Have you ever felt the need to work and a need to accomplish some particular task? The Bible says that God created man to work. Confidence and self-esteem can come from the way we work or the way we work can create confidence and self-esteem. This includes school, at work, home or in relationships. God created us to be achievers and if we aren’t, we may miss life’s opportunities. So whatever you do, do it with a desire that it will please God and you will be productive and accomplish God’s plan for your life. God gives us gifts and many are anointed to do certain tasks. We are to be ministers in the work place. Is it possible God placed you where you are for a specific purpose? If He has, are you fulfilling His will for your life doing your very best?

Genesis 2:15 – “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” This was before Adam and Eve had sinned or God had cursed the earth. It is my belief that God created every one of us to work and be an accomplisher.

Genesis 3:17 – 19 & 23 – “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 23 – “So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

As punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin, Adam was required to work harder than ever before to produce food for survival. In fact, the work would be so difficult that you would sweat to accomplish getting your food. God did not plan that work was going to necessarily be easy.
It took Noah and his sons 120 years to build the ark. Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about retirement. It only tells us that we need to take one day a week to rest and worship God. The other six days we are to be available to work. Statistics indicate that many who retire early die early. There is something about work that prolongs one’s life.

I do not understand how a person can have a high self-esteem without accomplishing something in life. This is the nature God created into us. This is a wife, mother or anyone who does not have a purpose to make life better for others, will possibly suffer from low self-esteem. Work is a part of worship, thanking God that we are able to provide for ourselves. My own experience is I have worked since being in the 8th grade. My confidence is a result of my work and what I was able to accomplish. What kind of confidence would I have had if I never worked or accomplished anything in life? Some allow their achievements to make them arrogant. The Bible says this is unacceptable. However, it gives an example of what great achievements can do to one’s confidence.
Ephesian 6:7 – “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people,”

1 Corinthians 10:31 – “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
Many of our young people have never been taught or required to work. As a result, many live a life with little confidence or a feeling that their life is fulfilling. Fifty years ago, many of us either worked or were raised on a farm. We knew how to work and we depended on God to provide the rain and the sunshine. If our crops failed we were in serious trouble. However, we learned to can food in case of emergencies. We had cellars to store potatoes, onions, etc. We were always planning ahead and how well we lived depended upon how hard we worked and managed our responsibilities.

God gave Americans a wonderful country. We were provided with a capitalistic economy. Many jobs depended on incentives. The harder we work, the more proficient we were and given our ability to produce, depended on how much we were paid and the opportunity for advancement. Many are now suggesting that we go to socialism, an economy that takes away one’s incentive and they rely on the government to take care of them. Socialism has two classes: the very poor and the very rich. It has a tendency to do away with the middle class. The elite realize it is easy to control the poor, harder to control the middle class and hardly possible to control the rich.