Living by Christian Values at Work — Sanjay Poonen

It's a joy, like Sunday morning, to be again here with the brothers and sisters, and 1975 Wednesday meetings used to be much smaller and very intimate, 20 -25 people in our living room in our home. And it's a tremendous joy to see some of the folks who were not even born at that time now here, and some folks who were babies at that time.

And I was six years of the old, and now I've crossed the age of 40. How many of you here work at a company, in a job, during the week? Raise your hand. That's almost 90%. How many of you are a mom at home, have a job at home?

That's also a very honorable job. In fact, probably the most important. How many of you are below the age of 40? Good, I'm really glad to see young people here on Wednesday. It goes downhill after the age of 40.

No, I'm just teasing. It actually goes uphill for the Lord. But it's very important that in our first years up to the age of 40, especially as you get your first job from usually about mid -20s, that we can live some principles in the workplace that I think the Lord has called us to.

A Calling to Witness in the Workplace

As I mentioned on Sunday morning, for me, my personal calling has not been to stand here in the pulpit or in the place where I live every Sunday morning. I believe my calling in life is to be a witness for the Lord in the workplace.

And outside of that, the Lord has given me a responsibility for a small group on a Wednesday night of 15 or 20 brothers and sisters that we meet. And that's my calling in life. And it's important that we, when the Lord gives us a calling, that we're very happy and secure in that calling.

I am delighted to hear my brothers speak. I'm delighted to hear other brothers speak. I'm delighted to hear my father speak. And when there's an opportunity to share the word, that's good. But I find my place in the body.

And that's important because often we think if we are in a part of the body that is not visible, but is behind the scenes. And we've heard many times about parts of the body that are behind the scenes, like the liver, like the heart, like the kidneys, like parts of the brain, that we can't really have a ministry.

And there were many disciples and many of those who followed Jesus and those who supported Jesus who worked behind the scenes, who had a tremendous ministry to support those who were at the pulpit. And I want to encourage every one of you, if you have a daytime job and the Lord hasn't called you to be a teacher or a pastor or a prophet, apostle, you have a ministry for the Lord in the workplace.

And the Lord called many people that we see in the Bible, certainly the ones that I'm going to talk a little bit about, Daniel, Joseph, Nehemiah. They were examples of men of God who took a stand in the workplace.

They had values that they stood for. They had principles they lived by. And the Lord used them. And it's important that we understand some of the principles. And it's been my testimony that as the Lord has given me both success, as also times where I've reflected on failure in my career, that I have steadily found more and more ways by which I can give the glory to the Lord and also encourage other believers who are younger than me, as also the other believers who are in the workplace.

We have an opportunity, brothers and sisters, in the small things that we do, where Jesus said, be faithful in little, that we can be a witness for the Lord because people around us watch us. I often work, and now I have management responsibility for a number of people, but many people often come to me and say, how can I plan my career so that I can do this, and I'm very frustrated with this part, and I would like to do this, and many other things that I'd like to do over the course of the next several years.

How do I plan this? I'm not satisfied with what I'm doing. And the important thing that I seek to share with them is the fundamental principle that I've learned from God's Word, which is, if you're faithful in little, God will give you more.

He was faithful in little. He was faithful in much. So in many places, the Lord may have given us a very small responsibility in the workplace. And when we're faithful with that, the Lord honors that.

He may give us more. He may not give us more. It's important that whatever we are asked to do in the workplace, that we're extremely faithful. And in that faithfulness, that those around us, especially those who are unbelievers, see in us an example.

Often, you might think as you work in the workplace, here are other people who you work with that you're jealous of. They may have more of whatever it is. They may have more money. They may have more.

And you may be surprised often that those people are jealous of you because you have something in your heart. You have something that defines true happiness that they don't have. So it's important, especially in a place where, as here in Bangalore, and I'm sure in many of the cities, we're faced with lots of temptations to desire more, compare ourselves to people in the workplace who you think have more, to understand fundamentally that our citizenship is in heaven, and that if everything disappeared tomorrow, everything, if God took away our job, we would still be incredibly happy because all that we have eventually is going to be here in stubble.

