Lighten Your Work Life by Steven Vongchanh

We have had a lot of great responses to work related topics. A couple of the most popular responses we received from our "Champion Your Work Place" devotion was "My work environment is not like that," or "How do I do that?"

I believe the main issue of confusion is how do I testify at work or share my testimony. Many associate this word testimony, in as it relates to Christianity, as "their story" and how they came to believe. And with that idea of testimony, it is really hard to fit that into the work place.

Picture, if you will, a court hearing. There was a crime committed and there are a panel of witnesses. Some of these witnesses saw John Doe commit the crime. And some of the witnesses are there just to testify that they saw John Doe at location and therefore, place the suspect at the scene of the crime. What does that mean? That means your testimony does not have to go into a full account of how this baby: grew into a man:, used two fish and five loaves of bread to feed 5,000 people: ended up on a cross: and that some how makes your life better. No, your testimony and the light you shine at work can and should be much simpler than that. If your full "coming to Christ" story was a candy bar and you wanted to give it to someone, you wouldn't expect them to take the full bar and shove it in their mouth and start chewing, no you would expect them to break the bar off piece by piece. And we should develop ourselves to teach others and shine light, piece by piece.

So what does that look like? I run a sandwich shop. One of our expectations for our team members is that when a guest walks in, that everyone should stop what they are doing and help the guest or prepare their meal. One afternoon I was using our meat slicer when a guest walked in. One of our team members was wrapping up some meat I had prepared so he could store it in our refrigerator. We had two other team members assisting the guest and I took notice as the young man who was wrapping the meat, stopped, looked behind him to see the others assisting the guest then proceeded to the back of the store to store the meat. None of these actions were wrong, but I noticed an opportunity for a teaching moment so I seized it. As he came back to the front of the store I stopped him and asked what just happened. Oblivious to what I just witnessed, he had no idea what I was referring to. So as I began to recount of what had just transpired with the guest walking in he caught on and said that he felt there were enough team members to help the guest so he made the decision to store the meat and not help. Let me repeat that, he stopped and saw that there were enough team members to help the guest so he continued on his way. And there is where I shined some light.

I proceeded to tell him that something had prompted him to stop and take an account of what was needed in that situation. I then told him his actions were not wrong by any means. But then I told him that that small voice that prompted you to stop, look and maybe help, or maybe not help. If he were to take heed of that voice more often, not only would he do good things, but great things.

How many times have we heard that voice but talked ourselves out of serving someone else or saying something uplifting or encouraging? How many times do we see a situation and say oh there are other people doing or able to do a task that we ourselves are completely capable of doing?

The numbers are astounding with the responses of the work environment devotions. And it really goes to show that we want to shine our light for the world to see, but we just do not receive the practice or that we lack the courage to say something. I can testify to you that when the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do something and you open your mouth or move when he says move, you allow Him to work through you. And I know that as you learn to offer yourself in these situations, that you will receive blessing from your service, ie courage, strength, confidence that you can make a difference. What difference will you make today?