Everything is Spiritual
John Mark Comer
5 min read ⭑
There’s someone God made you to be. Something God made you to do. All you have to do is dig it out from under the rubble of your fear and insecurity and upbringing and culture and consciousness. It’s there. Waiting to be found.
But I know what some of you are thinking, really? I know that God calls people to church stuff, but I’m an IT specialist for a cell-phone company — how is that a calling from God?
To get to a robust, deep, rich, charged theology of work, and for that matter, rest, we have to cross the chasm that is the sacred/secular divide.
And I forewarn you; it is a deep, wide, ominous chasm.
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The sacred/secular divide is this erroneous idea that some things are sacred or spiritual, and they matter to God; but other things are secular or physical, and by implication, they don’t matter to God, at least, not all that much.
The problem with this widespread, ubiquitous, domineering, destructive way of thinking is that, well, by this definition, most of life is secular.
The sacred stuff is a dinky slice of the pie — going to church, praying, reading the Scriptures, evangelism. What is that, 5 percent of our lives? Max? If you’re really “spiritual”?
Most of life — the other 95% — is spent grocery shopping or walking the dog or cutting your toenails or reading at the park or doing yoga with your wife or eating a burrito and then feeling bloated afterward — but less so if you just finished doing yoga.
This is the stuff of everyday life.
And so most of us feel a little bit frustrated because we think that what we do every day — our work and our rest — how we play and unwind and enjoy God’s world — is meaningless and pointless and ephemeral and doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of heaven and hell and eternal life because it’s not sacred.
This entire paradigm of the sacred and the so-called secular is seriously out of whack. And not only is it untrue, but it’s also dangerous.
Let’s talk about the word spiritual. It’s one of those words we use all the time, but as a wise Spaniard with a sweet mustache once said, “I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Did you know there’s no word for spiritual in the Hebrew language?
Look up the word spiritual in Genesis to Malachi — the Bible used by Jesus.
It’s not there.
Why? Because in a Hebrew worldview, all of life is spiritual.
Have you ever read that crazy book Leviticus? You really should. It’s in a part of the Old Testament called the Torah, a Hebrew word meaning “teaching” or “law.”
And there are laws — I mean teachings — about every facet of life.
When you get to the New Testament, the word spiritual is really only used by Paul. In his writings it means “animated by the Holy Spirit.” And for Paul, every facet of our life should be spiritual. I think if you had asked Jesus about his spiritual life, he would have looked at you very confused. My guess is he would have asked, ‘What do you mean by my spiritual life? You mean my life? All of my life is spiritual.’
Jesus didn’t buy into sacred/secular thinking. Not one bit. To him, the God he called Father is as close as the air up against our skin. To him, life is a seamless, integrated, holistic experience where the sacred is all around us. And for Jesus and his way, God wants to be involved in every square inch of our lives.
Because everything is spiritual.
Everything matters to God.
“For those who are spiritual — who are filled with the active, dynamic Spirit of God himself — the line between heaven and earth is thin at best.”
You mediate between the Creator and the creation. You’re his representative. You pass his blessing on to people who know him and to others who don’t.
And you’re called. What you do matters to God a whole lot.
Because it’s your ministry.
I have a love-hate relationship with the word ministry, which basically means I hate it. I work for a church, and so people ask me all the time, ‘What’s it like to be in full-time ministry?’ or ‘When did you know you were called to ministry?’ I’m a bit sarcastic and I get annoyed way too easily, so sometimes I crack, ‘When did you know you were called to ministry?’
All the word ministry means is “service.” Your ministry is your service — it’s the part you play, the slot you fill, the place you do your thing to work for a Garden-like world.
We’re all serving. We’re all in ministry. Some of us, like myself, are serving inside the church, which is great. But the vast majority of you are serving outside the church — as a paramedic or a landscape architect or a designer for Google or a hunting guide or a surf instructor or a radiologist or a parking-lot attendant — but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re serving outside the kingdom. And it definitely doesn’t mean that what you do isn’t spiritual or that it doesn’t matter to God.
This is why we have to go to war with sacred/secular ideology — because it essentially compartmentalizes God. We have our God box and then our work box and our rest box and our diet-and-exercise box and our entertainment box and our money box — and we cut our life up into tiny little pieces. And in all the masochism, God becomes a line item in our budget, a time slot in our daily routine, a building we go to every Sunday for a few hours. God is effectively shut out of the bulk of our lives.
This is disastrous for living the God-saturated, full-immersion, you-can’t-swim-to-the-bottom kind of life that Jesus wants for all of us.
Here’s what I’m getting at: If you’re a construction worker or a plumber or a teacher or a dental hygienist, you’re not a Christian construction worker or a Christian plumber or a Christian whatever.
You’re a Christian — a follower of Jesus the Messiah and the Lord of the world.
And you’re a dental hygienist. Or a professional football player. Or a you fill in the blank.
So do your work — whatever it is as a follower of Jesus. Because there are no compartments! Everything matters to God. The way of Jesus should permeate and influence and shape every facet of your life.
Maybe that means you’ll leverage your small business to work for justice and mercy — But maybe it just means that you’ll show up for your job as an accountant, and you’ll do your job really, really well, and the world will be a better, more Garden-like place because of it. And every day when you show up for work, you’ll embody the way of Jesus, so that your boss, your coworkers, your contractors, and your clients will all get a glimpse of what Jesus’ way is all about and, hopefully, an invitation to join in.
You need to know that’s enough. In fact, it’s more than enough. It’s beautiful.
For those who are spiritual — who are filled with the active, dynamic Spirit of God himself — the line between heaven and earth is thin at best. The sacred is never far away.
And your job, your career or whatever it is you do all day long, isn’t something outside of Jesus’ calling on your life — it’s right at the center of it.
John Mark Comer is the New York Times bestselling author of Practicing the Way, Live No Lies, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, God Has a Name, and three more. His podcasts, John Mark Comer Teachings and Rule of Life, have been ranked on top religion and spirituality podcast charts in the U.S. and U.K. He's also the Founder and Teacher of Practicing the Way, a simple, beautiful way to integrate spiritual formation into your church or small group. Prior to starting Practicing the Way, he spent almost twenty years pastoring Bridgetown Church in Portland, OR, and working out apprenticeship to Jesus in the post-Christian West. He lives in Los Angeles.
Taken from Garden City by John Mark Comer. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson.
