Your Successful Career Starts with a Prayer

Whether you are working in a field that you love, or toiling away in a job that you don’t really care for, there’s a good chance that you want to experience success.  Naturally nobody ever sets out to fail; we all want our labor to end successfully.  But did you know there’s a way that you can make sure that your plans will succeed?

As we looked at last week, success doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.  But when you’re ready to experience success, this is how it is done.

Your First Step to Experiencing Success

Every morning, before I get started for the day, I say a prayer.  I sit down at my computer and I pull out a small piece of paper.  On that paper I have 5 items listed out that I pray for:

• Give the business back to God.
• Ask for wisdom in making decisions.
• Ask for forgiveness for not following His will.
• Ask for strength to fight temptation.
• Offer every action as a sacrifice to Him.

This prepares me mentally for the day ahead.  And it helps me to keep the right frame of mind.  But how does this tie into having a successful career?  More on that in a little bit.  Let’s take a look at each of the requests that I offer up in the morning.

Give the business back to God.

I am not on this earth because of what I have done.  I am here because God has a job for me and a place for me.  I am working in His business to help bring glory to him.

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” Proverbs 19:21.

When I am running my own business, I make a lot of plans.  Many of them fail because my focus is in the wrong place.  However, by giving the business back to God (the prayer is my reminder to myself every day that I am working for Him), now it is His business.  If it fails, it’s because He has other plans; if it succeeds it’s because He has allowed it to succeed.

What a relief to me!  I work hard to make sure His business grows and prospers, but it’s not about me and not up to me anymore.  God tells me, “I got this.”

Ask for wisdom in making decisions.

God is in control and will allow the business to succeed or fail depending on what His plan is.  But that doesn’t mean that I can just run around doing whatever I please.  If I do, then that means the business will indeed fail.

What is required of me now is to pursue excellence in everything that I do.  Ask for Him to guide me in my decisions so that I can use discernment and wisdom and ensure that I am doing all that I can to portray the Lord’s business in a positive light.

“Wealth is the crown for the wise; the efforts of fools yields only foolishness.” Proverbs 14:24.

My job is to work hard, and make sound business decisions for God’s company.

Ask forgiveness for not following His will.

From the time we are children, those of us that have grown up in the church have heard it over and over again.  We are to seek God’s will, do what God wants, be in His will, and other variations of the same thing.  But how do we even know what that is?  It seems so abstract and vague.

Really, it’s not that vague.  It’s not that hard to grasp either.  Following His will is doing what makes God smile.  When I sit down at the computer, am I wasting company time scrolling through Facebook, or am I being productive?  Am I engaging in arguments online, or am I furthering relationships?  Am I visiting sites that host repulsive content, or am I setting my mind on things that are holy?  When you truly analyze your thoughts and actions, it’s not hard to see which glorify God, and which cause embarrassment.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8.

Ask for strength to fight temptation.

There are thousands of distractions that are thrown at us each and every day.  Some of those distractions are pretty innocuous.  For instance, I’m working on a project and a light bulb burns out.  Of course I should finish the project and then tend to the little matters, but sometimes I welcome the break.  That’s not the temptation that I’m talking about here.

We all have those sins that are our pet sins.  The ones that we keep going back to time after time and then we feel guilty, but for some reason we can’t seem to overcome them.  There are some that struggle with letting trashy language slip out of their mouth.  There are those that struggle with lust or pornography.  Some struggle with greed.  Others deal with gambling.  There are those who can’t overcome feelings of hatred.  Others have physical addictions to substances.  These sins creep in, and they will overtake us if we don’t have a plan.

“So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace…” 2 Timothy 2:22.

In Genesis we read the story of Joseph, who when tempted to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, he literally fled.  But he made the resolve to flee long before the temptation came up.

I pray for strength to maintain that resolve that I have committed to, long before any temptation arises.

Offer every action as a sacrifice to the Lord.

Years ago I heard a speaker talking about serving God.  The premise of the talk was about tithing and how we ought to be giving 10% back to God.  The speaker went on to say, “But why do we stop at money?  Shouldn’t we be giving 10% of our time back to God as well?”  If you do the quick math that means 2.4 hours out of the day should be dedicated to God.  2 hours and 24 minutes to serve the Lord.

Naturally most of us have pretty packed days.  And nearly 2.5 hours of quiet time, meditation, prayer and Bible reading, while a noble pursuit, may not be attainable.  After hearing the speaker suggest that we should be giving 10% of our time to God, I wondered how I could make that happen.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” Colossians 3:23.

Work heartily unto the Lord.  If you are committing every action to the Lord, you are committing your time to the Lord.  Giving back 10% is simple, when your entire workday (and then some) is dedicated to God.

Everything I do, I try to remember that it’s a sacrifice to God.  Is He pleased with my sacrifice?

The Simple Way to Work and Career Success

I am working in God’s business; He is providing me wisdom in my choices; I ask forgiveness for giving in to temptation and I ask for strength to fight upcoming temptations; and I dedicate my actions as sacrifices to God.  When I make sure to keep these concepts in mind, my career is successful.

“Entrust your work to the Lord, and your planning will succeed.” Proverbs 16:3.

I’m not saying I have it all figured out perfectly, but I have discovered how I can achieve career success.  Proverbs tells us that if we work for the Lord, our plans will succeed.

Are you ready to succeed in your career?  Claim the Biblical truth of giving it to God.