Taking Sunday into Monday

If you have your Bible, you can open up to Galatians chapter 5,

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

going to be in Galatians chapter 5, picking up from about verse

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

13 to give you a little bit of a backdrop.

I like the fact that Clint mentioned mentioned us as a base

church. It's one of the things we're

kind of weaving into our series at the moment.

I don't know if you're familiar with Two Kings 22.

It's a moment in the history of of Israel where King Josiah, I

think he'd been king for something like 18 or 20 years.

And he started his own little building project.

He looked at the temple, thought, you know, it's in a

little bit of a disarray. And so he sent A-Team to go and

fix up the the temple and something unexpected happened.

They found the Bible the high priest took here comes to the

king and says, listen, we found the book.

I don't know if you remember Rory mentioning that a few weeks

ago we found the book which meant that for at least the last

18, possibly 20 years, the the King had led the nation without

scripture, the the church had led the Tabernacle without

scripture. The people had lived without

Scripture. And you can imagine what this

did in terms of turning the nation and the Kingdom and the

Tabernacle on its head. Now say that because the verse

we're going to look at has done that to me this past week.

And since I can't afford therapy, I just thought I'd

share it with you. And we can deal with it publicly

together. But it's in Galatians 5, verse

Galatians 5:13

13, and it says the following. It says for you, a call to

freedom, Brothers and sisters only.

Do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your

flesh, but through love serve one another.

Now, I know you're looking at that and you go, like kind of

was expecting more, but all right, turned your life upside

down. What's going on there?

Well, the reason why this thing got a hold of me the way that it

did was because I just finished reading through an article a

lady by the name of Dorothy Sayers had written on work and

she says the following. She says how can anyone remain

interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with

9/10 of one's life? You're saying, how can anyone

have any interest in a religion that's for Sundays only and has

nothing to do with our Mondays? Which is why I read this verse

through the lens of work. You call to freedom, Brothers

and sisters only. Do not use your freedom as an

opportunity to indulge your flesh.

Pretoria East, but through love serve one another.

So that's what we're going to do.

We're going to take a look at serving one another.

What the Bible says, a biblical world view on work this morning.

So turn to your neighbor, tell them to buckle in.

We're going to jump straight in. So when you think about work,

what do you think of the sociologists say we probably

think of one or two things. On the one side we think of work

through the lens of idolatry. I think in Pretoria East, this

is our lens idolatry. You know you want to make the

bucks, you want to have a Botox budgets, you want to have the

fanciest car. You know you're doing e-mail on

holiday and over the weekends and you're finishing that

projects while the family is out swimming in the sea.

And they say that. How crazy is this that if in a

marriage one of the partners works 10 hours more than the

national average, you're twice as likely to get a divorce.

Because this is the power of idolatry when it comes to work.

It has a power, a dark and a belly.

And work gives us identity. It gives us worth.

It gives us safety and comfort and all the toys we can handle.

So sometimes when we approach work, we look at it through the

lens of idolatry. Other times we look at it at it

through the lens of futility. There goes my caffeine, just

like and you should have had a full cup.

Futility. You know that they say that

Gallup did a poll of all working adults in the US. 87% of working

American adults hate their jobs. I wonder if we had to ask hands

up, yeah, how many hands would go up?

Hates their jobs. My hand will go down because the

boss's wife is here. Futility.

You know that 50% of us, they say, 50% of all working adults

do the bare minimum. It's called quiet quitting, just

enough to not get fired and also get your paycheck until you

retire. And those are the two lenses

that the world looks at when it looks through when it comes to

work. But none of those are the heart

of God when it comes to our work.

So in the Bible, kind of like the second page of Genesis, we

come across work for the very first time.

When I was at Bible college, one of the things that they taught

us was that it's important that it's called this, the rule of

First mention. So when a word or when a

principle or a theme is mentioned first in scripture,

that kind of becomes the Plumb line for the rest of scripture.

You need to look at it through this lens.

When it comes to work and what is fascinating for someone like

me, a wordsmith, I love the nuances of the Hebrew language.

The word for work is Abu da and it has a very wide semantic

range. So in Galatians, sorry, in

Genesis 215 says God puts Adam and Eve in the garden to work

it. This is our stereotypical work.

It's here you get raw elements and you need to beautify it.

Work kind of a calling, a vocation of you all.

But you turn a few pages later into Exodus and you see Moses

standing in front of Pharaoh and God said tell tell Pharaoh to

let my people go so they can avodah me.

