by Os Hillman
A Catalyst for Revival
In his book The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, Dallas Willard notes, “There is truly no division between sacred and secular except what we have created. And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and the cause of Christ. Holy people must stop going into ‘church work’ as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.”8
That message is getting through as the Faith at Work movement sweeps across the land, and the potential is great for it to effect genuine revival across the culture. Dr. Peter Wagner, noted church growth expert and former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, also foresees this revival. In The Faith@Work Movement, Dr. Wagner notes, “I believe the workplace movement has the potential to impact society as much as the Reformation did. I have read 84 books on this movement and have 54 pages of handwritten notes. It is what the Spirit is saying to the churches today.”9
Below is a list of what I believe we can expect to see in the next five years as a result of God’s move among believers in the workplace:
• intentional training along with practical application in the local church to help men and women understand that their work is a ministry, along with practical application
• churches that equip and support Christians in their workplace callings
• a movement similar to Promise Keepers, with major events around the Faith at Work theme
• the integration of the Faith at Work message into the focus of the men’s movement
• a more proactive acceptance of Faith at Work issues on the part of corporations
• prayer making more of an impact in the workplace
• the transformation of cities, as those in authority become more active and passionate about their faith where they work
• a greater expression of faith in government agencies, the entertainment industry, educational institutions and corporate workplaces
• a greater number of people coming to Christ as major ministries embrace this move of God and integrate it into their operations
• an increased number of miracles in the marketplace because of Christians who are willing to move into arenas that the religious leaders have believed were taboo
• influential roles for pastors, who, although often last to embrace the movement, will find it to be the breakthrough they have been seeking
In other words, there is a revival coming; a revival that is returning us to our roots to understand what the Early Church understood—that work is a holy calling in which God moves to transform lives, cities and nations.
Indeed, we live in historic times. Using our collective influence in companies, ministries, colleges, the media and the local church, God has suddenly and providentially begun reaching the 9 to 5 Window. Let us not miss our opportunity to be part of this movement.
How About You?
1. Can you see the move of God in your workplace? Cite three areas where you have seen the activity of God in the work-place in recent years.
2. List three ways you might be able to start making a positive Christian impact in your workplace.
PART II:
BRINGING GOD’S POWER INTO YOUR WORKPLACE
CHAPTER 8
HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD—EVEN ON THE JOB
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me … My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
JOHN 1 0 : 1 4, 2 7
Tom Fox is a successful financial investment manager who heads up a workplace ministry in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, area. He used to be troubled when he heard Christians say, “The Lord told me … ” He certainly had never heard God speak to him like that. What is different about those people and me? he wondered. In the book of John, he had read that Jesus had said that His sheep hear His voice, but he didn’t understand how they could do that. His pursuit to answer that question began his quest to discover how to hear God’s voice himself.
Today, Tom realizes that God does speak and that we, as His children, can hear His voice. He has discovered how to hear God’s words of guidance in his daily life, which includes the day-to-day operations of his business, and he is teaching others how to hear God’s voice as well.
A friend of mine told me a story about an experience he had in Israel that demonstrates how sheep know their shepherd’s voice. He and his wife were visiting some of the famous biblical sites when they saw a group of shepherds and their flocks. They watched as three different shepherds put their sheep in the same pen for the night, and they wondered how in the world the shepherds would separate their sheep the next day, since none of them had any identifying marks on them.
My friend got up early the next morning to watch the shepherds gather their sheep. The first shepherd went over to the pen and called out to his sheep. One by one, his sheep (and only his sheep) filed out to follow him. The same thing happened with the other two shepherds. My friend said it was amazing to watch how only the shepherd’s sheep followed him while the others remained in the pen—and all because they recognized his voice. What a picture of Jesus’ words spoken centuries earlier.
Developing Intimacy With God
If Jesus is the good Shepherd and His sheep know His voice, how can we learn to hear Him speak? The answer is to develop intimacy with God first, so that our hearts are familiar enough with Him to be able to recognize His voice.