And the only thing that matters in the kingdom of God is character. And as we talk about some of the practical principles, I wanted to lay that out front because when you have that peace of your mind that ultimately, if everything disappeared and I lost my job tomorrow, if I was fired, if the Lord chose to take my intellect away, if He took my hands away, what mattered the most is that I was going to live for the kingdom of God.

Then everything else is upside. Imagine if you got fired tomorrow and you had that peace. It didn't matter because you now have a bedrock, a foundation of complete security in the things that matter. So it is important in the ups and downs of life, the highs and lows, that we have that foundation and that bedrock that our citizenship is in heaven and that nothing in this world can take away that citizenship so that we're never disappointed.

And disappointments will come. Joys will come. The other thing that it does is when joys do come, we're able to give glory back to the Lord in complete surrender. One of the things that a lot of young people struggle with today is stress.

And we feel that from the point we are in high school, right? We have exams. We have tests. We have a lot to study. We have only so many hours in the day. We have pressure to do this during a certain point in time.

Maybe we want to go to the meeting, but we know that after the meeting we have to go back. Maybe it's tuition. Maybe it's a variety of other things that happen. And so much bombards us during the week that we can see this among boys and girls.

It's sad today. We even see some very sad incidents where the pressure is so hard among young boys and girls at so early ages of their life. We had an incident in Clarence School where an unfortunate young girl committed suicide.

In my day and age, that would have been unheard of. But the pressures that young boys and girls face today is incredible. It may not be anything like those of you who are over the age of 40 or 50 or 60 ever faced.

So it's important that we root and ground our young people, our children. I pray for my young girl and my two boys because the pressures that they're going to face are going to be completely different from the pressures I face.

So those of you who are parents and you have young children, pray for them. Pray that the Lord protects the heads around them because the pressures they're going to face in high school, in middle school, in kindergarten are going to be significantly bigger.

I am thankful for a couple of things that happened to me when I was in school that helped me root and ground me in a few things. One was everybody knew in my school, Clarence School, that we had a home fellowship.

And that didn't make you the most popular person, but it made you known for the Lord whether you liked it or not. And I wasn't the most popular person and I struggled with that because I wanted to be popular, but there were lots of things around me that made me less popular and that was okay.

And it taught me very early that if I wasn't the most popular person and if the boys or the girls or anybody made fun of me, I was going to learn to get over this. It was okay if people made fun of me for whatever.

I had thick glasses. And lots of kids who are young or you know that when you're not the biggest boy or girl in the class... I wasn't the smallest, I wasn't the biggest, I was in the middle. And you have all kinds of pranks that get played in school today.

Many of you boys know this. I'm sure there are pranks that the girls also play. But you have the boys who want to go and deflate someone's tire, bicycle, that happens. They make fun of people, right? And all of us probably have had our fair share.

The one thing that I was always secure about though was that when I came into the children of God and among the people of God, I was secure. There was nothing that could touch me. Because I had a safety and a security, not just in this physical building, but I had a safety and security in knowing that I was loved.

I was loved by brothers and sisters who wanted my eternal good rather than just the short-term good of whether I was popular or not. I am thankful that personally for me, I wasn't the most popular in my class.

That was okay. And even though I did well academically, that did not make me popular. So if you are one of those boys or girls who are not the most popular in your class, that's actually a blessing. Because often the person who is the most popular in the class is going to have a harder time entering the kingdom.

They have much. They are like that rich young ruler who cannot give up their popularity. And it's important as the Lord gives us more of anything, we realize that we are in danger of being that rich young ruler.

The other thing that I am grateful for very early in life was that even though the Lord had given me a gift academically to do well, that inside the church, I had to leave that brain and that gift outside the doors.

If the Lord was going to use me, it was not because I was smart, not because I won a lot of prizes at school. It was going to be because I humbled myself and I got grace in the time of need. And God is no respecter of intellect.

The temptations that a smart person face, the temptations that a person who is not as academically gifted, the person who is athletic, the person who is not athletic, the temptations are the same. We talked about the temptations on Sunday.