Now it's not so that they can work me, so that they can

worship me. Same word, different context.

Work meaning work and work also meaning worship.

And the third use that avodah has in the Old Testament in

Hebrew is a master being served avodah by a slave or a king

being served by a subject. Or as we see in Galatians 513,

we serve through love, we serve one another.

So these are the three elements of work.

This is what your Monday should look like.

If you want to know, am I working biblically as a son of

God, as a daughter of God? Or am I working just like the

world? It's my work, work, sweat equity

and worship and service. So let's take a look at these

three. Firstly, work is worship.

When I was in Bible college, we we were slept with a verse.

I say slept because it was used against us.

It was weaponized. It's Colossians 317.

It basically says whatever you do in Word or deed, do it all in

glory of God. You know, everything is is

worship. You have to honor God and all of

that. I remember this week prepping

for this morning. I remember sitting at breakfast

the next morning and one one of the guys held up his orange

juice. He's like, I just don't know how

to worship God by drinking my orange juice right now, you

know, is it like, look, look, it's like what do you do?

How do you walk your dog as worship?

Like, really? I mean, but it's in the

scripture there, everything you do, whether word or deed, we do

it as representatives of Jesus Christ and we do it all in glory

and worship of the Father. And so I started scratching

around this week and I came across something fascinating.

It's called cabana. So the Jews had this, this

phrase, cabana. It's like Savannah with AK.

My spell check kept making it Savannah, but it's not dry and

you can't drink it. It's Cabana.

And Kavana means something where you impute a holy intent to

something. Now you you get this.

You don't know it, but you get this.

Imputing some meaning to something.

Has anyone here met President Cyril Ramaphosa?

Few hands. Anyone met the Queen before she

passed away. Anyone met Rory?

You know there's when you when you meet someone.

A statesman's a dignitary, a president.

It comes with certain decorum. There's, and that's got nothing

to do with the person. It's not because they were

immaculately conceived, it's because you've imputed meaning

to them, right. So I ran a production studio for

many, many years and I learned very quickly we were doing radio

and TV ads. So when you have a client come

in, we did, for example, did the Rugby World Cup and we were

doing the Absa ads. And so now you, you want to get

the best voice, someone with a warm timber authority.

And I subsequently discovered that the client doesn't get

that. The client wants Brighton Pulsa

to come and read a script because Brighton gets the game.

You know, it's like, no, but it's like, you know, we can do a

whole lot better. And what I used to do was I

would find out what their little fandom was and you'd get an

actor or an actress or a Springbok rugby player or

whatever the case because they would never complaints.

I mean, you can't complain when it's Bucky's doing your voice

over, you know, he's just the bee's knees.

And it's not because of him or because of the voice or because

of the abilities, because we've imputed something to them,

right? You're following me.

We get it when it's the big things, but it also applies to

the small things, the small things like your child's

drawings that you've stuck on your fridge.

It's not because they are a breathtaking piece of artwork.

It's because you've imputed value to them.

OK, so Cabana is an imputed imputation of holy intent.

So they said the following. They say when human.

This is not from scripture. This is sort of like their

little picture drawings. They say when human beings fell,

the glory of God that we carried was shattered and fragmented

into every molecule of the universe.

And when you Cabana, it's basically you're taking those

molecules and you're rebuilding something and you're bringing it

to God as an offering like your daughter's drawings and you

impute holy, intense or meaning to that.

And it is received from the father as worship our work.

Which is why Martin Luther King junior the the American activist

said if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper.

Sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures sweep streets

like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare

crafted plays sweep street so well that all the hosts of

heaven and earth will have to pause and say here lived a great

St. sweeper who swept his job. Well now if you don't think this

matters and you're like, seriously, I'm a sweep.

Like I'm doing it to Jesus and I've got a quote for you.

This is my own quotes. It won't be on the screen.

If you don't think this matters. All you need is bad customer

service, a bad boss, a bad dentist, bad coffee Clint, a bad

insurance broker, a bad medical professional to realize what a

gift to the world that is when someone works as unto the Lord.

My daughter, 13 years old in ICU and that when she went from high

care to ICU we weren't allowed to spend the evenings with her

anymore. And so she was left alone with

the medical staff. And every morning we would

discover whether or not the nurse nursed as unto the Lord,

whether it was a career or a calling.

