My Work. My Ministry

By Paddy Blessed Musoke

This book is about helping believers to see their divine calling to manifest God’s Kingdom in every sphere of their lives, but especially in the workplace. It is indeed a book written timeously when the workplace is the bastion of worldly philosophy and practice. Paddy Musoke has skilfully used the biblical examples of Daniel, Nehemiah, Joseph, Mordecai and others to reveal the exploits of men and women who used their places of work to manifest God’s Kingdom. The results of their faithfulness in doing so are mind-boggling when one views the course of history being positively changed and God’s glory being revealed.

About the Author

Pastor Paddy Blessed Musoke is a Civil Engineer by profession. God called him to the ministry in 1996 and was sent to Nations in 1998. He served as an associate Pastor with Rwanda For Jesus Revival Centre from 1998 to 2006 after which God led him to Burundi where he founded Trinity Tabernacle Church. He lived in Burundi for about nine years and planted three churches. He is a passionate prophetic intercessor, conference speaker, teacher of God’s word and possesses a call to take the River of Life to Nations. He hosts annual Revival Festivals that brings spiritual awakening and renewal to believers and church leaders. He started a ministry called, “My Work, My Ministry”, to empower and envision Christian professionals to make them relevant in meeting the needs of humanity and profitable to God’s kingdom.

He returned and settled in Kigali –Rwanda in 2015 and is married to Jolly with five children: Annet Blessed, Benjamin, Esther, Abraham and Joshua.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paddy Blessed Musoke
• Release date: Nov 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463842188

Paddy Blessed Musoke

Pastor Paddy Blessed Musoke is a Civil Engineer by profession. God called him to the ministry in 1996 and was sent to Nations in 1998. He served as an associate Pastor with Rwanda For Jesus Revival Centre from 1998 to 2006 after which God led him to Burundi where he founded Trinity Tabernacle Church. He lived in Burundi for about nine years and planted three churches. He is a passionate prophetic intercessor, conference speaker, teacher of God’s word and possesses a call to take the River of Life to Nations. He hosts annual Revival Festivals that brings spiritual awakening and renewal to believers and church leaders. He started a ministry called, “My Work, My Ministry”, to empower and envision Christian professionals to make them relevant in meeting the needs of humanity and profitable to God’s kingdom. He returned and settled in Kigali –Rwanda in 2015 and is married to Jolly with five children: Annet Blessed, Benjamin, Esther, Abraham and Joshua.

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Copyright © 2019 Paddy Blessed Musoke

Published by Paddy Blessed Musoke at Smashwords

First edition 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Paddy Blessed Musoke using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Bronwen Bickerton for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

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Paddy Blessed Musoke

Trinity Tabernacle ministries

Kigali - Rwanda

East Africa

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

What the Bible Says About Work

What is Work?

Purpose of work

How to Turn Your Work into Ministry

God’s Divine Structure at the Workplace

How God designed the social sphere of work to function

Principles to success in the workplace ministry

Workplace Models

The Men who Know Their God

Mobilising the Christian professionals

Interpreting the Dreams of Kings

The Voice of ChristianProfessionals

About the Author

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all gallant workplace ministers whose lives and sacrifices are making a tremendous difference in countless lives of people on a daily basis. Through many challenges and relentless battles you hold out your candles and lighten your world. Your life is light itself and many are enjoying your shining life in Christ. You are God’s unsung heroes and this book is God’s message to inspire and encourage you. You are profitable for God’s kingdom in this age and great is your reward from our Lord Jesus Christ.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My heart-felt thanks go to Patricia Muhongerwa (The Commissioner of Human Rights Commission Rwanda) and Ann Mbabazi who founded Workplace Mission Ministry International (WMMI). I met these two ladies in 2016. They were very passionate about mobilising and encouraging Christian professionals in all fields of work. They gave me the right hand of fellowship and it was one day after teaching a fellowship of Christian workers that the Lord spoke to my heart about writing this book. Great thanks go to different Christian professionals who supported financially the publishing of this book. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you so much. Your support made this dream a reality.