The temptations of the eye, the ear, the mouth, are all the same. So be encouraged, brothers and sisters. If the Lord has given you a gift or the Lord has not given you a gift, or the Lord has given you a gift, submit it back to the Lord, put your crowns at His feet, say, Lord, thank you for the gift.

I'm going to use it for the kingdom. If He hasn't given you a gift in one area and a gift in the other, don't be envious, because the most important thing is character for the Lord. And a couple of other things that were important to me was very early in life, and this is where I think it's important that all of us come to the meetings, Wednesday, Sunday, whenever there's a chance, because you hear some messages very early in life, and again, for those of you who are parents, I encourage you to do the same with your children.

For me, there was not much choice. I didn't like it often. The meetings were in my home, so I had to go and listen to it. I actually was thankful that some things actually made me interested in going to the meetings, like playing the piano.

It made me interested in saying, okay, I'll go there. Even though I'm not sure I want to sit there for two hours, it's nice to play the piano. And it was actually a very small keyboard, about this big, which had buttons, just three or four buttons.

All of you who were there at that time probably remember that. But during those times, there were some fundamental laws that were inscribed into the tablets of my heart. And quite frankly, these are very important laws that all of you can remember.

You know why you can remember it? They're up here. Okay? These plaques that have been put up are the types of laws. There are many more, but these are the ones I remember growing up. And if you do nothing else, and you're finding on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening, you're dozing off, put your eyes up here and read these and put them into the tablets of your heart.

And ask the Lord to really put them into the tablets of your heart. Let's look at a few of them. You can actually live your work life by taking these five or six of them and living your life by them. And you'll find tremendous joy.

Humility, Mercy, and Giving in Leadership

Let's look at one. Be merciful to others just as God has been merciful to you. When you are a manager for the first time, or you have a responsibility for somebody, or if you're not somebody, if you live your life by that, imagine how different you will be from the average person in the world who seeks to lord it over other people.

God gives grace only to the humble. How diametrically opposite that is to the principles of this world. In this world, you see them. I was in Bombay the last two days. Met with many senior executives at some of these companies.

And you can sense, some of them will give you an air of humility, but there's a lot of pride, right? A lot of pride. And it's important that in the church of God that we understand that everything that we achieve in the world is nothing.

It's zero. It means nothing if we lose our salvation. And the most important thing we can do is invest in the kingdom. Let's look at another one. If we judge ourselves, we will not be judged. Simple principle, we can live our life by.

It doesn't mean that we don't judge the community of people who are rotten apples that we want to move away from. Of course, we have to be discerning like serpents. But it means that if we find somebody in the church that's doing something different and they and their light are doing this, we heard about that on Sunday, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Another one. So what should be our attitude when the Lord gives us much? We're going to bless. We're going to bless as many of those around us that the Lord can give us. Bless of our time. Bless in the way we speak and encourage.

Maybe God hasn't given us money, but the Lord has given us an opportunity to speak and encourage and appreciate. We heard about that on Sunday. We can bless. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

And certainly, when the Lord gives us money, that we use that to say, Lord, if you took that away tomorrow, I cannot take my car, my money into the grave. You hear some of these people who say, when I die, would you drive me into the grave because I have this expensive car.

Do you think how stupid that sounds? That's how a lot of people live today. They think that they can hold on to their money, to their car, and they have no idea that when you die, all of this... We all know that.

But think if we could live that every day where it is more blessed to give. Finally, all things are possible if you can believe. Imagine if we could live our life that way, that every time you're struggling with something that's really weighing you down.

You say, Lord, I don't know what you're going to teach me through this situation at work, but I do know one thing, that all things are possible. It doesn't mean that I'm going to get maybe this promotion, or it doesn't mean that maybe I'm going to be able to solve this problem.

But your will for me is going to be done, and all things are possible. I am going to ask you for grace and humility, and you're going to get me through this. That's the way in which we can live. So these very simple principles you may hear, and I'm actually really blessed that these have become almost tablets of stone on the building, right?

