How to Climb the Corporate Ladder

00:00:00.000 | Well, how does one climb the corporate ladder all for the sake of the gospel? Today's question

00:00:09.360 | comes from a podcast listener named Dan with a very good question. "Pastor John, thank

00:00:13.480 | you for the podcast. I recently heard the episode on work and how we glorify God at

00:00:17.120 | our jobs. I want to glorify God in all things, and my question is more detailed. I know that

00:00:22.840 | I can glorify God in my work. I also know that work is my mission field. The question

00:00:27.860 | is really how do I balance my earthly work with eternal work? How do I balance climbing

00:00:33.360 | the corporate ladder at the same time pursuing relationships and caring for the lost? As

00:00:38.580 | a Christian, do I simply say that God will take care of me and I don't need to focus

00:00:41.860 | on climbing the ladder at all? Or as a Christian, is it glorifying to God for me to be great

00:00:47.480 | at my job and to get promoted? Then how do I also not forget about reaching out to others?

00:00:54.800 | How do I find balance in this tension, Pastor John?"

00:00:58.520 | In one sense, it's presumptuous of me to try to answer this question, because I've never

00:01:06.100 | had a long-term, full-time job other than teaching and preaching. There were summers

00:01:14.640 | when I worked full-time digging swimming pools one summer, bagging groceries one summer,

00:01:20.280 | working in the shipping department filling boxes one summer, working as a water safety

00:01:24.780 | instructor at a camp one summer, being a pole holder at a surveying company one summer.

00:01:30.080 | But I never felt any sense of long-term calling to any of those, nor any hope of advancement.

00:01:37.920 | They just were filling the time, putting money in the bank so I could get married someday,

00:01:42.800 | maybe, and get myself through school. None of those jobs lasted longer than several months,

00:01:48.220 | so I'm just not experienced in Dan's situation, but I assume he knows that, since he's still

00:01:57.520 | asking me, asking the Bible guy for counsel. So, all right, let's go for it. And you can

00:02:05.040 | decide whether what I'm saying is coming out of a spiritual ivory tower that has no use

00:02:11.160 | for real world, or whether it might be helpful. So it seems to me that the challenge Dan is

00:02:16.960 | facing, and that all of us face, is the challenge of how to live a fully integrated—and that's

00:02:24.720 | the key word—integrated Christ-honoring life. So Dan poses the question in terms of

00:02:30.080 | balance. Balancing earthly work and eternal work. Balancing efforts to become excellent

00:02:36.160 | in the vocational tasks of climbing the ladder, and excellence in loving people, and evangelizing

00:02:43.040 | people, and caring about people. And really, what he's asking, I think, and what we all

00:02:49.680 | want, is a life that is so integrated with Christ as the agent of the integration that

00:02:58.000 | we don't feel pulled in separate directions, right? So we're not standing between saying,

00:03:04.000 | "Oh, I feel both," but rather the whole thing feels cohesive, it feels whole, it feels like

00:03:10.000 | there's integrity to all the pieces of my life. That's what we're after. So let me

00:03:16.560 | suggest that the real challenge for Dan, and people in the work world like that, is probably

00:03:27.760 | asking the question of, "What is required in my specific vocational tasks that every

00:03:38.320 | unbeliever as well as believer has to do?" The challenge then is that these tasks can

00:03:45.680 | feel not very distinctly Christian, and therefore not fully integrated into a coherent life

00:03:54.160 | where tasks and relationships are just pulled apart from each other. So that's what we

00:04:01.040 | want to try to move beyond. And the way I've tried to approach it is that there are questions

00:04:08.800 | to ask, or reflections, or ponderings on our specific vocational tasks that might begin

00:04:19.760 | to transform those, what he calls "earthly work," into something more coherent with

00:04:27.760 | the rest of our life. So I'm going to name about ten of these. Just name them real quick.

00:04:35.360 | And maybe this will help Dan convert earthly work, so-called, into the obedience of faith

00:04:44.640 | and an honor to Jesus so that everything feels more coherent. So here we go. Number one,

00:04:50.480 | ponder the ultimate aim. And I'm going to emphasize the key word each time, it's a

00:04:55.600 | key word, "aim." Ponder the ultimate aim of the tasks and the less-than-ultimate

00:05:01.520 | aims and see if you can state those aims in terms of specifically Christian or Christ-exalting

00:05:08.160 | outcomes for the company. Number two, ponder how the quality of your work relates to the

00:05:18.240 | nature of God and your calling as a Christian. Can you see the quality, the excellence of

00:05:23.680 | your work, not merely in a worldly way, but in a Christian way of testimony, not just

00:05:28.800 | a worldly way of advancement? Number three, ponder your tasks as forms of service. Think

00:05:37.520 | them through in the category of how they serve other people, both in their outcomes and in

00:05:43.520 | the way you do them. Christians are fundamentally servants of others. We count others more significant

00:05:49.680 | than ourselves, that is, we count them worthy of our service. Number four, ponder your tasks

00:05:55.920 | in relationship to the value of honesty or integrity. How will absolute allegiance to

00:06:03.360 | the truth shape the way you do what you do, and how is that rooted in allegiance to Jesus?

