Lesson 11 of 11 · Chapter: Witness

Words and Works

Read time: about 8 minutes · Skill: being salt and light where words and works meet

This is the final lesson. Ten chapters have reframed your work as holy ground. This one tells you what that work finally says, and the surprise is how much of your witness is done before you ever open your mouth. Your good works are as important as your words.

The story that frames the chapter

A Christian woman in Chapell's congregation worked as a bank teller. At Christmas she gave her coworkers small devotional books. As far as she could tell, nothing happened. The heavens did not open. No one fell to their knees. About six years later, a young woman approached her: "Do you remember me? I was a substitute teller the day you gave out those devotionals. And after reading it, I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior."

Two remarkable things sit in that story. First, the Lord keeps working behind the scenes long after you cannot see what he is doing. Second, the teller told Chapell honestly, "What surprised me even more was that God used me. I was not walking very closely with the Lord in those days." Remember that. You do not have to be a perfect witness to be powerfully used by God.

God's promises outweigh our problems

Jesus frames the whole chapter from the Sermon on the Mount:

If you witness at work, there will be problems. Running crosscurrent to a culture always creates turbulence. Chapell points out that the American Library Association's list of most-challenged books has included The Holy Bible, for its "religious viewpoint." At the office the currents are concrete: what if everyone pads expense reports and you refuse? What if peers cover up quality control issues and you will not? A man once told Chapell, "If I don't go along with what others are doing, I will likely be fired simply for doing what is right." Jesus is not surprised. He promises that our problems are never greater than God's promises.

Three promises, specifically. First, blessing: the Lord bless and keep you, make his face shine upon you (Num. 6:24-26). There was only one occasion in history when God forsook one of his children, when Jesus took your sin on the cross and the sky went dark, so the Father's face could shine on you forever. He will not turn away when others do. Second, the kingdom, and note the present tense: "theirs IS the kingdom" (Matt. 5:10). His rule and resources are already being applied to your good. Third, good company: when you suffer for standing, Jesus says pull up a chair with Jeremiah, Daniel, Stephen, Joseph, Paul, and himself. You are not strange, and you are not alone.

You are the light on the hill

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount on a gentle slope above the Sea of Galilee. Around that sea rise several hills, and the most prominent is the Arbel, crowned by a village. At night, sailors on the sea navigated by its light. Another village, Capernaum, sat at a major crossroads of the Roman world; travelers found it by the light on its shore. So when Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden," he was pointing at real lights his hearers used to find their way home.

That is what your witness is. People on land or sea who need to know Christ navigate by the light you shine from your hill, your workplace. In the early 1990s a delegation offered Chinese president Jiang Zemin a Gospel of John. He agreed to read it, saying, "When I was a little child, the nurse who took care of me was a Christian. I will read it for her sake." In time, the pressure on Chinese Christians eased, and Christianity flourished there as it had not for centuries. Decades earlier, God had said to a young Christian nurse, "You can be salt and light to this boy." Her quiet workplace witness may have changed the course of a nation. A little salt goes a long way in the Father's recipe.

Your works are as important as your words

Now the sentence the whole course has been building toward. Jesus does not say, "let them hear your good sermons." He says, "Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father" (Matt. 5:16). Your works are as important as your words.

If you quote Bible verses but turn in shoddy work, you destroy your witness. If you are perpetually late but excuse yourself because you were "at a Bible study," you destroy your witness. The novelist Dorothy Sayers put it with her usual bite: the Church tells a carpenter not to get drunk and to come to church, when what it should tell him is that "the very first demand his religion makes is that he should make good tables." No crooked table legs ever came out of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. No piety in the worker compensates for work that is untrue to its own craft.

So do your work with excellence, because the quality of your work is itself the witness. When coworkers ask why you care so much, why your integrity holds, why you go against the current on ethics, you have your opening: "The Lord let me work here. He gave me these talents. I'm obligated to use them in ways that honor him." In 1989, United Airlines Flight 811 lost its cargo door at 22,000 feet, ripping open the fuselage. The pilot, Captain David Cronin, brought the crippled plane home with thirty-eight years of experience. Asked later what he did when the door blew, he said: "I said a prayer for them momentarily, and got back to business." That is the whole chapter. Pray, and then do your work with the skill of someone who serves another King.

Make it real this week

Witness gets concrete when you name the coworker and the craft. These answers save in this browser.

Go deeper

Where you go from here

This is the end of the chapter spine, but not the end of your work. Look at what you now carry into the office on Monday. You are an image bearer on a vocation, not an employee on a grind. You profess Christ in practices, products, and sacrifice. You adorn him with integrity when it costs. Your paycheck has a purpose for mercy, family, and ministry. Your success blesses God, measured by faithfulness, not accumulation. You lead with humble courage, choosing his purpose over your advantage. You carry his glory into the grit of every task, priestly all week. You refuse to be surprised by evil, and lead every wound to Calvary. You lead toward flourishing with admonish, encourage, help, and patience. You keep it all in balance through awe, because God builds the house. And now you let your words and works together be salt and light.

The desk, the screen, the meeting. Each is holy ground when Christ's name is on it. Go work, and let your light shine.