Corporate Missionary

Chapter 1: Implementing God’s Expectations

All throughout the New Testament we read how Jesus lived his life. Selfless, patient and sinless all come to mind. He is our great example of how to live our lives. Yet after his resurrection we find a bold call to action in Matthew 28:19-20.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

In this passages Jesus tells his disciples to go and make new disciples, everywhere. It’s one of the first commands he gives after his resurrection. He could have said anything but he said this. I often think about why he gave this commission instead of literally anything else. But I always leave this question with the thought that it had to be this. God wanted to build a relationship with all of humanity and the first disciples were given a part to play in making that happen. I believe though, God used Jesus to encourage but also to get the point across that - this hope they felt by seeing Jesus alive is the same hope he wanted every human to know and trust in. Jesus lays the foundation of what God expected post-resurrection. From what we see in other books of the New Testament the disciples took this Great Commission to heart and acted quickly.

So do these expectations still hold up today? I’d say yes they do. Most of us know someone who's gone on a mission trip to share the gospel. So we know people are still living to uphold the Great Commission. But does this commission extend to all areas of our lives? Like at work.

In the context of work and the Great Commission, what is God's expectation? Lucky for us we don’t have to guess, we have the bible. God has shared his vision for us as well as his expectations. The first expectation is to be imitators of Him, second to walk in love and third to share the gospel.

When it comes to our careers, we often have a vision of what it should look like, separate from God's input. However, no matter what we may be striving for at work one of our goals as believers should be to live up to God's expectations. Living up to his expectations solely rests on us stepping out in faith and relying on his strength to live each day for him at work.

Expectation #1 To Be Imitators of God

Growing up I always wanted to do everything my dad did. I loved spending time with him and still do! As I got older, I started noticing that my extended family would often say, “You act just like your dad” or “You can tell that’s Erving’s child”. To me that was a huge compliment because my dad is awesome. He’s thoughtful and loves to make sure everyone is having a good time. I was an imitator of my dad; I copied all his actions and those who I walked closely with could pick up on it. It’s the same thing with God. We imitate him by embodying his character, actions and behavior. It’s that simple. One of my favorite characteristics of God is that he is love and displays his love to us by being gracious and merciful when we don’t deserve it. The purpose of this book is to encourage you to share the gospel with your colleagues. For some of you this might be a huge step out of your comfort zone. But there is hope and you can be an imitator of God on your job which will help you reach your colleagues.

You can imitate God on your job by extending grace to colleagues even when you don’t think they deserve it. We need God's grace otherwise we’d be left to make atonement for our sins and the only way to pay for that would be to die for our own sins. God had a plan though, and came to our rescue by sacrificing his perfect and blameless son, Jesus. He died for our sins even though we didn’t deserve it. That’s called grace! Every last person makes mistakes not just our colleagues but us too. We all need second chances and God gave us that when he sent his son.

Romans 8: 3-4 states “The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So, God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the body’s we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.”

Because of this believers should know what it means to have second chances. This is one of God’s expectations of us as we seek to be imitators of him on our jobs.