God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Focal Point Series)

by Gene Edward Veith

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Title	God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Focal Point Series)
Author	Gene Edward Veith
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Tags	christian, lutheran, vocation, religion, living, theology, status: read once, status: read twice
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Your review	Some interesting passages: The doctrine of vocation looms behind many of the Protestant influences on the culture, though these are often misunderstood. If Protestantism resulted in an increase in individualism, this was not because the theology turned the individual into the supreme authority. Rather, the doctrine of vocation encourages attention to each individual's uniqueness, talents, and personality. These are valued as gifts of God, who creates and equips each person in a different way for the calling He has in mind for that person's life. The doctrine of vocation undermines conformity, recognizes the unique value of every person, and celebrates human differences; but it sets these individuals into a community with other individuals, avoiding the privatizing, self-centered narcissism of secular individualism. --page 21 What is distinctive about Luther's approach is that instead of seeing vocation as a matter of what we should do--what we must do as a Christian worker or Christian citizen or a Christian parent--Luther emphasizes what God does in and through our vocations. --page 21 Vocation is a matter of Gospel, a manifestation of God's action, not our own. --page 21 Most people seek God in mystical experiences, spectacular miracles, and extraordinary acts they have to do. To find Him in vocation brings Him, literally, down to earth, makes us see how close He really is to us, and transfigures everyday life. --page 24 "In God's sight it is actually faith that makes a person holy," says Luther in his "Large Catechism"; "it alone serves God, while our works serve people" --page 38 We often speak of "serving God," and this is a worthy goal, but strictly speaking, in the spiritual realm, it is God who serves us. "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). --page 39 Genuine good works have to actually help someone., In vocation, we are not doing good works for God--we are doing good works for our neighbor. --ppage 39 Since God, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, is a relationship of persons that constitutes an absolute unity, it can be truly said that He is love (1 John 4:16), since love is a unity of diverse persons. --page 42 Christians need to realize that the present is the moment in which we are called to be faithful. We can do nothing about the past. The future is wholly in God's hands. Now is what we have. --page 59 Under Levitical law, people who insisted on working all the time, who refused to rest, were subject to the death penalty. --page 64 Christians are not to retreat from the realm of the ordinary and the everyday; they are not supposed to be having mystical experiences all of the time, to be otherworldy, to neglect of the real world in which God has placed them. Many religions consider "the material world" to be evil or at least unspiritual; salvation lies in escaping the bonds of mundane experience through meditation or asceticism. Christianity, though, values the material world. God created it (not a demon, as in Hinduism) and "saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25). Moveover, God entered this material world, becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ. He was born into a family, into a particular culture, where as the son of a carpenter He must have worked with His hands. --pages 68-69 God works through vocation when it's done right. Imagine the potency of that. When you do right, it's God's acts through you. It is God working down through you to build up his kingdom. --my notes on page 135 "The natural man is always aspiring to rise out of lowliness to the heights; he follows his evil bent to get away from serving. Through the very action of striving upward toward honor and self-complacent splendor, he separates himself from the living God, who in sacrifical love bows down to created things and stands close to all who are in the depths. This man forsakes his neighbor, so he lives not with God but with the devil who leads him away from the path of his vocation." --page 148 In other words, the Devil tempts the holder of a vocation to the way of glory. Insisting on being served rather than serving, the calling becomes an occasion to wallow in pride. The mentality this creates is one of self-sufficiency. The person in this vocation feels no need for dependence on God. There is certainly no need for the Gospel, since the person in this successful position is doing just fine by himself. The Devil has twisted the vocation so that it undermines both love for neighbor and love for God. --page 148 Trials and tribulations, even failure, keep Christians aware of their wekaness, aware of their utter dependence on God. And it gives them empathy for their neighbors in need and a desire to serve them out of love. --page 149 "Prayer is the door," says Wingren, "through which God, Creator and Lord, enters creatively into home, community, and labor" --page 150 Realizing that one does not have to worry about what will happen, that the future is in God's hands, is liberating. --page 152 But "troubles and tribulations are to drive us closer to God; they benefit rather than harm us." --page 153 For the person without faith, on the other hand, "life's bitterness is actually something evil. It testifies to God's wrath and hands man over to Satan's power, for he is constantly given to impatience, ill feeling and egocentricity. Through tribulations he is led not to heaven but to destruction." The problem of evil really is a stumbling block to those who have no faith in Jesus Christ,and their hardships lead them further and further from God and deeper into their lost condition. --page 153
Other authors*
Publication	Crossway Books (2002), Paperback, 176 pages
Publication date	2002
ISBN	1581344031 / 9781581344035
LC classification 1	BV4740.V43
Dewey 1	248.4 21
Subjects	Vocation › Lutheran Church
Primary language eng	English
Secondary language	(blank)
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Summary 0	God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Focal Point Series) (2002)
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BCID	XXX-
Number of copies	1
Citation	MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, Wikipedia citation
Data source	amazon.com

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