For years I was stuck in a mindset that placed an irrationally high value on ministry while under-appreciating God’s interest in using my talents, skills, and interests to pursue His kingdom in a variety of alternate forms.
God has created a pretty big world out there, but many of us Christians have a tunnel-vision tendency to block out a huge portion of it. We lose sight of the sacredness of work, the benefits of education, the spiritual value of a career, the impact of our potential influence in the marketplace.
Here are five of the most entrenched mistakes that can tangle up your career path.
1. Over-spiritualizing your career situation. There’s nothing wrong with praying for direction when it comes to your job, but don’t get into the annoying habit of expecting God to do everything for you. This leads to a victimized, passive stance, waiting around for a sign instead of getting yourself mobilized. You can pray and fast and hang out the fleece all day long, but understand this: God is not going to hand over your life-long career path on a flaming silver platter. You have to pay your dues, fight for your life, and figure it out as you go, just like everyone else. Ironically, your spiritual growth will come mostly through the struggle in this process.
2. Ignoring what’s right in front of you. It’s great to believe God has some grandiose plan in store for you, but you’ll probably have to do a boatload of grunt work to get there. Some folks want to skip all the unpleasant parts and get right to the end, but real life generally doesn’t happen that way. I remember once complaining bitterly to a wiser friend about the many shortcomings of my job. He listened patiently for a while, and then gave me the best advice ever by pointing out the vast opportunities I was overlooking because of my bad attitude. Don’t let your self-limiting ideas cause you to ignore the potential of right where you are today.
3. Being afraid of the big bad secular world. For years, I was surrounded with a subculture that had this notion that “secular humanism” was infiltrating the world, threatening our Christian sensibilities. Its evil shadow fell over not just corporate life, but also suspect were prestigious universities, art galleries, music venues, and pretty much any secular expression that wasn’t dunked in a certain theological soup. This shunning of higher learning and culture creates a Christian ghetto filled with fearful and judgmental souls who will never learn to navigate, much less infiltrate, the world. Want to change culture? Be part of it. Want to be an influencer? Get a decent education. Want to impact the world? Be engaged in it. This is salt, and this is light.
4. Using your job as a stomping grounds for evangelism. Look, I know you want to spread the Good News everywhere you go, but your place of employment is not just a raw mission field. Sure, you can reach others at your workplace, but I am firmly in the camp that says doing a good job is pleasing to God in and of itself. There’s no need to artificially load layers of mission and outreach on top of it. You are plenty glorifying God by doing excellent work. Oh, and by the way, this is probably the best path to building credibility among the folks on the job so they’ll even want to listen to you.
5. Underestimating your own power and potential. In Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great, he describes the most effective CEOs as “Level 5 Leaders,” possessing a paradoxical combination of humility and fierce resolve. As Christians, we’d like to rally around the humility and servitude part, knowing that Jesus would heartily approve. But assertive leadership requires a tad more than that. There’s no need to feel guilty for being ambitious, visionary, or intensely focused on a goal or outcome. Embrace your inner drive because you can be both humble and fiercely resolved at the same time. Otherwise, how is God going to accomplish anything through you?
Christians are notoriously confused about the spiritual value of work. I believe we need role models, young and old, supporting each other as the voice of God himself, shouting out words of hope and encouragement to those called to work outside of ministry. It’s all good! If only we had faith enough to believe it.
Therefore, as believers we are now children of God who are new creatures with a new identity in Christ having been seated with Him in the Heavenly places(Eph 1:3-4)! We have been filled with new affections, desires, goals and with this comes a beautiful God-Ordained purpose to which we have been called. However, being adopted into God’s Family also means that we will now be in the enemy’s crosshairs. We are in a spiritual battleground and so we must be prayerfully in communion with God because 
Interestingly, there are even secular Biblical scholars who have attempted to use Bible verses to disprove the existence of God! In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells His followers, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will”(Mt 11:25–26). God delights in it when His creation recognize their need before Him and raise the white flag in surrender. It is only when we come to the end of ourselves that God’s Spirit can move and accomplish the surgical procedure within our hearts. Consequently, we must approach reading God’s Word with reverence and humility recognizing that it is all Truth even and especially when it contradicts our lifestyle. Otherwise, it will turn into an academic exercise resulting in people being puffed up with Bible head-knowledge rather than the heart-transforming Words of Life like God intended(like the Pharisees and experts of the law). When we read the Bible with spiritually-open eyes and an enlightened heart, everything changes! The words of God’s Holy Book will literally come alive and they can now have their intended heart-transformational impact. The veil from our hearts, even as believers, needs to continually be removed so that we unlock the Bible within the Bible. This will only happen through walking uprightly and obediently with God in unbroken fellowship. Sins needs to be confessed and repented from, or else our spiritual-vision will be blocked and we find ourselves chasing after the things of this world.