And if a 13 year old can get that, how much more I have any

father? How much more your boss or Co

workers? But it is resting on our

shoulders as sons and daughters of God not to work like the

world, to work as worship for you.

A call to freedom, brothers and sisters only.

Do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your

flesh, but through love serve one another.

So this work is worship. What about work as as a calling?

Now this is a tricky 1 because I don't really like the calling

thing. I put together a document if you

want to get a hold of it, shared on Friday night at satellite and

I've made available to them. So like a biblical framework for

for calling you can ask one of the leaders they'll send it to

you But to get the idea of calling, I've mentioned the

story once before but it it bears repeating.

A friend of mine, Brian Bonds was in school down in KZN and

during COVID one of his teachers just came to mind over and over

again and he spoke to his wife about Miss Kay and said I don't

know why, but she's just on the heart.

Want to track her down when I find out if everything's OK.

And they did that and as soon as the doors were open and we were

allowed to gather in crowds. He had an appointment with Miss

Kay because he just, he realized what he wanted to do was he just

wanted to thank Miss Kay for what you meant in his life.

And he was telling me the story of how it was.

I think it was what's that grade seven-year standard five year

last year of primary school. She was his teacher and he was

saying up until then he was sort of like a loner, didn't really

feel like he amounted to much, didn't carry much value.

He felt he was more of a disappointment in society than

anything else as a young man until he was in her class and he

tells the story of how she just saw he had an athletics gift and

loved on him and cared for him. And he he began to feel like he

was her favorite. He says he remembered he won one

race and she allowed him to stand on his desk with his medal

for the whole class, to see in and explain what it was like

going over that line first, whatever the case might be.

And he also realized that he was her favorite because there were

awkward moments where she would come, you know, to have a maths

problem and she'd lay her hand on him and just sort of lean in.

And he was like, OK, this is kind of weird, but, you know,

you know, my type of thing. I appreciate it.

But looking back, he realized, you know, it was just an

affinity that she had for him and she was a remarkable teacher

and so she wanted he wanted to say thank you.

So took his wife and they had coffee with her and he took a

gift hamper and fruit basket and flowers and you name it and told

her how much she meant to him. And then she said OK, is it OK

if I share myself the story? So please, I'd love to know.

And she said every morning she would arrive at work 30 minutes

before everybody else and would spend the morning praying for

the students, would lay her hands on every chair and every

desk, knowing the students by name, knowing some of their

stories, knowing the family situation, knowing what they

need. And she said as well, whenever

they had asked questions. And she said luck your maths

question, she said. I'll lay my hands on you while

you're asking me the question. I will be praying in tongues

over you fighting on your behalf, he says.

Sorry if it was a little awkward, but that's what God

told me to do. And he said this.

He said. What would my life have been

like without her praise? He said he radically changed

personality. Self worth, value, World view is

now a pastor in the US. What would my life have been

like without her prayers? What spiritual battles did she

win over my life? And then he said she simply took

her Mondays to Fridays and her turned her career into a

calling. I love that.

It's part of what Scripture calls us to when God says

avodah, I've made you to avodah. So I went and I went on to the

interwebs to try and find best way to frame what I see in

scripture as calling. And this is the best that I

could come up. It's not my own.

I've taken bits and pieces from lots of people, but this is how

I define calling Is to influence a corner, a community, or a

culture through redemptive participation.

OK, it wasn't just working really, really hard as a

teacher, but engaging in redemptive participation to

influence a corner. It might just be the tiny little

corner of the shop that you work in.

Or there might be a corner of the city, Might be a community,

or might be culture. OK, but this begs the question,

OK, So what does that look like to influence a corner community

or culture through redemptive participation?

So what does redemptive finances look like?

Anyone working in the finance industry.

What does that look like? I can tell you what it doesn't

look like. It doesn't look like my text

lady that I had many, many years ago.

She's not in three CI. You don't know who she is.

OK, be free. But Saturday night she sends me

an e-mail, so probably 12 years ago.

Saturday night I'm preaching the next morning and I don't even

know why. I think was the devil that got

me to check my e-mail. I'll never check e-mail on

weekend, but I'm checking it at like eight, 9:00 at night.

Dear Stephen, I've done your tax.

You're going to have to pay SARS 110,000 Rand.

Have a great evening. Worst tax lady in the world.

That's what it's not. So I probably preached a lemon.

I don't know what you know, Like, let's just worship.