FOREWORD

In one of the management courses I attended in my early years as a healthcare manager, I heard a story about a cleaner who worked for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s. This was the time when the US was working towards landing a manned spacecraft on the moon, for the first time. At some point, the cleaner was asked what he did at NASA. His reply was, I am helping this organisation to land a man on the moon!

This cleaner had the rare ability to see past his personal work situation, to dream and to visualise the bigger picture. Since the dawn of Creation, God has always viewed the bigger picture and this bigger picture has God’s Kingdom manifest in every sphere of time and space. In the Great Prayer that Jesus gave us, we were commissioned to pray for this to be realised. May your kingdom come is the prayer that is uttered countless times around the globe every day from the mouths of believers, in line with God’s bigger picture.

If that is true, how does God bring the Revelation of His Kingdom to every part of His Creation? If this revelation is only manifest in churches on a Sunday, how will it reach the highways and byways, the street corners, the offices, the construction sites, the hospital wards, the police stations and so on? Throughout history, God’s choice method has been to use His people, who are strategically placed in every sphere of society.

This book is about helping believers to see their Divine calling to manifest God’s Kingdom in every sphere of their lives, but especially in the workplace. It is indeed a book written timeously when the workplace is the bastion of worldly philosophy and practice. Paddy Musoke has skilfully used the biblical examples of Daniel, Nehemiah, Joseph, Mordecai and others to reveal the exploits of men and women who used their places of work to manifest God’s Kingdom. The results of their faithfulness in doing so are mind boggling when one views the course of history being positively changed and God’s glory being revealed.

Whereas the first part of the book helps the reader to get a godly perspective on the challenges and opportunities of the workplace, the latter part of the book has a number of practical guidelines on actions that will make the workplace a place of influence for God’s purposes.

My prayer is that God will use this book to open the eyes of our understanding so that we can truly embrace the work positions that He has given to us for His purposes. Whether we find ourselves as cleaners or as CEOs, what is important is that we seek first His Kingdom and manifest it in faithful dependence on Him. On a personal note, I would encourage you to seek out a modern day Joseph, Nehemiah or Esther and walk with such a person until you can reach your full potential as a workplace witness for God and then go on to be a role model for others!

Dr. Keith Michael

MBChB, MMed, DTMH, DHSM, DPH

Family physician, International coordinator, Healthcare Christian Fellowship International

INTRODUCTION

Work is one of the Christian areas of life which little is talked about on the church pulpits. God has called different people in the church and anointed them to minister to specialised people needs. There are those who are called to the youth while others are called to the couples. God has sent some of these people to men and others to women. God has sent some to children while others He has sent to widows. There is another vital aspect of a Christian life called work. What Christian workers and professionals normally hear in the church regarding the field of work is tithing and offering and other church programmes. When you walk through Christian bookstores and libraries, you will be bound to find books about prayer, fasting, family, ministry, missions, giving and prosperity, but you will rarely find any book addressing work in a Christian context. Recently I was invited to preach in a certain church for a week and preached about work in both Sunday services. One member could not hold; he was surprised to hear a sermon about work being preached on a Sunday. Work is regarded as a secular thing in many church circles. Many Christian leaders and churches regard work as a worldly thing. Many Christian workers and professionals go to their workplace from Monday to Friday knowing that they are engaged in something which is not part of God’s agenda but they have to do it anyway for the sake of survival. To many Christians work is regarded as a necessary evil! Many Christian professionals have a very flawed view of the workplace. When you talk to many Christian workers, they get up de-motivated on Monday to go to a place that is worldly, ungodly and secular and spend a whole week doing an ungodly thing called work. When Friday comes such Christians are excited because they are leaving a worldly place and are going to be in God’s house called Church, a place where they will find God, the only place to them where God can be found, the only place where they can worship God and where they can find an opportunity to do something that will go to their heavenly account as ministry. We have limited ministry to a place called church and have limited an omnipresent God to a four-walled building. We have so many Christian professionals in all kinds of fields of all the nations, but they are the poorest performers.