Let's make them tablets of stone in our heart. And there's many more like these, 50 more that we could spend all Wednesday evening talking about. But they'll come back to you during your work time, and you'll remember them.

You're struggling with something, all things are possible, if you believe. There's a sixth one that I'm going to imagine is there, if you would. And I talked about this on Sunday. And it's really been a blessing to me in the times of stress.

And I know that many, many, many young people struggle with stress. And mothers struggle with stress at the home, you might think, for those of you who are husbands who leave your wife at home, or that they don't have any stress, but you only have to have your first child and know what it is like to have somebody who's crying a lot in the night to know that that's stressful on a mother or a father.

Dealing with children and all of that is stressful on a mother. But like we talked about on Sunday, in Hebrews 1, if you want to be filled with the oil of gladness, I remember when I was a young boy, I think, Brother Newton, you're going to have to help me with this.

There was a place that you took us to that had a beautiful waterfall pretty close to here. I forget. You could stand underneath this waterfall, and in fact, right outside the waterfall, there were a couple of men who would actually give you an oil massage on your head, and then you could go and stand under the waterfall.

I think Brother Newton and Brother Nithya took us there once. And the picture of that waterfall, which is extremely relaxing, and so on, has stayed in my head, which is to say, Lord, if I wanted to be drenched in the oil of gladness, in that moment of stress, in that moment of tough battling, you've got a simple law, which is, anybody remember who was here on Sunday?

It's a test. Hate, iniquity, and love righteousness. Simple. So what is the massage formula before you get under that waterfall? Hate, iniquity, and love righteousness. A simple law. So when we're dealing with stress, and say, Lord, I want to come out of this with the oil of gladness, wherever it might be, in the workplace, at home, it's a simple law.

The Lord says, to the proportion that you have hated iniquity and love righteousness, you're going to get a bigger waterfall. If you have hated it this much, and love this much, you might get a small little glass.

Then you might get a little bigger bucket. Imagine if we could have a waterfall of gladness on us every day. And it doesn't mean that we are not, that we are not facing sorrow or challenges, and that everything is happy-go-lucky, and we could spend all of our time playing around, and then try to get things done in the last 15 minutes before a big assignment.

No. It means that when we are dealing with stress, and something that we feel our blood pressure is going up, we can submit ourselves to that oil of gladness. So I encourage you, brothers and sisters, as I sort of summarize what I said here a little bit, when you think about all that we go through, and many of the questions, I'll read a few of the questions in a little bit.

The Lord will give us wisdom, but a lot of the wisdom we hear about actually on the Wednesday evening and the Sunday morning meetings. And all we need to do is have two ears listening and saying, Lord, keep me in a place where He who has ears to hear will hear it.

And then these verses, I've just mentioned six of them, right, will come back to you, just like they did to the first century Christians who had no Bible with them, but they had submitted themselves to the Word of God, and it came back to them.

The Word of God is absolutely one that can change our lives, whether it's in our daily life and our work with the Lord, or also in the workplace. Okay? Now what I want to do in the next 15 or 20 minutes is just walk through a few of the things that I shared three years ago actually, almost three years ago to date, about some of the principles that all of you can live through.

Servant Leadership and Shepherding People

And I'm going to review it very quickly. And those of you who want to hear this in more detail, I think it was recorded the last time I spoke on this, so you're welcome to watch that on the YouTube that's on the CFC site.

But the first principle, I think, that's very important is that every one of you is called to be a leader. And a leader does not mean a manager. You may have responsibility in the workplace for one person, for two people, you may be responsible for zero people.

And as a leader, there are some fundamental things that you can learn from Jesus, and you can learn from what we see in examples that can be absolutely applied in the workplace. It certainly is very applicable when you have responsibility for people.

And quite frankly, it is the exact opposite of what you see in a lot of leaders and managers today. Okay? And the first key principle is that leaders are shepherds. If you think about the type of person that you have respected in the church, whether it's an elder, whether it's a teacher, whether it's an apostle, you notice their shepherding heart.

We see that among the elders in our fellowship here. We see that among the young brothers and sisters who serve in the Sunday school or serve in helping serve the food. They are shepherds. They really care about people.

