Made to Work | Good Work Pt. 1 // Luke Humbrecht

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

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If we haven't met yet, my name is Luke.

I'm going to open the scriptures this morning.

And uh the fun part today is we get to start, we're going to start a new teaching series called Good Work.

And uh and the subtitle that I'm calling is Rediscovering God's Vision for Work in Calling.

Um let me just give you a little bit of a setup for this.

So we we've been talking a lot over the last several weeks about this idea of formation, that we're always being formed.

And the kind of person that you are today is because of who God has made you, but also it's a lot of other forces that surround us that make us the people we are.

And so we have to both uh receive transformation from God, but participate in that transformation through giving ourselves to a way of life that involves practices.

And and uh and over the last several weeks we've talked about different practices that as a community uh we're gonna give ourselves to uh to to not conform to the way of the world, but to the image of God, that the love of God would be at the center of everything we do, giving and receiving the love of God.

And so we one of the practices that we mentioned was a practice called vocation, which you might know that word, you use that word when you talk about what you do for a living or your career.

Um, but but the idea of vocation, we're gonna get into this some more, it really is about living out of our unique design for work and ministry, taking seriously the gifts and the wirings and the expertise, experiences, and bringing that to bear for the flourishing of the world.

Okay?

So we want to be, uh we're gathered here in church on a Sunday morning, but the the vision, though, is we want to be the kind of people who live every part of life under the reign and rule of our good God.

Every part of life gets touched by God.

And every part of life is sacred.

So as we start talking about work and calling and these things, let me just offer a couple caveats before we jump in.

So to be clear, I'm talking about both paid work and unpaid work, and maybe in the season that does not look like traditional work.

Maybe you are retired from your paid work, maybe you're a caretaker, maybe you're a student, maybe you're a stay-at-home mom and dad.

Um maybe your work in the season has more to do with where you're volunteering and you're serving unpaid.

But no matter where you are, who you are, what age or capacity you currently have, even if you're retired or physically disabled, the truth is God invites all of us into creative participation with Him.

And that does change from season to season, but make no mistake that that creative participation is part of your inherent God-given identity as you walk this earth.

Okay?

So the tension with all of this, before we get into the scriptures, the tension is that with that being said, a lot of us end up living Monday through Friday somewhere between bored and drained.

All right.

A lot of people, when you start describing your work, oftentimes it's not with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, right?

And so, and when that happens, we don't have a biblical vision for what for why our lives matter.

It actually costs us more than we realize.

So the heart of this series is can be summed up in this statement.

We must reclaim a holy vision of work and calling in a culture that drifts towards toil, meaninglessness, and careerism.

A holy vision of work and calling.

My hope over the next six weeks is that you start beating your alarm clock every morning.

That you wake up before your alarm clock because you're so full of the vision of what God has given to you in this season.

I think it's possible.

So that's what we're gonna get to today.

And my question right now for you is what is the work that God's given to you in the season?

How would you ask that?

How would you answer that question?

What is the work that God has given you in this season?

Okay, now let's reset.

Open your Bibles if you have them to Genesis chapter one.

We're gonna start with the original calling in the garden when God placed Adam and Eve there.

And as you're turning there, I'm just gonna slow it down here for a second.

Just take a moment to pause before Jesus.

Let's just recognize before we say anything else that he is with us.

Just close your eyes across the room.

Take a deep breath and receive the gift of his presence here.

Name it.

And God already knows what's on your heart and your mind before you even say a word, but when we name it, it allows us to surrender that.

So, God, we present ourselves to you this morning as we open the scriptures, as we open your word, I thank you for your design for our lives from the moment we're born.

And as you parent us through life, and as we walk through transitions and the in-betweens and the different parts of life, uh, I thank you that you companion us in each one of them and you don't give up on us.

So I thank you, God, that we get to participate in this earth that you've created for us.

So bless us, God, as we open your word in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so this is Genesis 1, 26.

I'm gonna read from this is a little bit of a lengthier passage, but hang with me on this.

Here's what it says.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him, male and female, he created him.

