at His word and departed even though he had seen nothing, having only heard this announcement[xi]. This is a fitting parallel for the way we should do our work. Without seeing a work’s fruit we should anchor ourselves in confident, expectant hope and trust and commit the endeavor to the unseen hand of blessing. And even if the sun sets on our lives before our work’s fruit is seen, we should not abandon good faith and hope. God and life are not fickle, and a lifetime of waiting is not long enough to prove otherwise. While writing this book, my good friend Doug Ort sent me the following terse litany of quotes that reflect the spirit of what is written here and is a fitting conclusion to this chapter.

Reinhold Niebuhr said nothing that is worth doing can be done in our lifetime. And I. F. Stone said that if you can see the results of your work, you really have not asked a big enough question. If we’re going to get at root causes, we really can’t expect to see the new society ourselves. Given that time perspective, it frees us to avoid expediency and desperation—two things that are ultimately counterproductive.”[xii]

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[i] Gerhard Ebeling. Luther: An Introduction to his thought. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press), 1970, pp. 62-63.

[ii] 1 Corinthians 3:6-7

[iii] Ecclesiastes 11:1(KJV)

[iv] Philip Schaff.Volume VII: Modern Christianity – The German Reformation, History of the Christian Church. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems), 1997, p. 494.

[v] Psalm 121:5-6

[vi] Romans 8:28

[vii] Revelation 13:8

[viii] 1 Peter 4:10

[ix] Matthew 11:30

[x] Ecclesiastes 11:1

[xi] John 5:43-53

[xii] Frances Moore Lapp. Interview from the Other Side, 1977.

(The above Post for some reason failed to post when I created in a bygone teaching – preaching visit to MBTS in Penang, Malaysia. This visit took place in an earlier period in my Asia teaching work and corresponded with MBTS’ publishing of my book Existence and Faith: Breaking the Tension Between the Seen and the Unseen. In the interest of documenting and chronicling as many of my teaching assignments in Asia as possible and also for the relevance of the content of this article I have published it here.) The title of this piece and the content correspond both to my MBTS chapel preach before the student body and to a chapter in the above book I wrote at that time.)