Ken Gire, in his book The Divine Embrace, describes the intimacy Jesus had with the disciples:
Before Jesus called the disciples to ministry, He called them to intimacy. Following came first; fishing came later. Before he called them to represent him, he called them to be with him. Jesus appointed the twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority over demons (see Mark 3:14-15). Before he sent them out he drew them close. He went out with them publicly so they could hear him teach and see him heal the sick and cast out demons (see Luke 6:12-19). At times, he withdrew from them privately so they could be with him without distraction (see Luke 9:10). Even as he was leaving the earth he promised he would always be with them (see Matthew 28:20). And later, Luke tells us, the credentials by which the disciples were recognized was that of “having been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).1
Developing an intimate relationship with God is vital if we want to experience a fruitful life that is led by His Spirit. Jesus longs to have daily fellowship with each of us because He truly loves us. He will help us fall in love with Him in response to His love.
My wife knows firsthand what it’s like to fall in love with God. At the age of 29, Angie was single and worked as an account executive in an advertising agency. Her personal life was filled with struggles. One day, her Christian boss led her in praying the sinner’s prayer. When she said “amen,” Angie thought, Whew! Now I know I’m going to heaven and I can get on with the rest of my life.
At first, she didn’t attend church, but eventually she began to do so. It was there she learned that Christianity is a lot more than a ticket to heaven. Reading in Matthew 7:8 that “everyone who asks receives,” she prayed and asked God for “a husband or someone to fill the gap.” She then saw the words, “Be still and know that I am God,” which she felt had been written just for her. She was hungry for more of God, and she spent every available moment reading her Bible and getting to know what God was like.
After a couple of years, the Lord had transformed her life to such a degree that she hardly recognized herself. However, she did not yet have a husband, so she asked God for the second time to send someone to her.
A few days later, she got a note from a friend with “Psalm 27:14” written at the bottom. Sensing that this was an answer to her request for a husband, she ran to her Bible to find out what it said
. Much to her dismay, the verse read: “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Angie was disappointed. However, when she mentioned her dismay to a friend at work, she received a response that surprised her. “You are where my wife was before she met me,” her friend said. “She realized she needed to fall in love with the Lord before she could love someone else.”
Angie pondered that strange comment for days. She realized that she had come to know God as her provider, but that there was quite possibly supposed to be more to the relationship. So she asked the Lord to teach her how to fall in love with Him, though she was not sure He would answer a request that was so personal.
A few days later, a friend called to invite her to go on a women’s retreat at the last minute. Through a series of events that were obviously orchestrated by God, Angie found herself at a three-day retreat with a wedding theme based on verses from Hosea 2:16, 19-20, which read:
“In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ … I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.”
That weekend, Angie was “wooed by the Lord.” At the end of the three days, she went to the altar and promised Him that she would never again ask for a husband. She told the Lord that she would let Him be her husband.
Over the next few months, Angie says, “Life with Him became so much sweeter than any relationship I’d had with a man.” The Lord began to show His love for her in tangible, even romantic, ways, and Angie felt content. In the beginning He had told her to be still and know that He was God. Seven fulfilling years later, He answered her prayer for a husband—me. By that time, she was so happy with her divine Husband that she was concerned about having a flesh-and-blood one; she didn’t want to lose her intimacy with God.
Angie claims, “Jesus remains the greatest romance of my life. He has taken a person who was not seeking Him in any way, shape or form and transformed her life in a way that is best described in 1 Peter 1:8: ‘Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.’”
Following the Voice of God
If we are going to experience the reality of intimacy with God, we must do it in our daily work lives. Let me share with you how God led one company to develop intimacy within the context of a working environment.
Julian Watts and Warren Sinclair, who operate an international company called Markets Unlocked in Guildford, England, have learned how important intimacy and the presence of God is to fulfilling His purposes for their business. Even the existence of their company is a testimony of the Lord’s loving pursuit, faithful guidance, grace-filled preparations and His plans, which surpass anything Julian and Warren could have thought or imagined.
Julian used to be a partner in the strategy consultancy practice of a global consultancy firm that worked with chief executives of multinational corporations. He gave money to his local church and managed a quiet time with the Lord every couple of weeks when he could fit it into his schedule. In contrast to the high-profile nature of his job, he always kept a low profile on Sundays, usually sitting at the back of the church.
In 1999, the Lord asked Julian if he would be willing to resign his partnership, leave the company and walk out into the unknown. Having spent 15 years single-mindedly achieving his goal to become a strategy consulting partner, Julian was now hearing the Lord’s voice saying, “What is more important to you—your career or Me?” He discussed this with his wife, and her brief response was simply, “We’ve just got to follow the Lord.” Julian resigned.
