Working With God Instead of For God: A Leader's Inner Conversion

Blog by the Unhurried Living Team

Many Christian leaders carry a question they rarely say out loud: if I'm working so hard for God, why does it sometimes feel like I'm drifting farther from him? Working with God instead of for God describes a gradual inner conversion — a shift from striving to accomplish things for God toward learning to participate attentively in what God is already doing. This episode of the Unhurried Living podcast, hosted by Alan Fadling, explores what that conversion looks like and why it may be one of the most important transformations in a leader's life.

Alan Fadling, co-founder and president of Unhurried Living, Inc., opens with a question he posed unexpectedly to a room of church leaders: what is our product? What is the primary good our leadership is meant to produce? Beneath the programs and structures and departments, the answer keeps returning to people — and, more precisely, to the quality of presence we bring to the people we serve. The fruit that lasts always involves people, and that fruit grows out of who we are, not only what we do.

What Does It Mean to Lead from the Inside Out?

The most important transformation in leadership, Alan suggests, is not something that happens in our strategies or structures. It happens within us. Conversion is not only the doorway into salvation — it is the ongoing way that salvation reshapes every arena of our lives, including how we lead.

One of the early signs of this inner conversion is a growing attention to our interior state in ministry moments. Alan asks: do I enter a ministry moment anxious or at peace? Do I arrive frustrated or grateful? Do people experience me as driven or as present? These are not guilt-inducing questions. They are invitations to deepen our awareness of God with us — to stop treating our inner life as irrelevant to the work we do and start treating it as the very ground from which the work grows.

The Jesuit writer Thomas Green named the hidden dynamics of self-serving ministry with uncommon honesty in his book When the Well Runs Dry. Green observed that even our most generous and apostolic actions can be quietly tainted by the need for recognition, the drive to prove our worth, or the subtle satisfaction of being needed. Prayer, Green argues, is the thing that slowly exposes and dismantles those motives — not through accusation, but through reorientation.

The Apostle Paul frames the same reality in 1 Corinthians 3 with disarming simplicity: "I planted the seed. Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow." Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything. God gives the growth. We tend to act as though the fruit belongs to our effort — but Paul invites us to see that we are planting and watering seeds we did not create, in ground we did not make, toward a harvest only God produces.

One honest practice to begin this inner work: at the close of a ministry day, ask yourself — was I present today, or was I performing? Not to condemn yourself, but simply to notice.

If you're looking for ongoing support for your inner life as a leader, Unhurried Living offers one-on-one sessions with trained spiritual directors — explore it here.

Is Your Devotion Leading You Ahead of God?

Even deeply devoted leaders can move ahead of God rather than with him. Alan illustrates this with a vivid story from a leadership conference he attended, where a speaker used the familiar chicken-and-pig illustration to make a point about commitment. The chicken contributes to breakfast by laying an egg. The pig commits by providing the bacon. The message: be more like the pig. Give everything.

Alan understood the spirit of the illustration. Christian leadership does call for real sacrifice and wholehearted engagement. But as he sat with the image, another thought surfaced: when the pig has made his contribution, he's done. There are no more breakfasts for him. In that sense, the pig is not a picture of sustainable devotion. He's a picture of the leader who burns out or disqualifies himself.

That image brought him to 2 Samuel 7, and one of the most searching moments in King David's story. David had come to a rare season of rest — enemies subdued, settled in his palace. He looked around at his house of cedar and felt the contrast of the ark of God still dwelling in a tent. The impulse was noble: he wanted to build God a proper house. Nathan the prophet affirmed him immediately. God has clearly been with you, Nathan said. Follow the good impulse on your heart.

But that night, God corrected Nathan directly. "Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in?" David's idea was sincere, generous, and full of devotion. It simply was not what God was asking him to do. The assumption — that because something is good and intentions are honorable, it must therefore be God's will — is one of the quietest and most common traps in Christian leadership.

A small honest step: pause before your next initiative and ask not only is this good? but is this what God is asking of me?

Alan Fadling and the team at Unhurried Living write and speak regularly about discerning God's will in leadership — read more here.

What If Leadership Begins With Receptivity, Not Intensity?

The deeper conversion Alan describes is a shift in the question itself. Most leaders begin by asking: what great thing can I do for God? The quieter, wiser question — the one that takes years to learn — is: Lord, what are you doing, and how may I join you?

