Over the years, the Gallup organisation has polled 25 million employees in 189 different countries.

According to their latest survey, they found that only 13% of workers feel engaged by their jobs.

The vast majority, about 63% of us, describe ourselves as not

engaged. The remainder say that they actively hate their jobs. That means that roughly nine out of

every 10 workers around the world see their work as frustration rather than fulfillment.

As one commentator remarked, 90% of adults spend half their waking lives doing things

they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be.

I think we need to talk about the creation mandate. You can see it in Genesis chapter 1,

verse 28, where God blesses Adam and Eve and says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth

and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

That's the creation mandate, that we should be fruitful and multiply, that we should fill, subdue and rule the earth.

Similarly, in Genesis chapter 2 verse 15, we read that the Lord God took the man and

put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Notice here that for Adam, work is not a curse.

It's a blessing from God. Adam's work in the garden was very much a part of God's unsullied paradise.

So why is it then that many of us don't experience work as a blessing?

Well, it's because of what happened in Genesis chapter 3.

Adam and Eve turned away from God,

and because of that, from that point on, work became painful and difficult. And yet even after

that catastrophe, God says to Noah, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So God repeats the creation mandate that existed before the fall.

It's very easy to start seeing our work as little more than a necessary evil, rather than as a way to love and honour God's creation mandate.

We can think of work as an imposition that we

begrudgingly do because we have to pay the bills. And while it's true that many of us wouldn't

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