Send Me!

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
(the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6:8)

Bill Wallace didn't trade his scalpel for a pulpit when he felt God's call to China. Wallace, a skilled surgeon with a promising career ahead of him in the States, took his place in a long line of faithful servants who answer when God asks "Who will go?" His vocation served as both his worship of God and his witness to the work of Christ. Wallace eventually died at the hands of Chinese Communists who seized control of that ancient land in 1951. At great risk to themselves, the people he served built a monument at his grave with Wallace's favorite Scripture, "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain."

Thousands of Christians, thousands, are following in Wallace's footsteps...carrying their vocations into a new mission field: the workplace. Like Wallace, their tools of the trade are the skills they bring to their office, to their construction site, to their nurse's station and a thousand other places. Their effectiveness is enhanced by their competency, by an unwavering commitment to integrity, and by an earnest desire to honor God with their labors and to bring the message of grace to people who matter to them...their co-workers. These working servants of the Lord of the Marketplace are touching many lives.

Like Elijah when he grew weary and frightened (crying "I alone am left"), we often think of ourselves as an island of faith in a sea of unbelief. It wasn't true then (Obadiah rescued 100 prophets himself), and it's not true now.

We are everywhere. We are scientists and writers, housekeepers and physicians, attorneys and truck drivers. We are nurses and entrepreneurs, laborers and carpenters, programmers and actors, garbage collectors and historians. From Wading River to Windham, from Minnesota to Malaysia, from Texas to Maine, we see and hear the evidences of faithful servants in the marketplace. And those are merely the ones we see from our vantage point! Were we to stand up all at once in the places where we serve, we could likely look to our left and our right and find ourselves surrounded by the faithful. Name the vocation and it's likely we've already got it covered.

What we need now is a unity of purpose! What we need is prayer for each other, and prayer for our workplaces.

A symphony of revival has started the strains of its performance, and the melody of grace is sweeping across more places than we realize. Now is not the time for us to be discouraged. Now is not the time for us to surrender to the hopelessness that renders us useless. Now is not the time for us to bicker over what we don't have in common. This is our moment to set our hands to our labors and our hearts to prayer. On Sunday evenings our hearts should be knit by our prayers for the fields we go to on Mondays. God will hear the prayers of His people. How much sweeter would that sound be to His ears when raised by thousands of us as we call Him on the eves of our work weeks to make His Spirit known by the very way we do our jobs?

Nearly a century ago, men and women visited college campuses challenging students to find their place in the mission field. We should echo that call today, beckoning a new generation of young people to new places of service, as tax collectors, as miners, as professional athletes, as CEO's, and a hundred other vocations; each chosen not for its prospects for prosperity but for a vision of God's love for the people in that field, indeed, His love for the very work itself. When they get there, we should be waiting for them, settling them into a field we're already sowing.

When God asks "Who will go", let it be you. Let it be me.

A WORK PRAYER

Lord God, strengthen and uphold the thousands of men and women who operate as workplace missionaries already. Expand my own understanding of your work-related call on my life, and please make sure that it is fulfilled.   Amen.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. "We are everywhere." Is your workplace a mission field? What does that mean?
2. Are you prayerfully connected with your Christian coworkers? If not, how can you get started?

This WorkLife SwitchTOOL was written by Randy Kilgore, Senior Writer and Workplace Chaplain for  Desired Haven Ministries   Used by permission. All rights reserved. Content edited and distributed by WorkLife.org for non-profit educational purposes.

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