Undivided Loyalty – Hired by Heaven

It was one of those scrubbing bubbles moments. I was bent over the tub cleaning on a Saturday at the end of a long work week. It was 2009; a time, when recollecting certain difficulties, I refer to as “the year from h-e-double toothpicks.”

By now, I had worked in executive assisting for over two decades. Having newly engaged a Christian life coach in June of 2009, the coaching process was bubbling up to the surface desires and passion resident within me that would look different than my past years of employment. The combination of continuing to utilize my honed natural skills in the workplace, while this other spark was being fanned into a flame was cause for enough elbow grease to threaten scrubbing the gleam right off the tub’s enamel.

When I’m playing in the water, be it mopping my floors by hand, taking a shower, or scrubbing the bathtub down on my knees, often it just seems to be a cue to the Lord to step in front and center in my thoughts. During this particular tub scrub I heard Him say, not audibly, but as clearly in my mind as if someone had spoken it, “Nancy, will you be as loyal to me as your heavenly employer as you have been to your earthly employers?”

Well, if that isn’t enough to knock the rubber gloves off your hands! Holy Spirit must have emblazoned that question on my heart-brain, because over two years later I can recite it word for word just as He asked it. And it still stirs me…

That Saturday afternoon, it stopped me in mid-scrub and I had to truly consider His short but direct question. My answer was, “Lord, I want to be and Lord, You know.” Then and there, something was settled. It was as if a stamp marked Hired came down on my heart’s “passion application.”

A lot of mop buckets, hundreds of showers and ring around the tub scrubbings later, I have been walking out a new loyalty of an undivided heart that was swayed toward my heavenly hiring that day.

Holy Spirit’s question made me think back over the many executives or senior leadership I had been assistant to for well over twenty years. I had been loyal. The question’s phrasing was wrapped in a sense of God’s affirmation of all those years of loyal service as each one’s right-hand woman. But a little thrill began to rise up in me as my heart understood the Lord was bringing me to a new place in working with Him.

The Amplified version of Colossians 3:23 says, “whatever may be your task, work at it heartily (from the soul), as [something done] for the Lord and not for men…”

How many times have you heard that scripture quoted – in varying paraphrases – by ones who mean to encourage you to keep up the good – and frustrating – work? Recalling scripture’s admonition to mind is indeed something we need to be diligent about. Even our friend, David, often speaks in the Psalms of encouraging his heart in the Lord.

But what about when you’re told that because someone just hit the play button and the Christian-ese auto-recording came on? Isn’t there a solution to be found if one is working for the Lord? Is it possible there’s conversation to be had with the humanity referred to in this scripture? Is there a time of “come, let us reason together” needed with the Lord to get to the bottom of what ails us?

To be enabled in undivided loyalty to the Lord, our heavenly employer, means we must also remember the rest of the admonition:

 “…knowing [with all certainty] that it is from the Lord [and not from men] that you will receive the inheritance which is your [real] reward. [The One Whom] you are actually serving [is] the Lord Christ (the Messiah). For he who deals wrongfully will [reap the fruit of his folly and] be punished for his wrongdoing. And [with God] there is no partiality [no matter what a person’s position may be, whether he is the slave or the master]. Colossians 3:24-25 (AMP)

The Lord is an incredibly faithful Employer. But sometimes without a scrubbing bubbles moment, we remain caught in this temporal loyalty – or lack thereof – that is far below the heavenly “employment” that God has for his people.

I believe He has roles, functions, occupations and tasks readied for assignment as one by one individuals choose to live and work from an undivided heart of loyalty to Him alone.

Few will find themselves working in a silo when “hired by God,” for He is a God of community and relationship. But we find our work transformed when our loyalty is placed where it should be…

…toward the One who accepts passion applications and stamps them “Hired by Heaven.”

Loyal to my Lord,

Gracefully Free