Credit Where Credit is Due
By Chris Jones, Small Group Director
President Reagan famously kept a plaque on his desk in the Oval Office that read “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
Unfortunately, the success of our work lives often hinges on how much credit we receive or don’t receive. If our superiors credit us with the success of a project we receive accolades, raises, promotions, etc. If the credit goes to someone else, we lose out on those rewards and sometimes find ourselves worried about job security.
It’s almost as if we have two jobs: completing the work and making sure we get credit for completing the work.
If this stresses you out, you are far from alone. Consult any survey about worker happiness and you will see all manner of evidence that many of us are losing sleep over whether we get credit for the things we accomplish at work.
What if I told you that Christians were never meant to be stressed about who gets credit?
Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Think about the implications of this verse:
For we are God’s handiwork-God made us with His own hands.
Created in Christ Jesus to do good works-God made us to do good works.
Which God prepared in advance for us to do-God prepared the good works he meant us to do ahead of time.
This is a radical shift from the mindset we talked about above. God didn’t just make us, He made us with certain specific tasks in mind, and He prepared those tasks ahead of time so all we have to do is step into them.
That means two things for us as Christian workers:
- Anything we accomplish in this life is a good work God prepared in advance for us to do. He will use our efforts to accomplish whatever He wants accomplished. This means we can relax and work from a place of freedom knowing that God promises to accomplish whatever He wants in the situation.
- We can stop wasting our time fighting over the credit for the job because that belongs to God and God alone.
In the opening sequence to one of the greatest works of art America has ever produced (The Simpsons), we see what appears to be infant Maggie Simpson driving a car. We are certain that she is doomed until the shot widens to reveal that Maggie’s steering wheel is a toy, and that the car is safely being driven by Maggie’s mother Marge.
The next time you find yourself sweating over a job and who gets credit for it, remember Ephesians 2:10 and loosen your white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, look over your shoulder to see the God who loves you more than you can fathom, and say a prayer of thanks that He’s driving instead of you.