And it is amazing how when you're first given responsibility for whatever, if you can have that attitude of a servant as a leader, the Lord will bless you. It has been my testimony that the thing that has inspired many around me who are not believers in the workplace that I work in, that I sought to live my life as a servant leader, which is to say my opportunity is to serve not my boss.

That's easy, serving my boss. I'm going to serve the people that the Lord have given me in my team. And their success is my success, is the company's success, is the Lord's success if I'm doing the will of God.

And today, in the workplace, there are very few people who live by that principle of shepherding. Now, there's a couple of other things that I think are very important when you live by the simple principles often that you'll find in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount.

That's so amazing how you can apply many of those things in the workplace. But I want to also say a few things about the characteristics of leaders who are shepherds. You notice that shepherds, a couple of other characteristics, they are extremely good communicators of the right word at the right time.

You notice a teacher can stand up here and the Lord gifts that person, a man or a woman in a Sunday school. Sisters can also be teachers in that type of setting. They are extremely good at giving us a word for the right time and the right place.

And I think that one of the things that we can do is learn how to be precise and crisp communicators in what we do in the workplace. It's a skill that the world values. But I will tell you it's something we can learn in the church.

And you might think this is more than just a feel-good type of pep talk because I will tell you often the thing that has given me the most boldness to articulate something was the fact that early on I was encouraged by the brothers to get up here and speak from my heart what the Lord had put on my heart even if it was a confession of faith.

It taught in me boldness to speak in a very crisp fashion often we were told by the elders spend no more than 2 minutes up here or 3 minutes and we asked ourselves why was that unimportant? How many of you in the workplace like to sit in a conference room and you have somebody rambling on for 30 minutes about something?

The manager says shut up we are going to move on to something else. But we can learn some simple principles about communication even here. So when the Lord uses you in a place where you on a Wednesday evening it may not be a Sunday morning you have an opportunity to say in a very crisp fashion what the Lord has put on your heart and it's not just good communication and good skills and good speaking the Lord will give you the boldness in the meetings to be bold and speak up here you will find that the same boldness the Lord anoints with you in the workplace to be crisp and communication is something that we can learn not just in spoken form.

The same thing in writing you might find that you have been the Lord gives you a burden to write a note of encouragement to another brother or sister or a short note on their birthday or whatever it is a short note of appreciation.

That very same skill that the Lord gives you to use in a way to bless others you will find comes back in the way in which you articulate something in the workplace where you are asked to write. So the principles that the Lord calls us to live our life by are the same principles we can use in the workplace and you will find that you stand out.

I believe that the reason Daniel and his three friends were also successful was they were taught early in life by their parents some fundamental principles not just don't compromise. They were taught to be bold to be bold in their witness perhaps very crisp in the way in which they communicated.

And as a result they stood out from a lot of those other worldly kids who all they did was watch the equivalent of television in their time maybe the equivalent of television was just standing around watching games and so on and so forth.

These brothers were instructed by their family were disciplined by their family and those values came in later on. So I encourage you as you think about some of the things that even the world values very much which is the way in which communication is done in spoken or in written form you can learn those values in the church by saying Lord give me a word not a smart word of intellectual word but give me a burden in my heart and allow me in a Wednesday meeting to be bold so that I can confess from my heart with my words and use that word in a short two or three minutes to bless others.

And you will find that same boldness helps you in the workplace. Same time you might find writing this little note to somebody on their birthday takes too much time. It's too much time. I'm busy. I don't have time to do this.

I don't have a short time to write a short note of appreciation. Sit down and clear your head for an hour. And you will find the first time it took you a long time to write a very short paragraph of appreciation to somebody.

The next time you do it it takes you 45 minutes. The third time you do it it took you 30 minutes. The fourth time maybe it takes you 15 minutes. And you're getting better and better at communicating a note of appreciation because the Lord allowed you through that practice.

You'll find that same skill will affect you. There are so many people I find when I read their emails or I hear them speak they're rambling on and on and on. I don't know what they're really saying in the workplace.

