The Prophet in the Workplace

"The plan seemed good to Pharaoh and to all his officials. So Pharaoh asked them, "Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?"

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you."

To understand our mission in the workplace, it is vital that we first understand what God has given us to bring to it.

It began back in the Garden. You know the story. But you may not have noticed that Adam and Eve, after they sinned, were not evicted from Eden as punishment. They were evacuated from Eden as protection. Had they remained there as sinners, they still would have had access to the Tree of Life. And with a sin nature, incapable of not sinning, they eventually would have taken a bite of the other forbidden fruit and remained alienated from God forever.

When God placed us in the world, he placed us on the path home to him. He transformed Abram (exalted father) and Sarai (contentious) into Abraham (father of multitudes) and Sarah (princess) to give us a vision of our coming transformation from fallen man to redeemed children of God. He revealed the coming of the Messiah through Moses, son of an Israelite girl, who would leave the richest, most powerful kingdom to free God's people from centuries of slavery.

And we watched bug-eyed as another Israelite girl gave birth to the God of the earth he created, the earth we ruined, to live among the people condemned to suffer forever in hell for the sins we committed against him.

At twelve, he was already about his Father's business "in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."

Throughout his final years on earth, he described an amazing kingdom, greater than Rome, greater even than our entire world and its surrounding universe. Finally, we surrounded him as he was tortured and crucified—payment in full for every one of our sins.

And after he arose alive from his tomb and returned to his Father, we waited together, terrified, in an upper room until, one day, everything changed again.

God came back!

He baptized us in fire, and we became new beings, regenerated men and women, filled with the power of God Himself, equipped to take back dominion and make disciples of all men, to hear and to share the knowledge and wisdom of our Creator and Redeemer!

"To be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through His Spirit in our inner self, indwelling your innermost being and personality, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through our faith. Having been deeply rooted and securely grounded in love, we became fully capable of comprehending with all God's people the width and length and height and depth of His love, fully experiencing that amazing, endless love; we came to know practically, through personal experience, the love of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience, we were filled up throughout our being to all the fullness of God so that we may have the richest experience of God's presence in our lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself."

Just as God filled Bezalel and Oholiab

"with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills,"

he filled us to overflowing with powerful spiritual gifts and unparalleled intimacy with our Giver.

This is what God has given us to carry with us everyday into the workplace, into every community of mankind—not just the church!

The Greeks had an amazing word for it, pleroma (play'-ro-mah) which means "repletion or completion, what fills (as contents, supplement, copiousness, multitude), or what is filled (as container, performance, period)—which is put in to fill up, piece that filled up, fulfilling, full, fulness."

In short, it is the filling up of all things in schools and families, the military, the media and the marketplace, in arts, entertainment and government, as well as in his church.

"These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all."

How can we, how dare we, hide it at home or leave it behind in our churches? We have been ignited with it, we burn with it, and we are commissioned to ignite the world.

When the Lord called me into the marketplace, he reminded me that the Holy Spirit would lead and guide me. When I arrived, I asked Him how to engage. He told me to begin by building relationships and trust, and once I had done that, he would give me the next step.

One day, the businessman I had been working with asked me to come up with a topic to share with his C-suite team. So, I asked my Father, and he reminded me of something he had spoken to me years before while I was in the pharmaceutical industry.

"Work wise, not hard."

It was a smash hit! And afterward, they asked me to work with them to show them how to apply it to their industry. It became a five-year journey. We restructured the entire organization, and the Holy Spirit led me every step of the way.

In the final year, they instituted morning prayer for the executives, introduced a flexible work schedule for employees, raised salaries to meet the market rate, launched a philanthropy program for the less fortunate and scholarships for employee's children, paid time off for mission trips and provided donations to families whose children were being treated for cancer.

Company profits soared, people worked less, the workforce was more engaged and fewer people wanted to leave for other jobs because they worked in a peaceful, joyful environment. The Lord even moved on the heart of the CEO, and he and his entire family gave him their lives.

God has begun to change the church into what it has never been, and we are beginning to become what we were redeemed to be, in order to do what we were re-created to do.

I call that pleromising* our culture.

*The totality or fullness of the Godhead which dwells in Christ.