We often use the word “workforce” to describe a number of employees working together to carry out a specific activity in a company. Together their cooperative efforts accomplish a bigger purpose than our individual responsibilities. For instance, a flight leaving Atlanta and going to Munich requires a coordination of employees and equipment. This workforce is made up of people in flight operations, ground people, mechanics, airport/gate agents, baggage handlers, and finally cabin and flight deck crews, all of which work together to carry out this purpose.

Do you realize that there are also other forces constantly working around you in your workplace? I don’t mean the company workforce, but spiritual forces that are trying to form your attitude and actions toward a purpose quite contrary to the Christian faith? It can happen when employees around you join together to show their disgust over the company, toward a supervisor, or maybe toward an employee with a troubling life. Their joint coordination is like an energizing force around you creating a general attitude or response toward a person or a company policy. Some Christians think that if they just ignore such things, or distance themselves, it will eventually go away and not affect them. But this is furthest from the truth.

Part of God’s design for maturing us as Christians is to allow our faith to be tested in a world with problems and evil (1 Peter 1:6-7). Jesus told us that we are to be His light in a dark world. However, our confrontation with these adverse forces often reveals our own weakness and vulnerability, and our tendency to become angry or fearful. It is at this point that God is calling us to come to Him by faith at that moment, so we can experience the complete sufficiency of His power at work in us. God’s strategy in teaching us to deal with the adverse forces around us is not by ignoring or joining them. Instead, He alerts us to their danger and their persuasive pull, and He uses our encounters with them to draw us to trust Him and rely on His directions and strength. Learning to rely on Him in the midst of our difficulties and problems allows us to experience the transforming work of His greater power at work in us, one that restrains us from returning wrong to those who wrong us, and compels us to do what is right even when we’ve been wronged. Learning to rely on God’s power and Word to direct us in life’s circumstances will produce attitudes and actions that conform us to His ways (1Thessalonians 2:13). Only then can our lives become a sharp contrast to the forces around us at work.

“For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13

So, what forces are you allowing to influence you at work? Are they the ones that drive people to complain, want more, and be less content and more self-centered? Or are you being compelled by the love and forgiveness of God, which has set you free from the bondage of the self-serving life and gives you a motivation that exceeds any company incentive? We trust that you are experiencing the compelling power of God working in your life. (PMC)

“You are from God….and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4