What Does Your Character at Work Say About Your Faith?

Before I got married to Toyin, I didn’t ‘consult’ her pastor . But I pondered on what her previous and immediate boss at work told me. And then my colleagues, who had had street experience with girls made categorical statements about her conducts in and out of our MBA class. I couldn’t ignore those unrehearsed, objective comments.

She had returned from National Youth Service Corp(A compulsory post-graduation service in Nigeria) and was attending a weekend postgraduate program. However, she got a job in a small, one-man-shop, selling MTN recharge cards(wholesale + retail). The business had a very small profit margin but with good turnover, business owners could go home with something. If a card got missing, the entire profit for a batch of cards could be gone. It required 100% accountability to be profitable.

Her boss said: “I have had to pursue and arrest some salesgirls, who had worked here. But I have experienced peace since Toyin came to help me”. He pulled me aside as we were leaving and whispered “Guy, man to man, were I to be single, I would have begged to marry Toyin”. This resonated exactly with what another of her boss she served while she was on industrial attachment many years prior had also told me about her.

Workplace! workplace!! workplace!!! If your character and spirituality can’t standout here, pulse and go back to God.

How many would genuinely help a boss who is struggling with a small business succeed, even if it’s at a cost?

When her colleagues and her several bosses would later tell me about her exceptional performance at UBA, I would smile and sometimes replied in Yoruba language: “eefin n’iwa” - character is like smoke that can’t be covered. If you are faithful with preserving the sheep against lion and bear where there was no salary, you would be much more faithful preserving Israel against an uncircumcised philistine.

It’s okay if you get into Exxon Mobil upstream. But even if you’re a gas attendant at a Mobil filling station, let your character speak Christ. He’s the same every where.

Hebrews 13:8

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Beloved, let’s stop the theoretical noise and debate about our faith. Let’s proof our faith at work and in how we build our families, our nations and systems.

Jesus I know! Toyin I know! But who are you?

Philippians 3:12

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

Receive grace!

Your Brother,

David Kay-Akeremale.