Hard Work Brings Blessings

If you want God to bless you, start by excelling at the things He gives you to do.

 

A reader from Canada asks whether hard work brings blessings or just the grace of God:

Does God want us to work really hard and achieve excellence in our workplace? Or does He want us to work and wait upon His blessings or timing for everything?

This is an important question with an important answer. It should impact the way each of us works every day.

 Yes, God wants us to work really hard and achieve excellence. He blesses us according to the faithfulness and diligence that we’ve shown. 

Proverbs Says Hard Work Brings Blessings

God created work, and He wants us to work hard to help others and earn the things that we need. Prov. 10:4 was written by Solomon, the richest man ever to live, and it clearly spells out  where wealth comes from:

Lazy hands make for poverty,
    but diligent hands bring wealth.

God created us for work, and He intends for all of us to work hard. He promises to provide for us. And this scripture teaches that His main way of providing for our needs is through our work. Hard work brings blessings

Christians should be shining examples of hard work and excellence in the marketplace. No matter what kind of work we’re doing.

Christians should be shining examples of hard work and excellence in the marketplace. tweet this!

Waiting on God’s Blessing

There’s another important part of this question: the idea of “waiting on God’s blessing.” A lot of people get confused about this idea.

Some people teach that if you believe the right things and have enough faith to wait for God, He’ll eventually bless you with material wealth. But this is a very incomplete view of scripture and the nature of God.

The Bible does teach that God wants to bless us with abundance, and that this blessing includes meeting our worldly needs. But as we’ve just discussed, the primary way that God does this is through our work. Hard work brings blessings.

Waiting on God should should go hand in hand with our hard work. tweet this!

There are times in the Bible where God met someone’s material needs through supernatural intervention. In the story of the Elisha and the widow’s oil, for example, God provided oil and flour to the widow when she was at the very end of her resources.

It’s okay for to ask God for help when we find ourselves in dire straits. But that’s not the way that God wants us to live each day.

Instead, our waiting on God should should go hand in hand with our hard work. Go to work and do everything He has called you to do there. Then wait on Him to bless your hard work according to His promises. 

Don’t Become a Slave

There’s one more important thing to keep in mind on this topic. Hard work brings blessings, but if you go overboard, you can become a slave to your work.

If you work hard enough, you’ll start to find success in your career. And when that happens, you may be tempted to double down. You might work longer hours and take on extra projects in order to make even more money.

There are times in life when it may be appropriate to work long hours, But you don’t want to make a habit of it. Money can trap us in bondage if we’re not careful, and one of the ways that it can happen is by making us slaves to work.

Hard work brings blessings, but if you go overboard, you can become a slave to your work. tweet this!

If your work (and the money you earn from it) ever begins to come between you and the people you love, or you start to draw your identity from your work in unhealthy ways, you may have gone so far that you’re neglecting God’s will for you in other areas of  your life.

It’s important to be careful and be balanced. But most of all, be diligent. God wants you to work, and He wants to make a difference in the world through your work. He promises to bless you when you spend your time blessing others.