We’ve been trying to pull together a “flesh & blood group”, versus an on-line group for awhile about living our lives as Christians in the workplace. We have an on-line group on LinkedIn, but can’t seem to get it past that. More and more it seems we are disconnecting our work life and our other “vocations” from the fact that we are Christian. Seems like church is an activity we check off the list, instead of a time we come into contact with the living God, look at our life and what it means to be a Christian and how we are going to go back into the world and apply our Christian life.

For the “once in awhile” that we have people at our Wednesday morning “Coffee Break Bible Study”, we been using a book by Dr Gene Veith “God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life”, which I think is, unfortunately, out of print, but I did manage to grab one off of Amazon.

Dr Veith is the Provost at Patrick Henry College in Virginia and also a very prominent Lutheran leader, writer and teacher. As a Lutheran teacher he is obviously highlighting Martin Luther’s teachings and as Dr Veith points out: “For Luther, vocation, as with everything else in his theology, is not so much a matter of what we do; rather, it is a matter of what God does in and through us.”

This is an important distinction. Lutheran theology is all about what God does, not what we do. The issue of faith, for example. Too many Christian teachers talk about how we need faith. No argument there, but the issue becomes how we get faith. Too often it will be imposed on the person to somehow generate “faith”, otherwise they are somehow not good enough or worthy enough to be Christians. Sorry, but we don’t generate our own faith, when we trust in God and what He’s doing, the Holy Spirit will provide us the faith that we need. We don’t “choose” God, he chooses us. We don’t do anything to earn our way to salvation or justification, it is God who does it and that’s a very good thing. Let’s face it if it’s up to us to have enough faith or somehow achieve justification, really, how’s that going to work out for us? Right! We aren’t going to make it. But when we trust in the Holy Spirit to do it, how’s that going to work out? Yea, we have what we need because He provides us with it.

Obviously when God gives us that kind of trust and understanding that impacts our entire life He is going to do it far better in our life than we will. We trust that He is moving us where we need to be and what we should be doing. That applies not just on Sunday morning, but our lives at work, our lives with our parents, spouses, siblings and children, our lives in the community, whatever we do. God guides us in our entire life. We don’t say that because we go to work God’s not there. Of course God is there guiding us in an important aspect of our life. When we go to school, despite what many in the world think, God doesn’t wait at the door as if public education is somehow some greater “god”. Really! What part of our life is Jesus not Lord of?

We will have group meet at the Green Bean Coffee Co 10 am Wednesday mornings, right at the corner of W King and Beaver Sts in downtown York, Pa. Parking is available right behind the church, 140 W King St, and it’s just a few yards to the coffee shop.