We have men like Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah and Mordecai who had no temple or synagogues. They all lived in foreign nations; they were not priests neither were they prophets, and all of them were workers. Joseph had a job in the palace working next to the king of Egypt. Daniel served in four governments as a high profile administrator. Mordecai worked next to the king of Persia, and Nehemiah was a king’s cupbearer. I call these four men workplace models. They all had many things in common; they all served in a very high profile position, they were all excellent, they were very productive, they were all God-fearing, they walked with God, they worked with God, they were all prayerful and God impacted those nations so powerfully through them.

One statement that characterised these professionals was: "The people who know their God shall be strong and shall do great exploits." (Dan11; 32). Their work was their ministry.

The Holy Spirit has helped me to see something in the new Covenant because my mind was struggling with this message about work and Christian professionals. I wanted to know if this message was from the Lord and to see whether it was consistent with the new Covenant. My mind was telling me in the New Testament we are supposed to teach people to repent and be saved and be ready to go to heaven, and that’s why Jesus Christ died. I was led to the ministry of John the Baptist where multitudes came to be baptised, and among them were some professionals who came to him. His message was clear: Repent and bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.

Then tax collectors came to him and asked, What shall we do? (Luk3; 10-14.) Their question was, ‘we have repented and are baptised and we want to live differently but we don’t know how. The work we have been doing as tax collectors has been a challenge to us and we have been stealing from people to survive’. John did not tell them to leave their work and stay in the synagogues praying all the time; he sent them back to work and taught them how to do their work differently.

Soldiers came to him also asking the question: What shall we do? John sent them back to their work and instructed them on the way they were to work. The soldiers and tax collectors were professionals. John’s message to the professionals was clear that work is not evil, but it’s evil men who do work the evil way. Work is godly and there is a Kingdom way of doing it.

The Holy Spirit continued to lead me to the Book of Acts of Apostles and when you read it analytically, what you see is the ministry of the Apostles, i.e. the Apostles teaching and preaching the gospel of Christ, multitudes being saved, baptised in water, many being baptised by the Holy Spirit, believers daily coming into the temple and attending to the teachings of the Apostles, praying, praising and sharing their food and life necessities. When you read this Book, you see the church or disciples in the context of the church and the life in the church. Were you to read beyond the Book of Acts of Apostles, you may conclude that Christian life is all about church, but read the epistles of Apostles and you will discover that the New Testament is not only about the Acts of the Apostles but also about the Epistles of the Apostles. The Epistles of Apostles teaches the instructions and applications of our Christian faith. In the church we encounter God and we are taught kingdom living but what we learn in church and what we experience in church we have to carry and apply it in our families, workplace and in society.

Let’s see some examples: Rom13:1-7 teaches the roles of Christian citizens while Eph5; 22-33 teaches what a Christian family is supposed to be like and the roles of Christian family members. Thirdly, Col3:22-25 teaches about work and how a Christian worker is supposed to handle his/her work. Col3:24 make this powerful statement: You are not serving men but you are serving the Lord Christ. Work is therefore service to our Lord Christ! Work is ministry!

This book about the workplace ministry will give us light and understanding on how Christian professionals can be mobilised and organised and positioned to bring the light of God’s glory to our workplace and to maximise our potential for the Kingdom of God impacting humanity in our generation.

Chapter One

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT WORK

We are going to see in this chapter what God says about work through His Word. There are many schools of thoughts as far as work is concerned, both in the Church and the secular world. There are diverse mindsets about work in church circles, but we would like know God’s mind about work through the Holy Scriptures.

#1 Work is of the Kingdom of Heaven (Gen2:1-2)

Work is heavenly not worldly. Work was created by God. The first thing God gave man was work. God created man to work. God created man in His image and said, Be fruitful and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, over everything that creeps upon the earth and over all the earth. This is the purpose of His existence. Man was created to work. Work is not a duty that we are fulfilling; it’s the very reason we were created. Work is not simply labouring; work is the purpose of our living which we are fulfilling.

#2 God is the author and origin of work (Gen1:26-28); (Gen2:15)

It’s God who created work. Work is a God thing; it’s not a man thing.