He was now without a job, and he had no idea what to do next. He spent the next few months attempting to discover what the Lord wanted him to do. Eventually, he founded an internet company that specialized in connecting businesses that wanted to buy and sell to each other. He set about building the new company, focusing on all the commercial fundamentals and occasionally praying for God’s help to get the task done.
Julian also established a charitable trust in which 10 percent of the company’s revenue would be deposited for distribution to Kingdom projects. He felt that God wanted him to pay salaries to other people in the company, but that he and his wife should not draw a salary until the company had started making contributions to the charitable trust. God was calling them to live by faith and to depend totally on Him, an experience that would profoundly change their Christian experience and relationship with the Lord.
The business grew very quickly, riding on the crest of the Internet wave. But the dotcom crash that swiftly followed in the year 2000 was brutal, and the company was all but wiped out. As things were getting worse, the non-Christians in the company left, and the remaining Christian directors started praying together—monthly at first, then, as things continued to worsen, weekly, and finally, as desperation set in, daily!
In the beginning, the directors’ prayers just had one focus—the list of things required to save the business. However, the more time they spent with the Lord, the more things began to change. Gradually, the list of urgent prayer requests gave way to simply worshiping God—seeking His face rather than His hand of provision. Now that they had a considerably smaller staff, they set aside a room in their office space for company prayer. Since their corporate communications director, Liz Jones, no longer had much to communicate about, she started spending more and more of her time in the prayer room, worshiping the Lord and praying for the company. The more the directors simply worshiped the Lord, the more they saw Him intervene. Throughout the rest of 2000 and into 2001, time after time, the Lord would provide just what was needed at the eleventh hour.
The directors’ daily routines soon began to change. At first, Julian started having his own personal time with the Lord from 5:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M. each day. Then, from 8:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M., all the company directors would meet to worship and pray. From 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. every weekday, Liz would worship and intercede for the company; and every Tuesday from 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M., everyone in the company would meet, along with local pastors and intercessors, to worship and intercede.
Liz was now the trailblazer for the rest of the company. During the hours she spent in the Lord’s presence, God started speaking to her about her personal identity as part of the Bride of Christ. The Lord then began to increasingly speak this message of intimacy with Him to other people in the company. They began to dare to believe that He viewed them as part of His beloved Bride, that He was passionately in love with them as believers, and that He had died so that they could commune with Him.
By late 2001, the company had passed through the wilderness of the dotcom crash. In the process, all the commercial aspects of the company had been completely transformed—including its business strategy, organization structure, people, operational processes, location and everything else. Experiencing God’s presence is now the heart and driving force of the company. Each workday, the directors’ personal and corporate prayer times are characterized by simply worshiping the Lord. After worshiping, the directors ask if anyone is hearing from the Lord. Based on that feedback, they intercede for whatever God has indicated.
Today, the directors see that the Lord is increasingly establishing their company’s corporate identity and defining characteristic as their corporate intimacy with Him. Markets Unlocked is now expanding rapidly around the world, with customers in over 80 countries.
How Does God Speak?
As we have already glimpsed in this chapter, God speaks to His children in many ways, primarily through the Bible, an audible voice, a “still, small voice” or thoughts, circumstances, prophetic words, and visions and dreams. Let’s examine each of these ways that God speaks to us.
The Bible
The Bible is loaded with principles to guide us in our daily lives and should always be the standard by
which we weigh all the other methods of hearing God’s voice. Spending time reading the Bible and knowing what it says will keep us from making mistakes as we discover the other ways that God speaks. The Bible is often referred to as the “living” Word of God. As you read your Bible, you can expect God to speak to you directly and personally through the words on the page.
God used the Bible to speak to me when I was still grappling with financial difficulties. I had already felt called to help men and women understand their workplace calling, but I had no idea how it would come to pass, and I certainly had no income to support it. I was in such a hard place that I was unable to pray, so instead of trying to do something in my own strength, I asked Angie to come over and pray with me (we weren’t married yet). Angie prayed for me and asked the Lord to give us wisdom.
Within a couple of minutes, she blurted out, “First Thessalonians 5:24!”
“What verse is that?” I asked. “I have no idea,” she replied. “It just popped into my head.”
I grabbed my Bible, looked it up and read, “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” We laughed. Could God be so personal? Could He care that much? That night, God encouraged me to be at peace with the situation in which I found myself. He never failed me once through the difficult years, and now we have a ministry to those in the workplace. God has brought it about.