Let's just worship because I'll got home and I'm looking at my

books. I'm thinking like how 110,000

Rand completely out. I think the last time I paid

5000 Rand tax and I'm paying 110,000 Rand.

And I can't remember what it was because it was so long ago and

it, you know, I'm not allowed to bring it up in therapy anymore.

But for some reason it's something like, you know, you

get a tax rebate with having solar at home if you work from

home. It was something like that.

I said listen, have you factored this into it Sunday afternoon?

Don't hear from her until Monday because that's when she goes to

work. OK, this.

Hi, Stephen. I've recalculated good news.

You're getting 15,000 Rand back, so that is not redemptive

finances. OK, Redemptive finances would be

like a friend of mine. We had dinner last night and I

remember over the years he's built up an incredible company.

But I remember him telling me the stories of how he sat with a

single mom with their first child going to varsity and she

just cannot afford it. And she doesn't know what to do.

But she, he restructured their finances and cashed out on some

unit trusts or whatever so that she could send her son to

varsity. Now he's graduating or a man

that he sat with who had a chronic disease and they don't

know how they're going to afford their medical bills.

And he said, well, listen, don't you remember about five years

ago I said, let's just add this little clause on you.

And it was only 45 random month. Now we can cash out and we can

pay all your medical bills. That's what redemptive finances

look like, where where you you're basically pushing your

industry away from the brokenness and greed of society

towards stewardship and generosity rather than adding to

the idolatry or the futility of work.

Redemptive finances. What does it mean to be a

redemptive lawyer? Could it be redemptive divorce

lawyer looks like the following. I heard the most remarkable

story I said. I don't know if you know but in

Ephesians 525 it says husbands must love their wives and wives

must respect their husbands. And she read this and when

scratching around like what does it mean to to respect a man.

What what is that? And whilst this is busy

processing and she's busy learning, she has a client come

in and the lady wants a divorce but she wants it to sting, she

said. I want my husband to bang, yeah,

I want to pull the rug out from underneath him.

He's going to wish he never met me.

So she's thinking, like, sure, how do I behave?

Like a redemptive divorce lawyer in this space.

So she hatches a plan. The spirit gives her great

insight. She says, listen, if you were to

divorce your husband now, and if you really want to go and, you

know, cut throats, probably going to be happy to see you go,

she says. Why don't you, for the next six

months, treat him like the world's best husband, build him

up, and then when he's least suspecting, well, you issue your

divorce papers, cut him off at the shins like this is, this is

going to work. So she gave us some advice.

She said, you know, things like, you know, find the best possible

explanation for why he's late and he doesn't let you know that

he was coming in rather than ripping his head off.

You know, just maybe just convince yourself.

Well, maybe he's dealing with the boss and, you know, couldn't

get out. So when he comes home, you know

you're not hacking him off of the shins, but you love on him

and building him up, she says. Things like, you know, don't be

easily offended, don't bring up the past, don't pack the

dishwasher by making noises and giving him the bombastic sada.

So just pack the dishes, he says.

You know, no criticism, just encourage sending messages.

Like, I really appreciate it when you said awesome how he's

feeling, How is they build him up and then she put in her diary

six months later, then come and we take him off at the shins.

Appointment comes and goes. The lady doesn't pitch up the

lawyer phones. Listen, you missed your

appointment. What's going on?

No, no, no, no, no. We don't want to get divorced.

We're head over heels and love because she has simply applied

the principle, the scripture principle Wives respect your

husbands. And she had done it over time

and had germinated love in his heart for her.

Before they knew it, they were like newlyweds because she was

behaving like a redemptive divorce lawyer.

What does it mean to be a redemptive restauranteur or

engineer or mechanic? On the restauranteur side, I've

got a friend who owns a number of restaurants.

He was having an end of year function.

The staff were coming. It was a function for his staff.

So the staff had come with their partners and the one lady came

with her boyfriend and at the end of the night he saw that she

was still sitting there and went to said, are you OK?

No, my boyfriend left with another lady, so he's like, OK,

I know some people. Giovanni, come.

So he said. Listen please, I know I'm your

boss, but let's sit down, have a glass of wine.

How can I help? I said.

You please break up with him. You never have to see him again,

she said. The problem is we live together

because I can't afford to stay on my own.

So he said, OK, tell me your expenses worked out that she was

4000 Rand short, he said. Tonight you've got a 5000 Rand

raise a little bit to spoil yourself.

You move out, you get yourself a new place.

You never have to see that man again.

