Book Review – Grace at Work – Redeeming the Grind and the Glory of Your Job by Bryan Chapell

Grace at Work by Bryan Chapell

Synopsis:

For many people, their job is merely “the daily grind” needed to provide for family or pay the bills. Yet our work is a vital means for fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives and displaying his grace to those around us. We bear God’s image in our workplaces, experiencing his blessings and expressing his nature through our efforts, integrity, creativity, generosity, and excellence. No earthly chore is without the opportunity to observe his divine hand. No challenge in task or relationship is without opportunity to represent God’s heart.

In this book, author and pastor Bryan Chapell shares this biblical perspective of vocation, explaining how God gives purpose to our work by making it an instrument of his grace to our own hearts, as well as a way of bringing his goodness and glory into our world. Chapell explains how we can worship God by our work, rising above drudgery, duty, or self-interest with the understanding that our jobs are unique callings for displaying God’s character and care. Our work is worship when we see the glory beyond the grind, the mission in the mundane, and the grace at work. (Taken from GoodReads page)

Review

What Bryan Chapell does here is something I have been enjoying Christian authors doing more these day – the talk is about taking the normal, everyday things as service to God. This is the “redeeming” part of the book. Chapell covers a whole array of different aspects of work: dignity, purpose, integrity, money, success, humility, glory, evil, leadership, balance, and witness. This isn’t self-help slapped onto Jesus, this is looking at different aspects of work through the lens of a Christian world.

The Christian Believes Christian Things

I believe God exists and He operates in the world and through His people. The part of Ephesians 2:8-9 that people sometimes forget is verse 10. What are we saved by grace through faith for? V.10 for good works prepared for us in advance. And your daily work is exactly where you can find a plethora of “good works”. It is how we evidence our faith to the world. Jesus doesn’t tell us to divorce ourselves from the world but to live out our lives in His name and our job is to search the Scriptures for how to do this in the best way possible. That is the role of Chapell’s book.

There are some good parts Chapell covers really well. The chapter on “humility” had a portion where he covered Jesus as King, priest, and prophet. At first, it didn’t make much sense but he comes in toward the end of the chapter and applies that section to us and our work. That was a nice surprise. He also covers the straightforward parts well like “integrity” where we understand the Christian should live so drastically different from the world that they take notice just for seeing us in our work. A tall order but one we should desire. He also provides a lot of everyday examples and antidotes to prove his point or show its antithesis.

More Work To Be Done

One of the areas that I wish Chapell could have focused on more was some of the hard cases. This is not to say that the book is devoid of that. He tells of a story of an investor who refused to take profit from setting up others on his team to make money on a business that he didn’t agree with as a Christian. Chapell doesn’t always go out of his way to talk about these hard cases and suggestions from Scripture of what to do in general. However, the purpose of the book is to give a redemption story to work but it would still be useful to highlight a few more areas where the grey wants to encroach into our work lives. Or one of the subjects I really wanted Chapell to cover was failing at work or failing in business or failing to succeed. We need to have ways of encouraging failure as not a complete end but even failure can be redeemed.

Our Hope Not Found In The World

I would recommend this book to those who are struggling with work as a Christian or who are facing non-Christian resistance at work. Some might view this as middle-of-the-road Christian Living reading and it could be if you’re not serious about taking what you read that is based on God’s Work into the areas of your life where Jesus rules. And as Christians, we should find those dark areas of our lives and shine the light of Christ on them as we recognize that Jesus is Lord of all – including our work.

Final Grade

B+