The Church and especially the Christian professionals must understand this truth. Much of what is taught in many churches about work is unbiblical. It is liberating and motivating to know that what you are doing is of God; you can pray about it, you can trust God to bless it, you can trust that God will back you up.

#3 God is a worker (Gen2:1-2; Jn5:17)

The Bible says that God worked for six days and he rested on the seventh day from all His work. Creation is God’s work. The story of Creation reveals God to us as a worker. We first encounter God as a worker in the story of Creation. It was great work that required God to have rest after six days work.

Jesus said, My Father has been working until now, and I am working. (Jn5:17) God has been eternally working and Jesus too has been working. Therefore, God is a worker. God did not only create man to work, but God is a worker. God created man in His image. God is a worker and therefore man bears the inherent image of God. Man is a worker because God is a worker. Working is God’s nature in man.

#4 Work is a calling (Ps104:23)

Working is not a duty; it is a calling. We were created to work. The Bible says that man goes to his work early in the morning and labours in his work until evening. I think that’s why God used to come to have communion with Adam in the cool of the day. God used to come to visit Adam in evening after his working time. I think again that God created day and night for man, so that during the daytime man goes to his work and at night he rests.

#5 Work is sacred not secular (Col3:23-24; 1Cor10:31)

The Bible teaches that while you go about your serving your bosses or the government, you are not serving man but the Lord Jesus. Again, the Bible says that whether eating or drinking or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. The work is clear. To a born-again child of God there is nothing like the secular. The totality of our life should be lived in God, by God and for God. We born again into his kingdom and to us eating is sacred, drinking is sacred, sleeping is sacred, marrying in sacred, studying is sacred, and therefore working is sacred. We cannot departmentalise our lives, all of our life is one and it’s in Christ. We don’t have one life in church and then another life outside church. It’s religion that works that way because religion is just a set of dos and don’ts. Religion is simply performance. Salvation however is life, not religion. Life in church, at school, at home, at work and any other place is the same. You are God’s child at home. You are God’s child at school. You are God’s child at church. You are God’s child everywhere. You don’t behave one way in church and then behave in another way at work. You don’t behave holy at church but behave like a sinner at work. If you are holy, you are holy everywhere.

Work is sacred, not secular as many think. Many believers think that work is a necessary evil. By this statement I mean that many believers have a wrong perspective about work. They think work is worldly, it’s secular, it’s satanic, it’s Babylon, but it’s an evil that we cannot avoid because we need it for survival purposes. This perspective of work as a worldly or secular thing is one reason for work not being taught about in many church pulpits. Different church leaders give all kinds of names to work: Babylon, secular, worldly, etc. so when Monday comes, many believers walk into places they consider ungodly and all they expect to see is Satan. Believers can’t pray for their work because they cannot pray for something they know is ungodly. This is what has paralysed the potential of the Christian professional in the workplace.

The Bible teaches that working is service unto the Lord Jesus Christ (Col3:24). When you are working, you are serving the Lord Jesus Christ; you are not serving a man. Work then is ministry. This revelation must liberate many Christian professionals. God is not locked up in a church building where we only meet with Him on Sunday morning. It’s so amazing how we have made the omnipresent God so small that we can confine Him to a building of four walls. This is the religious spirit that blinds our eyes to see this way. The spirit of religion blinds the eyes of many of God’s children. But God lives in us; we are the actual temple of God. The Kingdom of God is in us (Luk17:20-21). There is no demon that can stop God being present in your place of work. The truth is that God is present in your workplace; that is why He says that in your workplace you are serving the Lord Jesus. Jesus is so present at your workplace that He examines how you work and He is the one who rewards every worker according to his/her performance.

#6 Work is worship (1Cor10:31)

Work is worship. The Bible says whether you are eating or you are drinking or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. Work was created by God to bring glory to his name. Work was intended to please the Lord. Pleasing God must be one of the core motivations in our working. When God finished creating all things in the beginning, he looked at all of His Creation and it was very good. God was pleased by the work he had done. Now, when all of the God’s Creation fulfils the purpose for which God created it, God is pleased, God