Saturday 1 February 2014

Book Review - The Gospel at Work (2/1)

How does the gospel affect my daily life, especially in my work? How should a christian view his/her work or choose what work to do? This is what this book offers to all Christians, for those who have worked for quite some time or those who would start work soon.

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The book first tackles 2 issues that are related to our work, idolatry and idleness, this chapter would be most apt for those who are already working, but this 2 chapters also serves as a great warning for those who will work in the future, neither idolise your work nor idle at your work. Different examples of idolatry and idleness was given in their respective chapters and I felt that it was comprehensive enough to cover almost all aspects a christian would face in a workplace. Most likely, anyone of us would likely identify with one or a few of the examples raised.

The authors then teaches how we should view and serve at our workplace, using many biblical principles the authors seeks to present especially Colossians 3:22-24 and what it means daily for us in our workplace.

For those who are looking for a job, or for those who are thinking of changing your job, the next section would be especially helpful. The authors show several principles on how to know what work to choose. The chapter explains what the three ‘must-haves’ in the job are, and what the 3 ‘good-to-haves’ are in the job. This chapter goes across the grain of our social where what I like to do is under the ‘good-to-have’, instead of the ‘must-haves’.

The next section then deals with an important aspect of how we can balance our life, work and service? The authors used a simple yet helpful principle to balance all these, “pursue faithfulness, then fruitfulness, but not idolatry”.

The next section brings out some important points, there has been many books on how to be a good employee, but how many books have you seen on what it means to be a good employer? This section covers an area that deserves to be better served, bringing out many principles we can have that allows us to be faithful and showing Christlikeness as employees or as employers.

The last section explores the value of full-time ministry and a full-time job, the authors decides to tackle the question in terms of ‘value’, and how we ought to re-think about the meaning of value. Lastly there is an appendix for those who are working to help us grow whilst serving in our workplace.

This book is not heavy, yet filled with biblical principles and good examples, and is definitely to be helpful for almost every christian and well worth the price. Definitely a book I would recommend to any christian who wants to understand how they can glorify God in their work.

Rating: 4.5/5

If you're interested, you can get it here and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

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