ARE YOU A WORKAHOLIC LEADER?

Leaders are often characterized as people who love their work.

For some, this love affair has caused them to make their work an idol. They worship work. It becomes all consuming - more important than anything else.

Sometimes, it even comes in the guise of doing “God’s work” along with subsistence work – you are either at church, in small groups, singing, teaching, administrating, managing the church's social network, and then also doing your own “work.” With that kind of schedule it is easy for relationships, reflection, reading and rest to suffer - to say nothing about your reverence for your Creator.

I've bowed to that idol - after all, it promised me success, fulfillment, happiness, wealth, power, and prestige. All lies. When "activity" became a God, it became a sin.

God gave humans “work” as a gift, and like all His gifts, the blessings of each gift are best realized when they are “given back” to Him. In our natural humanity, we want to accumulate them for ourselves. As the Apostle Paul reminds us when working do it “… with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.” Colossians 3:23

Yes, give it all you got - but not for you, for Him. And that's why God gave us the Sabbath. To rest from our work. He knew that work could consume us. He is to consume us. And I understand, that's not easily accomplished. What is visible is much easier to grasp than The One who is unseen.

The link following is to a story worth taking some time to read – it is the confession of a workaholic who once was practicing law in Oklahoma and suffered the consequences of working too long and too hard for the wrong reasons.

Read it then ask yourself:

Am I working for myself or for the glory of God?


Copyright (c) 2010 by P. Griffith Lindell