“You can build God’s Kingdom wherever He’s placed you”: 5 ways to live out your faith at work

Did you know that, regardless of your role at work, you are carrying out a priestly ministry for God?

In the Old Testament, priests ministered to the people with God’s revelation and wisdom, and communicated God’s blessings to them. Since we are now living temples of God, we become His priests – channels of His revelation, wisdom and blessings to those around us.

“We can host the presence of God every single day,” said Calvin Hong, senior leader of Awaken Generation, during a talk, Building God’s House in the Marketplace, on November 5, 2025.

During the talk, participants were led to ask themselves: Like the Levites, have we been attentively waiting on Him? Are we listening to what is on God’s heart?

The talk was one of the worship school’s free public electives on leadership, which focuses on producing healthy leaders for ministries and the marketplace.

The panel consisted of:

• Reuben Lai, co-founder of Arkadiah Technology, a nature technology company that revives degraded lands through AI-enabled nature restoration
• Oriana Suryo, business development and marketing head of Arkadiah Technology
• Pastor Trisha Khoo, school overseer of Awaken Generation
• Calvin Hong, senior leader of Awaken Generation
• Timothy Wong, Head of Research at DBS Bank

From their sharing, Salt&Light identified five ways we can become effective ministers of God in our workplace, regardless of our role.

1. Invite God’s presence through prayer

Timothy encouraged people to invite God’s rule and reign into “every area of our lives, including our work and the company we work for”.

He said: “It’s so powerful when our first response to a challenge is not to fret or to worry, but to get on our knees and just pray.”

Citing Matthew 18:20, he added: “Can you imagine walking into your company, and no matter how difficult the situation might be, or how bad the politics might be, the two or three of you invite the presence of God and everything changes?”

In the Bible, Daniel and his friends modelled how believers in the marketplace can live. “You can build God’s Kingdom wherever He’s placed you,” Timothy affirmed, encouraging people to build rhythms to invite the presence of God.

Joining over Zoom from Korea, Timothy called on listeners – both on-site and online – to find other Christians in the workplace, gather together and to call on God’s presence beyond the weekends.

He gave some practical tips on how to do so: “Gather your colleagues. Make it virtual so that anyone can dial in on the bus or MRT, and find a regular time to connect and to pray. Secondly, find someone that you can pray with and intercede with for specific work situations.”

Quoting 1 Timothy 2:1-2, he added: “One of the very powerful things that we can do as believers in a company is to lift up your CEOs and senior leaders in prayer before the Lord. Do it regularly; do it earnestly.

“If you believe that God answers prayer, that’s probably the single most important thing you can do.”

Oriana shared about how she had prayed with a colleague when businesses were affected during the COVID pandemic. “Things took a long time to open up and, even then, her revenue kept going down. I reached out to her and said: ‘Why don’t we pray?’”

Every day, they would pray at lunchtime. It took more than a year for things to turn around.

“Many times we expected that when we pray one time, two times, suddenly the miracles will happen. But not everything follows God’s pattern,” shared Oriana.

Rather than using “brute force” to settle problems, the solution is to “knock on heaven and just be faithful in that, every single day”.

2. Deepen your personal relationship with God

Before we set out to discover God’s specific calling for our lives and work, we must grasp His call for us to know Him intimately.

“There’s no point answering a phone call when you don’t know who’s on the other side,” said Calvin.

“When we know Him, God then entrusts us with His heart’s desire, through His Spirit, with the giftings that He’s given us, to rebuild His Kingdom on earth.

“After that, God invites us to co-labour with Him. That’s our assignment – to bear witness, to fulfil the Great Commission in making disciples of all nations and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. That’s why He’s called us to know Him, and to be known by Him, and to make Him known.

“When you’re faithful, you shouldn’t be worried about where you end up. As long as I’m under God’s covering, God’s perfect will, I know that I’m walking in the right path.”

Calvin (right), spoke on living out our identity as a royal priesthood in the marketplace. An aspect of this identity is knowing that we are God’s chosen and beloved.

