Four months have already passed us by, you now have six months to train for the 2024 Summer Olympics. You are all going to watch some part: track and field, basketball, rowing, swimming. Right now, the athletes who plan to compete in those games are on a training schedule which will land them in the best shape of their lives so they can compete for a gold medal.

Challenge Yourself: What two or three events do you want to be in peak shape for? Spiritual, relational, financial, physical shape?

Accountability: Write it down and share it with someone. Share it with me if you like and I will check in and see your progress.

Core Training: Think of the book Run to Win as our training guide for the year. Seventeen core exercises to keep yourself, your soul, in shape so you might run to win.

Don Flow talks about how being a Christian shapes the way you work. What does it mean to “Live, Love and Bring Hope”? We want to build trust with our customers and serve the community. What would it look like to be trustworthy to every customer? Trust has underneath it keeping your promises. Never advantage yourself to the disadvantage of others, do nothing manipulative or deceptive.

I want to encourage you to listen to Tim Keller’s lecture about work, some of which I will repeat this morning. My challenge to you is: find someone to have a cup of coffee with and discuss how your faith might better intersect with your work.

Wrong or Incomplete Views of Work: 

1. Secular View: The primary purpose of work is self-fulfillment or identity. Success in your life = Success at work.  There is a danger when you make work your identity. If you are successful it goes to your head. Keller says, “Surely you know that if you are successful in your work you don’t just feel like a good business person…you feel like you are a great person! So it’s very natural for people who are very successful in one area to think that makes them an expert in every area.” It happens across the board, in every profession.

When you make work your identity, it goes to your head and can have many bad side affects. If you make work your identity and things don’t go well, then it’s far more emotionally draining and anxiety producing than it should be. It’s just work, not your identity!

What rescues us from this problem of too closely identifying with our work? You must have an identity that is not rooted in your own performance. This is the message of Christianity!

Read the lyrics to “My Worth is Not in What I Own”

2. Two-Storied View – Secular vs. Sacred: The two-storied view distinguishes between secular and sacred work. Work that matters to God and has eternal value and work that doesn’t matter and has little value. The weakness of the two-storied view is it divides or disconnects the soul and body. The soul is the most important and work is diminished. This view creates two classes of workers – there is a hierarchy between soul work and secular work.

3. Work as a Pulpit: Christian participation in work is primarily to set-up opportunities for evangelism. Work is a bridge or platform for the Gospel. The weakness of the work as a pulpit view is reducing your work to a soapbox. It only has value if it’s evangelistic. In this view, your actual work doesn’t matter much.

Your Work Matters to God: 5 Pointers
It has intrinsic value, work all by itself is valuable to God

1. God is a worker: The very first thing you find God doing in the Bible is work! Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

2. Work is not beneath God: “It’s not by accident God shows up in the Old Testament as a gardener and in the New Testament as a carpenter.”

3. Work is not a result of the fall: It’s not like we were created to lounge around in the garden but Adam blew it in Genesis 3 and now we all have to work. No, work is part of God’s good creation. In heaven, we will not sit around on clouds but we will work. Work is good and is as much of a basic human need as food, friendship and prayer.

4. Work is not a curse: Work is not a 4-letter word. Work is not a barrier which prevents you from doing the really meaningful things in life. How many of us think or have thought, “I work, I grind it out 40-50 hours a week but what’s really meaningful in my life is…Thank God it’s Friday/O God it’s Monday.”

5. Work was designed for joy: Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Like a master craftsman, when God completes his work of creation he steps back and enjoys the work of his hands. God finds pleasure and satisfaction in his work. God creates things that are beautiful, just for joy. Beauty has it’s own kind of value, not everything has to be useful!

God is a worker and we are made in his image so when we work we are exercising God-like characteristics. That alone gives work dignity.

Questions:

1. Flow video: What stuck with you? Can you think of some aspect of your work which might need to be deconstructed or reconstructed in order to live out your faith in a more authentic way?
2. What wrong or incomplete views about your work do you carry around in your thinking? Talk about your identity and your work – are you in danger?
3. Discuss the 5 Pointers which point to the fact that your work matters to God. Which one is most helpful for you to digest?

Iron Leadership Materials:

• The Daily Office- 1-12-24
• IL Handout – 1-12-24