00:06:12.880 | Number five, ponder the relationship between the tasks you do and the spirit of thankfulness

00:06:20.160 | to God, simple thankfulness that you can just do the tasks. Linger over this question long

00:06:28.720 | enough so that you can feel the specifics of how you're thankful for your thinking and

00:06:35.120 | thankful to God for your feeling and thankful for your skills and thankful for your hands

00:06:40.720 | and thankful for your eyes and your ears and the gift of this job and a dozen other things.

00:06:47.120 | Let a spirit of thankfulness permeate everything about the tasks that you do. Number six, ponder

00:06:55.680 | how humility will mark the way you do your tasks. Think through what humility would look

00:07:02.400 | like in your particular role and in the tasks that you do. Number seven, pray earnestly

00:07:09.200 | that the Lord will give you joy in your work, not just alongside your work in other things

00:07:15.360 | you like to do, but in your work, in the very tasks, in the relationships involved in those

00:07:21.760 | tasks. Ask the Lord that your joy in Him would thoroughly saturate all you do. Number eight,

00:07:30.560 | ask the Lord to give you—this is one of the hardest ones—utter freedom from murmuring

00:07:38.800 | and complaining in your tasks. In Philippians 2, 14 and 15, Paul says that to be free from

00:07:46.160 | murmuring makes Christians shine like stars in the night sky of this world. It is so rare.

00:07:55.520 | Number nine, ponder how manifestations of patience can permeate all that you do. In other words,

00:08:04.880 | let patience be woven through all your responses to the tasks you have to perform and all the people

00:08:12.640 | that you're involved with in those tasks. And number ten, ponder how you can actually see

00:08:21.040 | the nature of God, the aspects of the glory of God, in the very kind of work that you are doing.

00:08:32.880 | God is the maker, the creator of molecules of everything you handle. He's the creator of

00:08:41.840 | mass and grammar. He's the creator of all human capacities. Nothing that you deal with is foreign

00:08:52.320 | to God but speaks something of God. There's a language out there to be read, and God is the

00:09:01.520 | meaning of the language. Develop the ability to read God in all your tasks. And finally,

00:09:10.800 | I could call it number 11, or I could say it's the sum of all of them. Ponder how everything you do

00:09:20.000 | is an expression of love—love to God, love to people. So here they are. Aim, quality, service,

00:09:28.000 | honesty, thankfulness, humility, joy, not murmuring, patience, seeing, love. And my guess is

00:09:36.960 | that if you devote yourself, Dan, to this kind of prayer and pondering, you will find that the

00:09:45.840 | earthly work, the tasks, the so-called vocational, ordinary, secular tasks that you do are not as

00:09:56.800 | distinct as you think they are from the eternal work and all the relationships around you.

00:10:03.120 | Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Pastor John. You really were a poll holder for a survey company?

00:10:08.720 | Yeah. I remember the summer of '68. I wrote poems about it,

00:10:13.440 | standing on a railroad track looking, and the railroad track happened to be the keys on the

00:10:20.240 | piano, and this field of wheat, I think it was, had a river, and the river shaped the field just

00:10:32.240 | like a grand piano, and the railroad was the keyboard. And they sent me down this railroad

00:10:38.240 | till I was almost out of sight. Go down there and hold that thing. And I was standing there all by

00:10:44.000 | myself while they were a mile away shooting this thing, and I thought, "This is gorgeous!"

00:10:49.680 | Yeah, I did that.

00:10:50.400 | The poll holding poet. The poetry surprises no one. It's the poll holding that does. Thank you,

00:10:57.760 | Pastor John. And maybe someone listening right now is on a surveyor's crew. And if so, thank you for

00:11:02.800 | listening to the podcast at work and for passing the time with us. Thank you for listening to all

00:11:08.160 | of you. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. You never know what you're going to

00:11:12.160 | learn about Pastor John on these things. You can stay current with our episodes through your

00:11:16.400 | favorite podcast app, and every episode is now published also on YouTube. You can go to our feed

00:11:22.880 | to check it out at youtube.com/desiringgod. And you can subscribe there. If you're listening to

00:11:28.480 | this through YouTube and you already know how all this works already, just be sure to subscribe to

00:11:32.960 | the channel for the latest content from Desiring God. And if you have a question for Pastor John,

00:11:37.360 | send it to us through our podcast homepage, desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:11:44.560 | Well, we're going to close out the week talking again about doomsday preparations.

00:11:48.400 | It's a follow-up question to ask, "Isn't preparing for the worst possible catastrophe

00:11:54.400 | like a nuclear apocalypse? Isn't that an act of a man's love and service to his wife and his family?"

00:12:01.440 | It's a twist on the conversation that we had earlier. And I will pose it to you, Pastor John,

00:12:05.680 | next time we meet. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Friday.

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How to Climb the Corporate Ladder — for Jesus’s Sake

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