Reuben added that closed doors can also be God’s way of speaking to us. This year, he shared, he was discouraged while struggling with a series of closed doors in investments.

“The Lord just told me: ‘Hey, can you have joy even in the closed doors – the same joy you have in the mountaintop?’”

As he started to “practice” that joy, the first call he received was an investor who wanted to reduce their investment by 75%. He continued to praise God amid the testing – even though he felt like he was “delusional”. Yet, there was peace in Reuben’s heart.

Later that week, another investor called Reuben: They wanted to increase their investment by ten times! 

“The amazing thing was that the investment was not my takeaway. (My takeaway was that) the same God exists in the valley and the mountaintop – He does not change.”

3. Let God shape your values at work

As priests, our relationship with God is most important.

“Once the vertical relationship with God is established, that now sets the tone for all the horizontal relationships. We no longer need to look at the person on the other side of the table as that ‘problem colleague’ or ‘problem customer’,” Timothy explained.

“What if, instead of engaging in gossip, backbiting and joining in, we started to speak blessing over them?”

Believers should embody godly values and honour everyone in their different roles at work, the panelists added.

“Nothing can substitute intimacy or spending time with God to know who he is and how he speaks to you,” said Oriana (second from right).

“Just like in God’s house, He has different people taking on different roles … Not one role is better. For example, the sales role is not better because you’re bringing in the sale of revenue,” said Oriana.

Reuben added: “Inevitably, people will be comparing with each other, but we try to crush all of those comparisons … Like a professional sports team, we need to work together for a season and work together very well.”

4. Be willing to take risks in faith

Calvin challenged the audience to strengthen their faith by obeying God in seemingly risky situations and seeing what happens.

“I make a lot of mistakes when God asks me to do something. I ask, ‘Is it really you?’, not realising that God is saying: ‘I’m waiting for you to step out.’ Many times, we don’t step up (in obedience) because we don’t want to look foolish or we don’t want to be embarrassed,” said Calvin.

“To me, risk is spelt F-A-I-T-H,” said Reuben (second from left).

Starting small is crucial. Reuben added: “You need to take risks in all the smaller things, like taking a risk if God asks you to pray for a waiter or Grab driver.”

5. Be attentive to the Holy Spirit

The panelists shared how discernment in the marketplace requires wisdom and listening to the Holy Spirit.

Oriana shared: “Reuben and I are in a prayer group, and our prayer leader is a lady with a lot of wisdom. One thing she always says is: ‘With intimacy comes power.’

“Building that intimacy with the Lord is key. If you don’t know the Lord, then you don’t know His voice … Nothing can substitute intimacy or spending time with God to know who He is and how He speaks to you.”

Pastor Trisha added: “I think Asians especially fear man – what people think of us, how we’re going to succeed. But the only thing that can displace the fear of man is a healthy fear of the Lord.

“When we know the voice of the Holy Spirit, we’ll be able to discern, choose and yield to God’s leading, rather than the fear of man.”

“The more yielded we are, the more the fruit of the Spirit will overflow,” said Pastor Trisha (left).

Calvin also emphasised the importance of waiting upon the Lord and being attentive as He speaks.

“If it’s a VIP guest, you don’t just leave a VIP guest to somebody else. You’re always attentive: ‘Hey, are you okay? Do you need to drink anything? Are you hungry? How can I serve you?’ That should be the attitude of every priestly person to carry the presence of God.”

“God, as I administer your commands: Who are you sending me to? Who can I serve? Who can I bring blessing to? Because You are the King that I’m serving.”

Awaken Generation believes healthy leaders build healthy cultures. Their Leadership Mentorship Programme is designed not just to teach skills, but to form leaders who thrive in both calling & personal well-being, build high trust & relational teams, and lead out of intimacy with God. 

Find out more about the leadership stream at Awaken Generation’s Worship School here.

 You may also access their free Leaders’ Well-being Assessment here.

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