Okay. And then often you hear somebody else was crisp. I think that one of the reasons the Lord has blessed many of you many of you I heard this actually from somebody after the Sunday meeting was that many people in CFC were getting jobs because they spoke English.

Well often better than perhaps some of the other folks that they were competing with. Where did that come from? Not just because you were watching movies and all these things on TV or whatever. Hopefully that's not the reason.

It's the reason because you were bold enough to first pay attention in the church here as also apply that. So think about some of those very crisp things that we can apply in our lives because it can help you in the workplace.

Lifelong Values, Honesty, and Moral Courage

Okay a couple of other things that I want to share as a review of the last time we talked about when you think about the values the goals the decisions that we make and I talked about these three different things that are important.

It's very important that we set for ourselves values that last for a lifetime. You don't change your values in the middle of your life. In companies they have these things called corporate mission statements or values.

And often you find that companies today we saw this with with Satyam in India we saw this with a company named Enron. In the US you have these CEOs of the business who behind the scenes are lying about something or the other and you wonder how did this CEO now go to jail for 10 -15 years somewhere along the line their values had dishonesty and finally they got trapped later on in life.

Goals are what we set for ourselves for a short period of time or a long period of time and decisions are what we make everyday so simple little framework by which you can think about this. It is very important.

And I think this is the reason that you have a lot of CEOs who later on in their life eventually they are doing a lot of illegal potential things and they get trapped is early on in their life they have they have cut corners so that later on they say well you know maybe saying this is you know 2000 versus 1800 is not such a big deal and there is a financial statement that later on they get caught for so early on in life it is very important.

I talked on Sunday about the principles that Jesuits teach their kids in the first 8 years. If you give me a child they will be a Catholic for the rest of their life. In those first 8 to 10 years we learn certain values.

Honesty being being completely honest is something that you see later on in life. Slowly people get more and more and more dishonest and I think that many of those people who get trapped and eventually even CEOs that get put in jail have early on in their life found a way to cut corners lie about something a white lie here and there.

It is important especially for those who are young. If you find there is any part of your life that is not being honest to submit that before the Lord and say Lord I am going to live my life being completely honest.

And one of the things that the Lord seeks from us in our spiritual life is complete honesty. He wants us to say Lord I am struggling with this area. I want to bring my life before you and I want your grace because you give grace to the humble that same honesty.

Apply that completely in the workplace and you will find that the Lord blesses you. The Lord blessed Joseph He blessed Daniel and He blessed Nehemiah. There are many examples in the Old Testament of that honesty that you can learn very early in life.

For those of you who are older and have struggled with this make sure that what you struggled with doesn't get repeated in your children's generation. What can we do? We can teach our children early in life before they reach the age of 8.

I find slowly not yet but my 4 year old is bordering on the case where there's a few places where she wants to extend the truth very early on in life we'd like to teach her that honesty is the most important.

Lying is not allowed in this house right? And think if we can live that same level of principle where by the time we get to the point where we get our first paycheck whether it's 22 or 25 or 30 or whatever it is that we have understood that honesty is at the core.

There is so much in life in the workplace that is dishonest and we know this it doesn't have to be the gross bribing and so on. It could be in the way something is marketed or the way in which you describe things.

Honesty today is a rare value and the Lord has called us to be those types of values. Couple of the values that Jesus taught about if you think about Jesus' values was absolutely humility um um washing his disciples feet um and seeking out for help.

The other example I used when I spoke about this last time was an incredible example in the 1940's of this man named Eric Little who um the story goes that as he was thinking about the various events in the Olympics he couldn't run a particular event he chose not to because it was Sunday and you know that and he missed the heat and as a result was not able to win that race.

And on the other event where he could compete um and win the gold medal and it wasn't his favorite event. I think it was the 200 meters just as he was about to get to the starting blocks. This man came up to him and gave him a piece of paper and in that paper he rolled it out and was 1 Samuel 2 30.

Those who honor me I will honor and it's a very again one of those laws that you can put up here the 6th the 7th the 8th law if we honor God He is not a debtor to us in any way or any principle. I've seen that here in CFC.