Redemptive, restauranteering, mechanic, policeman, designer.

You know that the first time the Holy Spirit is poured out in

scripture, it's in Exodus 3535. You know who the Holy Spirit

comes on? Designers, graphic designers,

Bezalel and a holier. The two that were called to

create CAD designs for the temple.

The Holy Spirit comes upon them. Redemptive design, because we

are called to bend the corner that we work on, or the

community that we walk work in, or the culture that we walk

through to a redemptive calling, to generosity, to healing, to

restoration, to fruitfulness, to righteousness and integrity.

South African politicians for you a call to freedom, brothers

and sisters only. Do not use your freedom as an

opportunity to indulge the flesh, but through love serve

one another. Work as work as a calling,

redemptive participation, and then lastly work as service.

Right at the very end of Galatians 513.

This is really one of the things that got under me says But

through love serve one another. Doesn't just say serve one

another. Says through love serve one

another. So I looked in the Greek

lexicon, what that word was and it's the verb of agape.

So I don't know if you know it, but it's Aga pao, Aga pao this

verb agape. So he says they through love

serve one another. And the definition of that

absolutely untid me because I got power or agape.

The verb of Aga of agape is a love that can only be known by

the actions it inspires. That means if we were to look at

your work ethic, your Monday, and we have to say, OK, so

scripture calls us through love to serve one another in the

workplace, can you show me the actions that it's inspired, Not

intentions, not good thoughts or no.

My heart is right. You know, the the actions that

it's inspired. Look, we can take your pulse.

But yeah, you say yeah, but my boss says he's a real chop, OK.

But another part of this definition is it's a service

that's not drawn out by any excellence in the one being

served. So you can't even hide behind

the fact that you are working for the worst boss in the world,

even to you, says through love, serve one another.

Yeah, but he never lifts a finger.

Yeah, but in another part of this definition is that it's

unconditional, apart from any reciprocity.

How we doing, Pretoria E Can I hear an A?

Nah, yeah. But what about my needs?

You know, I've worked here for like 20 years and no one seems

to care. Yeah, but it's always expressed

as how much you are willing to Curb Your choices as a way of

meeting the needs of others. Have you ever considered work as

a way of meeting the needs of others?

Because that is the biblical framework of work.

That is what goes up and against the idolatry in our hearts to

pad our nests, to plan a big future and an early retirement.

While the Bible says in the New Testament, it says the cries of

the workers have reached my ears.

The unpaid workers have reached my ears because we are doing it

as to ourselves and not unto the Lord.

And so that is the invitation that Paul gives to us.

He says, would you, through love serve one another in your

workplace? Because in case you're

wondering, the final nuance of Agapao says it has its perfect

expression in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's not asking us to do anything more than what he has

done, that we would work as worship, as unto the Lord.

Which will it be? Will it be work, sweat, equity,

or will it be worship? Is it going to be a career, or

was it going to be a calling? Is it going to be selfish or was

it going to be service? That's what he invites us to.

And I have struggled with this because on the server side,

doing something for me, myself and I is one thing.

Doing something for someone who's unappreciative, unkind in

his words, self-centered, has the corner office and everything

going from and I'm just a nobody that grinds against my flesh and

that one thing always expresses how much you are willing to Curb

Your choices as a way of meeting the needs of others.

Caught my attention because I read recently, you know the the

counter, William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery.

I never realized how much it cost him.

So they said that when they wanted to abolish slavery, they

managed to get at least half the House of Lords to agree.

The reason why the rest would flat refuse to go along with it

was because of the cost. So someone did a quick

calculation on how much it would cost their GDP, what an

influence it would have on Britain's GDP.

Because now all of a sudden you've got to pay for the food

production and the harvesting and all of these things and food

prices would go through the roof Inflation like they've never

seen in world history because of one decision.

The second problem was a lot of the people working in the House

of Lords had land themselves and they were the ones who would

actually have to bear the brunt of these exorbitant prices and

paying for labor. Added to that, they would have

had to tax the people because they would need to get like a

military together to make sure that slavery was completely

abolished on the four corners of their their nation.

And there would have to be taxes on top of that to create a naval

defense system so that they could go after these slave trade

ships that were going to Zanzibar and the the western

islands. And here's what her name is,

Seymour Drescher. She says the following.

She said, well, this is what I say.

