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How To Be An Employee of God (based on the 10 Commandments) 1. Trust in God only Trust in no one but GOD. People will disappoint you. God created you and has a wonderful plan for your life. He is too good to do wrong, and too wise to make a mistake. Let His peace abide in you. (Proverbs 3:5-6) 2. Worship God only Don't make your career, your company, or your boss a god. If you do, you will provoke Him to jealously and will end up fighting Him. In fact, He may hinder you from achieving what you want until you are broken of the idolatry. (Exodus 20:5) A "god" is whatever people put first in their lives... many of us worship other gods by building our lives around something other than the one true God. If your greatest desire is for friendships, popularity, or money, you are devoting yourself to something other than God. To put God first, 1. recognize what is taking His place in your life; 2. renounce this "substitute god" as unworthy of such devotion; 3. ask God for forgiveness; 4. restructure your priorities so that love for God is the motive for everything you do, and 5. examine yourself daily to be sure you are giving God first place. 3. Use God's Name Reverently Don't swear!! Clean words come out of a clean heart! If your co-workers know that you are a Christian, but they hear the Lord's Name used in vain, or cursing and swearing from your mouth, you will give the appearance of being a hypocrite. Matthew 15:17-19 4. Work Six Days and Rest on the Seventh Before you beg for more vacation time, ask yourself a few questions, "Do you honor the Sabbath?" God has already given you 52 days of time off that equates to seven weeks. "Are your expectations for work, vacation, and retirement realistic?" By resting one day a week, you can avoid burnout. Genesis 3:17-19 5. Respect and Obey Your Boss You should respect and obey your boss, because you don't know what it's like to be in their shoes. Plus, your ultimate boss is the Lord. Serve Him faithfully on the job, and He will bless you. However, if your boss commands you to do some thing illegal or immoral, you must make a stand and obey God rather than man. Ephesians 6:5-8 6. Protect and Respect Human Life Emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual manipulation, abuses and violence have no place in the workplace...or any place. You do not have the right to use and abuse your boss, co-workers, employees, customers, or suppliers. 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 7. Be True to Your Spouse If you are not getting the kind of attention that you feel you deserve at home, it's common to seek it with someone at work. Honor your wedding vows by avoiding company romances! They are very tempting, very real, and very common. They are also very wrong and very destructive. Matthew 19:8-9 8. Do Not Take What Belongs to Others Stealing at work can take many forms. You can choose to steal materials, money, time, productivity, and joy from your employer and others. Do not remove your integrity by stealing. II Corinthians 7:1-2 9. Do Not Lie About Others Do not fabricate stories about your boss, co-workers, and spread gossip for the sake of company politics. You are here to be the salt and the light, not the pepper and the darkness!! Truth always rises to the surface, and eventually you will be ashamed and rebuked if you lie. 2 Peter 2:10-13 10. Be Satisfied With What You Have Contentment doesn't mean that you cannot pursue God-given goals, but it does mean that you are content with what He has provided you with, day after day. Contentment is a rare quality in today's culture, but it is extremely liberating! Materialism, striving for rank, backstabbing, and discontent lead to emotional, mental, financial, and spiritual bondage. I Timothy 6:6-11 GRIEF and GRACE One day a while back, a man, his heart heavy with grief, was walking in the woods. As he thought about his life this day, he knew many things were not right. He thought about those who had lied about him back when he had a job. His thoughts turned to those who had stolen his things and cheated him. He remembered family that had passed on. His mind turned to the illness he had that no one could cure. His very soul was filled with anger, resentment and frustration. Standing there this day, searching for answers he could not find, knowing all else had failed him, he knelt at the base of an old oaktree to seek the one he knew would always be there. And with tears in his eyes, he prayed: "Lord -- You have done wonderful things for me in this life. You have told me to do many things for you, and I happily obeyed. Today, you have told me to forgive. I am sad, Lord, because I cannot. I don't know how. It is not fair Lord. I didn't deserve these wrongs that were done against