You may find this hard to believe, but God loves Mondays. Why do so many of us think that Sundays are His favorite? Because of our notion of worship. Worship, so the reasoning goes, is primarily what happens on Sunday. Since God created us as worshipers, then it stands to reason that Sunday is His favorite day. 

And Monday? Well, Monday is a necessary evil. It’s the beginning of “the grind.” It’s the one day above all others that we don’t thank God for. We thank God that it’s Friday, but never that it’s Monday.

Not only have Mondays received a bad rap in most people’s books, but so has work in general. Western society glorifies leisure and retirement, but not work. Like Mondays, work is a necessary evil — it’s what we do to pay the bills. Some of us even have the unbiblical notion that work is part of the curse of Genesis 3, even though God clearly commissioned Adam to work before sin entered the world.

But God — who created work, modeled work and entrusted to humanity the charge to master creation through work — actually loves work! This is why He loves Mondays.

When God redeems people from the ruin of sin, He also redeems their work. He infuses their work with purpose. He doesn’t call them out of work into “full-time ministry”; He calls them into full-time ministry through their work.

Let me share a story with you. Ever since my friend Eric was a child, he felt called to business. When he came to faith in Christ as a young man, he threw himself whole-heartedly into ministry. What that meant to Eric, in practical terms, was that he became very involved in everything that went on inside the walls of the church — on Sundays and any weeknight the church doors were open. Isn’t that what most of us think, too?

But something seemed amiss in Eric’s exhausting pursuit of God. He seriously considered quitting his job. “Am I wasting my life behind this desk?” he asked. “Should I go into full-time ministry where I could really make a difference for Christ?”

Through a series of God-ordained events, Eric realized that God was not calling him to leave work for ministry, but to do work as ministry. Eric explains, “God made it clear to me that there was no such thing as a sacred calling and a secular calling. It is all sacred. He has called some to be dentists, some to be teachers, some to be in retail, some to be in vocational ministry, and some to be in business.”

Today Eric, like God, loves Mondays, because it is not a call away from ministry, but into ministry. But what exactly does it look like to make Monday mornings count?

Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.