The cost of emancipation was so high that historian Seymour

Drescher called the British abolition of Slavery, voluntary

economicide, economic suicide, and she says they were willing

to trash their economy for a generation or two in order to

rid themselves of the slave trade.

None of those who campaigned for the end of the slave trade and

then for the freeing of the slave stood to personally gain

in any way at all, but rather only to lose.

Why? Because through love they were

willing to serve one another. Same applies whether it be

William Albuforce or William Tyndale, who translated the

Bible into English at the cost of his life, or John Cadbury,

who saw how alcohol was decimating the nation and he

invented hot chocolate as an alternative.

Or Robert Barclays who realized that most Christians couldn't

get a loan because ethically they were in disdain among the

people. And so he started Barclays Bank

or Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford all started to raise up

men of integrity to serve the nation.

It always comes at a cost, and this week I have wrestled with

this because it has gotten a hold of me, because to be really

honest, I've had to ask the question of myself, Do I work as

worship? Is it a calling?

Am I meant to be here? Was it just a career?

Am I just doing it? And am I just going to work on

Monday because, well, that's what I've done every Monday

since. But most importantly, is IT

service or is it selfish? And this thing bothered me and I

said to Cath during the week, I don't know what it is.

It's like it feels like the word is like wrestling, wrestling me

into submission. And then Friday morning it felt

like God nudged me awake and in like a nanosecond conversation

that all fell into place. You see, I don't know if you

know this, but Pretoria was set up as a knee jerk reaction

against Johannesburg. So Joburg, a goalie, 1886, the

gold rush. If you look at a street map, a

road map of Joburg, it is chaos. Basically they just plunged a

tent down and went to find gold. So it's this bird's nest mess of

interchanges and St. Pretorias, perfectly line by

line, square square. But what happened was eventually

they got sick and tired of the noise and the farts and the

alcohol and the killings on the streets and the money grabbing.

So they came to Pretoria to settle.

We want some white picket fences.

You can stay on that side of the yucks gay.

We've got the Opus River and some beautiful hills, and we're

just going to settle here. And so that is the spirit of our

city, is to settle. That is why when you raise a

sacrificial lifestyle, it T bones with the spirit of our

city that has saturated you and I.

And so Martin, I was telling Damien this and Martin Smith on

Sunday nights just before he stepped out one of the Branson

guys, one of the guys from Joburg, said, well, good luck

leading conservative Pretoria and worship tonight because that

is our reputation. That is the spirit.

And Damien said no, no, no, no, no.

We're settlers now. But we began as pioneers, with

the fruits of foot trackers, who gave up comfort and convenience

to the heartfelt to find a life and a living as pioneers.

And when he said that, it was like everything just fell into

place. I suddenly realized the reason

why this is so hard for me is because I'm saturated with the

spirit of the city. The reason why worship is

conservative and careful, and while Martin had to fight it

with his flags, is because we like to settle.

We like to stand, like to sit. We'd like to finish sometime

because we are saturated with the spirit of the city.

But over the last few weeks, I don't know if you've noticed it,

the call of the king has begun to ring out.

A call to go, a call to stand and worship and freedom.

I call the plant churches and today a call to count in the

marketplace by allowing the spirit of your Heavenly Father

to take work and allow it to be worshipped.

To take your career and turn it into a calling and taking what

is only ever be modelled to you as selfishness and allow it to

be saturated with service for our city.

And as we do that, watch as Miss Kay's pop up all over the place

and people begin to say of people in three CII don't know

what my life would have been like without his prayers or her

prayers. I don't know what my finances

would have been like if it wasn't for that man who sat down

there and redemptively restored the mess that I had created.

I don't know if we would have been married if it wasn't for

that person At my lunch break. It just said how you doing

service rather than selfish and that is my charge to you. 3 CI.

Would you respond to the call of the King?

Certainly Father. We just on behalf of everyone

sitting here, I just want to lay our Mondays to Fridays before

you I pray Lord that what we hear on a Sunday would not be

left on a Sunday. I pray that your Holy Spirit

will begin to saturate us where we are saturated with the spirit

of the city. Set us free.

Father, I pray Lord God that we begin to see the city through

new eyes, see our workplace, our work environment, our Co

workers, our bosses and our employees through the lens of

the gospel of work. And I pray Lord Jesus, then

years come, maybe in 20 years time we'll be sitting at a

coffee table with someone who's got chocolates and flowers and

we were able to say how much we Lenten with your gospel and we

were able to see the fruit of this response to this word in

Jesus name.