me and I shouldn't have to forgive. As perfect as your way is Lord, this one thing I cannot do, for I don't know how to forgive. My anger is so deep Lord, I fear I may not hear you, but I pray that you teach me to do this one thing I cannot do -- Teach me To Forgive." As he knelt there in the quiet shade of that old oak tree, he felt something fall onto his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw something red on his shirt. The oak tree turned into a tall, rough wood stake in the ground. He raised his head and saw two feet held to the wood with a large spike through them. He raised his head more, and tears came to his eyes as he saw Jesus hanging on a cross. He saw spikes in His hands, a gash in His side, a torn and battered body, deep thorns sunk into His head. Finally he saw the suffering and pain on His precious face. As their eyes met, the man's tears turned to sobbing, and Jesus began to speak. "Have you ever told a lie?" Yes, Lord. "Have you ever been given too much change and kept it?" Yes, Lord. "Have you ever taken something from work that wasn't yours?" Yes, Lord. "Have you ever sworn, using my Father's name in vain?" Yes, Lord, he sobbed... As Jesus asked many more times, "Have you ever?", he could only answer Yes, Lord. Then Jesus turned His head from one side to the other, and the man felt something fall on his other shoulder, it was the precious, Holy blood of Jesus, Yashua, the only begotten Son of The Most High, God, Yahweh, I AM. The sinner looked back up, his eyes met those of Jesus, and there was love the man had never known before. "Lord, I love You and I need You, come into my heart, today. For without You I can do nothing." If God brings you to it - He will bring you through it. Christmas Program! My husband and I had been happily (most of the time) married for five years but hadn't been blessed with a baby. I decided to do some serious praying and promised God that if he would give us a child, I would be a perfect mother, love it with all my heart and raise it with his word as my guide. God answered my prayers and blessed us with a son. The next year God blessed us with another son. The following year, he blessed us with yet another son. The year after that we were blessed with a daughter. My husband thought we'd been blessed right into poverty. We now had four children, and the oldest was only four years old. God had entrusted me with four children and I didn't want to disappoint him. I tried to be patient the day the children smashed two dozen eggs on the kitchen floor searching for baby chicks. I tried to be understanding when they started a hotel for homeless frogs in the spare bedroom, although it took me nearly two hours to catch all twenty-three frogs. When my daughter poured ketchup all over herself and rolled up in a blanket to see how it felt to be a hot dog, I tried to see the humor rather than the mess. I did keep my promise to raise them in the Word of God. I knew I was missing the mark just a little when I told my daughter we were going to church to worship God, and she wanted to bring a bar of soap along to "wash up" Jesus, too. Something was lost in the translation when I explained that God gave us everlasting life, and my son thought it was generous of God to give us his "last wife." My proudest moment came during the children's Christmas pageant. My daughter was playing Mary, two of my sons were shepherds and my youngest son was a wise man. This was their moment to shine. My five-year-old shepherd had practiced his line, "We found the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes." But he was nervous and said, "The baby was wrapped in wrinkled clothes." My four-year-old "Mary" said, "That's not 'wrinkled clothes,' silly. That's dirty, rotten clothes." A wrestling match broke out between Mary and the shepherd and was stopped by an angel, who bent her halo and lost her left wing. I slouched a little lower in my seat when Mary dropped the doll representing Baby Jesus, and it bounced down the aisle crying, "Mama-mama." Mary grabbed the doll, wrapped it back up and held it tightly as the wise men arrived. My other son stepped forward wearing a bathrobe and a paper crown, knelt at the manger and announced, "We are the three wise men, and we are bringing gifts of gold, common sense and fur." The congregation dissolved into laughter, and the pageant got a standing ovation. "I've never enjoyed a Christmas program as much as this one," Father Brian laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. "For the rest of my life, I'll never hear the Christmas story without thinking of gold, common sense and fur." "My children are my pride and my joy and my greatest blessing," I said as I dug through my purse for an aspirin.
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