About a year ago, I realized something: Whenever my 6-year-old son was given a chore, he whined and resisted. When doing a job, he fiddled and lollygagged. Put bluntly, he was plum lazy.

My son needed to learn how to work. He needed instruction and a good example to look to—and I wanted to provide it. The problem was, my job doesn’t lend itself to child participation. Writing articles and editing magazines isn’t even particularly exciting to watch.

So I started doing something that I have continued ever since: Every time I have a job to do around the house, my son does it with me. If there’s anything to repair, assemble, replace, maintain, weed, prune or plant, we do it together.

I’m fairly limited as a handyman. But I do what I can and seek to learn and improve—in large part because I want to teach my son and spend more time with him.

This has been one of the best things I’ve done with him. In order to get the landscaping around our home under control, I decided to commit at least 30 minutes of yard work every Sunday. “Time for yard work—let’s go,” I’d say. Within just a few weeks of doing this consistently, my son started jumping at the opportunity. His focus and engagement—so lacking before—noticeably improved. Then his skill at some of these tasks began to visibly advance.

One day, I needed to replace several water connectors to sinks in our home. It took time for him to learn how to use an adjustable wrench in tight spaces and grasp some elementary plumbing principles. Changing out these waterlines ended up absorbing several hours—far longer than if I had simply done the job myself. But by the end, my son could change a connector entirely on his own. He had learned a skill, gained confidence, and spent quite a lot of quality time with Dad, working.

In such cases, efficiency takes a back seat to more important concerns. I want to develop my relationship with my children, and I want them to learn skills and build aspects of character that come only through work.

God has the same mind-set with His children. He has gigantic ambitions and a lot of work to accomplish (John 5:17). He wants to reach the entire world with His message (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). Being omnipotent, He has unlimited awesome means of accomplishing this job on His own. But He has a bigger picture in mind.

God is a Father, and His ultimate ambition is to build a Family. He wants to be close with His children. His priority is to develop our character. He wants us to learn to love Him, to honor Him, to want to emulate Him. He wants us to be excited about His Work and to passionately support it.

So what does He do? He invites us to work with Him.

“[W]e are labourers together with God,” the Apostle Paul wrote—“workers together with him” (1 Corinthians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 6:1). This is extraordinary.

God could speak directly to mankind if He chose to, as He did with the Israelites at Sinai (Deuteronomy 4:32-35)—but instead He speaks through men (Amos 3:7-8). He could employ the world’s wise, mighty and noble to do His Work—but instead He uses the foolish, weak, base and despised (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). He knows the needs of His Work in detail and could fulfill them in a flash—but He holds back and waits to hear our fervent prayers for those needs (Matthew 9:38; Romans 15:30-32; Ephesians 6:18-20; 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2). He owns everything (Haggai 2:8) and could fund His Work in any number of spectacular ways—but chooses to do so through the tithes and offerings of a little flock, composed substantially of common laborers, housewives and pensioners.

Consider God’s great power and what He seeks to accomplish! But in pursuit of a greater ultimate reward, He actually bridles that ambition. Instead of accomplishing the objective in a millisecond, He enters into partnership with us. He places these responsibilities on our shoulders. He fulfills His mighty aspirations through our prayers, our donations, our encouragement and any other possible contribution.

That powerfully demonstrates the priority God places on building your character and strengthening His relationship with you.

“I trust God to supply every need,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in a March 4, 1960, co-worker letter. “But God does not go into the counterfeiting business and by miracles bring new dollar bills, hundred dollar bills or thousand dollar bills into being and hand them to us for His Work. God works through human instruments. In supplying necessary funds for His great Work, God works through you! He has called you, through your honestly paid tithes and generous offerings beside, to have your part in His Work.”

God wants to teach us how to love and give the way He does. He wants to convert our selfishness and vanity into sacrifice and generosity. He is expanding our thinking beyond ourselves and our immediate circle to include the largest audience possible.

As we partner with our Father to clean up our lives and to do His Work, we are growing in spiritual focus, godly skill, Christ-led confidence, and holy character. And we are spending quality time with our Father, learning to work together with Him to change the world! That’s something to keep in mind whether you’re a father working with your child or a child working with your Father.