Work

Work as if it is God you are working for.  Colossians 3:23  "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men;  In a sermon on the eighth commandment "Thou shalt not steal", Bill Wolfson used this reference Colossians 3:23 in his sermon, and Ephesians 4:28.  Pastor Wolfson always gives me much to think about when I listen to his sermons. This verse hit home with me. I know there were times on the job I did pretty good and other times not so well. As I thought about this work as unto the Lord, how does that change my work habits? I have a difficulty finishing things, always have. I have a bathroom that still needs work, and my motivation has been terribly lacking. After hearing this sermon of Pastor Wolfson, I thought about this, what if I were doing this for God? On any job we do, would it change the quality of the work we are doing, if we realized that in all we do we are working for God. The Ephesians reference: "Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." Does this change our perspective on how we work? Remember this is on Thou shalt not steal. On my last job, I had a guy on my crew tell me, we are like firemen, we sit around and play cards until there is a fire and then we go to work. I did not have that philosophy, and I tried to get my crew to do things to help our project groups when things were slow. This man for one did not like that. As I think of this scripture, I think I was on the right track, I know the company liked me as a lead, my crew not so much. I started what our ECAT (Electrical Corrective Action Team) group called Leon's Look Ahead. We would take an airplane that had some new development on it that had not reached the factory and compare continuations from one Production Illustration drawing to the next and we would find errors on the drawings. We would initiate fixes and have the drawings corrected before the airplane hit the factory. The reason it worked so well, it saved the planners time and money on their jobs because if it became necessary to fix the airplane in the factory, it would sometimes require removals and re-installation of other equipment to fix the problem. It wasn't a hit with the group owning the drawing, because they had to stop what they were working on and fix these previous drawings. In the overall picture it saved the company time and money. I received a $500 award for this "Leon's Look Ahead". This is in the spirit of not stealing and working as unto the Lord. Quality in the things we do also fits the spirit of this message. I haven't always though about things in this light, but I think it may help me in my motivation. Even in retirement, I need to find things to do as unto the Lord. I try to be involved at church, Nehemiah's Men is one of those things.  Some of our retired men come to church to perhaps paint a wall or replace light bulbs, replace a stage curtain, or what ever we can find to do. When we do not give our employer eight for eight, we are stealing from him. When an employer does not give us a fair wage, he is stealing from us. Work as unto the Lord, perhaps it will help. God Bless, LVZ.