doing this to be saved, rather, we are doing this because we are saved. Once we have been built-up and equipped spiritually, it now our commission to go out and share the good news of the Gospel with those around us in tangible ways! After all, what good is it to be in prayer and to be full of Bible knowledge if we do not actually do anything?! We must let Christ’s love stream freely in us but also through us and towards others as the Holy Spirit delights in! Our hearts should be so overjoyed with this glorious gift of salvation that we cannot help but share this gift with others. Oftentimes this may simply look like being the hands and feet of Christ through serving by meeting the physical needs of those in the community at a homeless shelter. Other times, it may extend to verbally sharing our faith with co-workers and others in our spheres of influence. James teaches us that true Christianity is “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world”(Jas 1:27). It is entirely about extending our love towards others as an overwhelmingly thankful response to the love which Christ has shown to us on the Cross when He obediently accepted death on the Cross, dying the death that you and I should have died!
imperfect humans who are gradually being transformed into the image and likeness of Christ. Christ is perfect, Christians are not. Sadly, one of the main stumbling blocks I encounter when witnessing to others is their exposure to a misrepresentation of the Christian Faith. Therefore, as Christians, we should not be placing our faith in fellow Christian brothers and sisters on a micro-level and/or even towards Christianity on a macro-level. We are equally broken–Christian and non-Christian–who are all in as much of need for Jesus as the next person. Yet, we regularly put other Christians on pedestals almost on a daily-basis, commonly without consciously thinking about it. The tragic result is disappointment when they do not fulfill our expectations, but, more significantly, it is a diminishment of the all-sufficiency of God. In turn, we end up idolizing other Christians, rather than placing our unwavering faith in Jesus Alone for our salvation and spiritual growth.
What I believe is one of the leading causes of lukewarmness within the Christian Church in the West today derives itself from the false belief that the Church saves us. The implicitly-held belief among several Christians in the West is that as long I attend weekly church service, partake in helping through various ministries and fulfill the requirements of other rituals, then I am saved.
This most recent season of my life as a Christian has been one marked with periods of doubt, uncertainty, wavering and confusion. There have even been some worldly desires and pursuits that have subtly begun to encumber my walk as a Christian. Relevantly, one of the teachings contained in the parable of the sower tell us that “…the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful”(Matthew 13:22). Furthermore, James candidly tells believers, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God”(James 4:4). It is abundantly clear that we cannot be friends with both God and the world. Believers who try 
If you remember from Genesis 3, it was the devil who craftily decided to utilize doubts as his spiritual weapon of choice to assault Eve, then Adam in the Garden of Eden. Surely, what worked then to help cause the fall of creation still works just as well today. One of the most potent spiritual assaults against Christians is when they are tempted to doubt the very core of what they believe. In Ephesians 6, Paul instructs believers to put on the full armour of God reminding us that our battle is “not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). We are then instructed, “in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph 6:16–17). The other elements of the armour of God are identified in Ephesians 6:10-18, but I believe that the secret to success to combating doubts is found here in verses 16 and 17.
please without having to answer to a higher power sounds both appealing and liberating at the same time. However, this type of freedom is not freedom at all. Don’t let the world’s way of thinking confuse and entrap you. In contrast to what real freedom in Christ provides, this is actually slavery which happens to be under the guise of freedom. Slavery to what you may be wondering? Simply put, it is slavery to your fleshly desires and impulses. The precise thing that you think is liberating you is in fact doing the exact opposite, that is, enslaving you.
that deep down inside you already know the truth of God. As seen in Romans 1:19, God’s eternal power and His divine nature are manifested throughout the beauty and intricacies of creation, consequently leaving people without excuse(Rom. 1:20).
Photo Credit: Ricardo Camacho via CC Flickr 
and to actually be in God’s Word. I think that as Christians living in a self-absorbed western culture, we easily become ignorant of the fact that if we are not actively seeking intimacy with God then we will indeed fall away. For clarity, by falling away I mean that we begin to quench the Spirit thereby weakening our faith and delaying us from furthering God’s Kingdom. I believe that delaying the good work of Christians is one of the Enemy’s main spiritual assaults against us. It is when we enter into the forgetfulness of Who God is and all that He has done for us that the Enemy renders Christians ineffective for God’s work. 
Recently, I feel that the Lord has been drawing my attention to the importance of prayer more than ever. It is so easy for Christians(myself included) to become apathetic with our prayer life, particularly living in an increasingly Biblically-hostile society. However, I firmly believe that prayer is the powerhouse for the Christian life. It is paramount that as Christians we realize that “…
Theological Reflections 