When I started sharing my faith on my social media pages and my blog several years ago, so many people were excited! I own a corporation, and have been running very successful companies for 20 years now. People pay me a lot of money to help them tell their story, increase conversion on their ads and email campaigns and more. So talking about prophetic vortexes or a word from God was typically politically incorrect. However…. it seemed that the more I shared, two things happened that were pretty significant:
1- A lot of people were thrilled! It encouraged them and inspired them to take their faith to work
2- Some people were mad. They wanted me to shut up already about God. Warning me that ‘bringing God’ into my company would destroy my credibility and profits.
Well, it’s 6 years later, millions of dollars in sales, millions of people following me on social media. I guess #1 won.
Faith at work to me is not just for Christians. Yes, I’m a radical Jesus lover. You can’t talk to me for very long without realizing that God and I hang out together all day long. Sometimes I might tell the devil to shut the hell up in the middle of creating an ad campaign or I might take a minute to pause and say, “Come Holy Spirit” as I’m writing copy. But that doesn’t mean that all of my followers should be or are also Christians.
A large portion of my client base are. But the refreshing and amazing thing to me is that there are a significant amount of my followers and clients who are not. They are however inspired by my boldness and authenticity. I’m so politically incorrect, most of them love me and don’t quite know what to do with me! 🙂
Faith works at work when it doesn’t bring physical harm to someone else. Occasionally you’ll have someone say they’re feeling threatened if you talk about prayer in the workplace, but I’m finding that this is the rarity. It typically is related to someone who has a horrific trauma in their past sadly, done by people who said they were acting with and for God. But the majority of people are refreshed, inspired and hopeful because of the things I share.
It shouldn’t offend me if my Muslim coworker wants to pray. And it shouldn’t offend them if I say quietly at my desk, “Come Holy Spirit.” They don’t have to pray if I ask people to join me at my desk for 5 minutes to pray over our project. I shouldn’t be offended if they kneel on their mat for a few minutes. If we want freedom of religion in the workplace, it cannot and should not be a ‘christian only’ thing. That’s rooted in Kingdom Dominionism and that’s not what I am about. I’m about Kingdom Infiltration, making a difference, changing cities and cultures. If people come to know Jesus, or get healed, that’s incredible! But if they simply have a better day because I’m there, or they learn to talk to their children better, have more faith in their work because I said something, that’s awesome too. It’s not my job to save people, it’s my job to love people. Jesus is in the business of saving, I’m in the business of doing my very best to be like Him. But I fail daily, so it will be important to add humility, honor and forgiveness to my pursuits of faith at work.
We must get back over stereotypes of what certain religions are. Please please, get over IT! Not every Muslim is a radical terrorist. That’s so ridiculous and it breaks my heart to even think about how many amazing people are judged by the color of their skin, the clothes they wear and the posture they stand in when they pray. Equally, not every Christian is a nutcase burning down abortion clinics, demanding people behave in a certain way in their presence, beating women and children half to death with a Bible, all in the name of Jesus. Let’s stop defending our position by extremes. It’s important that a culture of honor and love exists. This will happen when we know WHO we are, we understand WHO’s we are and we truly rest in WHAT we believe. The confusion and nastiness comes in with insecurity, religion and people who say they believe one thing but have a lot of doubts and fears going on.
You can make your home and your family surrounding anything you want. Praise GOD for freedom in the USA. I pray for religious freedom in other nations. But in the workplace? We gotta grow up a LOT if we want to see things change.
At the core of every faith are several tenants we can agree on: Faith, hope, love, kindness, patience. These things we can agree on and you really won’t be persecuted for bringing these to work with you. As a matter of fact, your boss and coworkers wish you’d GET a little more faith, stop sinking into a pit, be hopeful and inspired in the workplace and wipe that negative Nelly look off your face.
I’m a rarity, I get it, but I’m also a pioneer. It really empowers me to be with people who are of diverse spiritual backgrounds in my workplace and seeing people step into their full power and abilities. In my personal life, and with the people I am most intimate with, yes, most will be of my same belief. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love people that I disagree with in the workplace so that we can ALL create a better result for our companies. I’ll stay true to my conservative yet radical out there beliefs. Even that statement makes some people laugh. I am pretty conservative, holding to Biblical beliefs that others will disagree with. But I’m also radical, have tattoos, colored hair, love to dance, enjoy an occasional glass of wine or some good tequila and a cigar for a celebration a few times per year. I also absolutely love Jesus and don’t want to live one minute without Him.
What we believe affects so much in our lives. Most, if not all things we struggle with, can be traced back to belief. Even our ability to perform well at work, or, really suck at our job, can be traced back to BELIEF. IF we believe that we have to fulfill the expectations of our parents and teachers by pursuing a certain career, but this so-called ideal job they keep steering us toward is not only contrary to our natural wiring, it’s something we do NOT like at all, or maybe, even despise, it will show up in our work, every day. We will be the one people do NOT want to be around.
We can only perform, play a role and do things for position for so long. Then the real heart and belief issues come in. For example if I have a client who is adamant that they can NOT afford to do $10 per day Facebook ads to grow a highly targeted following for their small business, there are only rare cases when this is truly the case. Only rarely is money the true issue. And even in those cases, I’ve been creative enough, resourceful enough and ridiculous enough to come up with great plans on occasion for these situations, and have helped a lot of people out of a pit. But if their belief is so rooted and firmly planted in lack and struggle, they will fight me and I won’t bother at all.
I won’t bother because I have a strong belief that I can only take a business owner as far as they want to go. I am a pusher by nature, and I do push hard sometimes. But I only push hard under the mutual understanding that they want me to push and they are going to take responsibility. Otherwise, forget it. That’s codependent and I am not going there. You don’t take responsibility, I am not gonna push you.
If our beliefs are tied to anything gender, religion, income status, family history, location or anything else and these beliefs are prohibiting us from doing something we really want to do in life, we have the power to change things. Faith at work comes in to equip and empower people. To help them go beyond their own self into a realm that is higher and greater than they are.
Many people go into this realm when it comes to personal emergencies. Even the atheist can oftentimes be found praying when their child is diagnosed with cancer. But bringing this kind of faith and desire for more and belief that something bigger than us truly does exists into our career? Well that is a new thing. AND…. it’s being widely accepted around the world.
When we are really confident in the things that we believe, we don’t need to start an argument every single time someone disagrees with us. We don’t need to ‘defend our faith’ when someone persecutes us. We’ll have wisdom and discernment for when this might be ok, but typically, if someone is fighting us that hard, they’re not hearing our rebuttal anyways. I am not the debate team type of girl. But I am a bold in your face girl and I’m gonna love you hard, in your face and many times, when you don’t expect it. But I won’t push my beliefs, my love or anything on you if you’re really enjoying your misery. Nah… that’s when I’ll pray for you, release heaven over you, and keep some good boundaries. I might, on occasion, also pray for open doors to love you if things get real hard, and work periodically to keep the doors open.
Faith works at your work, because your beliefs are fueling everything you do, whether you know it or believe it. Go shine today. Make a difference. Bring kindness into your workplace! It’s a superpower!
With love,
Sandi Krakowski