This is not a retreat from engagement. It is a reorientation of how engagement begins. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar captures it in his book Prayer: we do not build the kingdom of God by our own efforts, however assisted by grace. The most we can do through genuine prayer is to make as much room as possible in ourselves and in the world for the kingdom of God, so that its energies can go to work.

That image does something to the posture of leadership. We are not the builders. We are the ones who learn to make room. We make room for the kingdom to reign in us so that it might rain through us. The work of leadership, in this frame, grows out of a living and interactive relationship with God — we share what God gives us in contemplation, we speak what we hear in prayer, and we act in response to what God is already doing around us.

Alan reflects that this has been a lifelong lesson, not a one-time arrival. Like Peter, who wrote that it is no trouble to remind his readers of the same things again and again, the invitation bears repeating: our work, whatever form it takes, becomes one small way we join God in praying and living those familiar words — your kingdom come, your will be done.

A practice to carry into this week: before beginning your day's work, take five minutes to ask God what he is already doing in the people and situations you are about to enter — and invite yourself to join that, rather than direct it.

Working With God vs. Working for God: A Comparison

Two Ways of Leading in the Kingdom

Where Leaders in Every Season Can Find This Kind of Support

Unhurried Living exists as a fully digital and distributed ministry — which means the resources, coaching, spiritual direction, and training Alan and Gem Fadling have built over thirty years of work in spiritual formation and leadership development are available to Christian leaders wherever they are serving. Whether you are a pastor in a small town, a ministry director navigating an exhausting season, or a leader who has quietly wondered if what you're doing is actually what God is asking — this community is for you. There is no local address required to find your footing here.

The Question That Changes Everything

The inner conversion Alan Fadling describes in this episode is not a single dramatic moment. It is a slow, ongoing reshaping of the question a leader brings to their work. We begin by asking what we can accomplish for God. Over time, we learn to ask something quieter and far more life-giving: Lord, what are you doing, and how may I join you? Working with God instead of for God is not a retreat from faithful effort — it is where faithful effort finds its deepest roots.

If you want to stay connected to this kind of reflection week after week, the Unhurried Living weekly email brings these conversations directly to your inbox — sign up here. And if you are ready to go deeper through a structured community of practice, the PACE certificate program is a 21-month training in spiritual leadership and soul care — get started here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does it mean to work with God instead of for God? A: Working for God tends to begin with our own initiative — deciding what impressive thing we can accomplish in his name. Working with God begins with receptivity: listening in prayer, discerning what God is already doing, and learning to participate in that rather than lead ahead of it. Alan Fadling describes this as one of the deepest conversions in a leader's life — a gradual shift that reshapes not just our strategies but our entire posture before God.

Q: How do I know if my ministry motives are self-centered? A: The Jesuit writer Thomas Green, in When the Well Runs Dry, observed that even our most generous actions can be quietly shaped by the need for recognition, the drive to prove our worth, or the satisfaction of being needed by others. A deepening life of prayer slowly surfaces these motives — not to condemn, but to reorient. Honest questions like "was I present today, or was I performing?" can be a gentle starting point.

Q: What if I'm doing good things that God never actually asked me to do? A: King David's impulse to build God a temple in 2 Samuel 7 was sincere, generous, and full of devotion — and God redirected it anyway. The assumption that a good idea with honorable intentions must be God's will is a common and quiet trap. Alan Fadling suggests replacing the question "what great thing can I do for God?" with "Lord, is there something I am eager to do for you that you are not asking of me?" That shift in question can open a more discerning kind of leadership.

Q: Why do I feel distant from God even when I'm working hard in ministry? A: This is one of the most honest questions Christian leaders carry but rarely say out loud. Alan Fadling opens this podcast episode with it directly. The distance often grows when leadership becomes more about what we accomplish than about the life we are actually living with God. Paying attention to our interior state — whether we arrive at ministry moments anxious or at peace, driven or present — is often the first step back toward closeness.

Q: How does prayer reshape Christian leadership? A: Prayer does more than support our leadership — it fundamentally reorients it. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that genuine prayer makes room in us for the kingdom of God so that its energies can go to work. When prayer becomes a place of listening rather than only asking, it begins to teach us how to act in response to what God is already doing rather than what we have planned for him. Leadership that grows out of this kind of prayer tends to be more fruitful, more sustainable, and less prone to the self-serving motives that exhaust us over time.