Created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.

You shall have them for food, and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, and everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them, and on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all of his work that he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So I remember my first job like it was yesterday.

I was twelve years old when the call came.

A grown man and a windbreaker stood on a front porch and asked if I was ready to serve the good people of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The Fort Wayne News Sentinel had chosen me.

It may have been because I lived on that route, but I'd like to think it was because they saw something in my eyes.

Either way, you do you do not question a calling, you answer it.

Every afternoon, a stack of freshly printed newspapers was laid on my front door, still warm, still smelling of ink and destiny.

Then my daily ritual began.

Each paper was delicately folded by hand, tied as a flag at a military funeral, each one secured with a double-looped rubber band.

Single loop is for amateurs.

I was a professional.

I loaded these sacred scrolls into my canvas satchel and mounted my trusty steed, a green Huffy BMX with a bike radio.

In 1995, this was the most advanced piece of equipment in the state of Indiana.

Rain or shine, I rode out of my driveway in cinematic slow motion with the weight of free press on my back.

My mission?

Southwood Park.

Maxine Drive, Pembroke Avenue, Lexington Avenue.

Those streets had no idea what was coming for them.

No, I did not throw newspapers.

I delivered them with conviction.

Some landed on the welcome mat like a work of art.

Some landed in the bushes.

One went through a window.

I did explain to the homeowner that, listen, news does not wait.

And freedom has a cost.

The cost was a window pane in most of my tips that month.

But either way, I went to bed each night knowing that whatever the homeowner homeowner had faced that day, one thing was sure.

This news would meet them at the front step.

Not by accident, but because I had put it there.

Yes, I was a herald of good news, a courier of knowledge and wisdom and local sports scores and obituaries.

Friends, I was a paper boy.

Now, to be honest, I may have not been thinking those thoughts at 12 years old.

But wouldn't it be incredible if all of us treated our work as if we were saving civilization each day?

Because the truth is, in some sense, you are.

There is a sense of when we are commissioned in whatever work we're given, whether it's the work we want or the work we have, there's a part of participation with God.

So this passage that we just read in the book of Genesis, before sin, before money, before survival, we read that God was working.

It's the first thing we learn about God.

The first thing we ever learn is that God, He is a maker.

And it says this in Genesis 1.27.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God.

He created the male and female.

So we learned that he's a maker, and then the first thing we learn about us is that we are made.

And the first task that God gives to us as humans is to be makers, to participate in exactly what he's doing, to steward and to cultivate the very thing that he has made.

This is all in the first sentences of this book that we give ourselves to, the scriptures, right?

And God blessed them, right?

He said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing.

And then in Genesis 2.15, he says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

To work it and to keep it.

And isn't it funny that with all of these beautiful commissionings that happen in the very first phrases of Scripture, how most of us still dream of the day we no longer have to work.

We see work as one day something we will overcome and conquer by the grace of God.

Rather than a mandate to join him in what he's doing in the world, right?

We read books about this, best-selling books about escaping work.

Thank you, Tim Ferris, for the four-hour work week.

Let's figure out how to work the least amounts possible in a week, right?

We read books about the secrets of retiring early.

Like let's get to that day as fast as we can, and what life hacks do we need to give ourselves in order to do that?

We we busy ourselves with, you know, how do I get not from active income but to passive income because I need to make the most amount of money with the least amount of effort.

And certainly in the age of AI, the promise of AI and robots is to replace the work that we don't like so that we can do other things.

The whole kind of operating system of the world we're living in is work is bad, other things are good.

Just get away from work as quickly as possible.

But in a biblical imagination, when we give ourselves to what does God think about work in its original design, work is not a necessary evil.

Working is part of what it means to image God.

And this is the first place that we really have to start when we look at who is God and what is he like.

The first thing we know about them is he's generative, he's a maker, he works, and he actually delights in his work.

He didn't have a bad day at work, didn't happen.

He worked and he was impressed with what he made.

He was actually blown away at the end of each day.

Man, I'm good.

I'm good at what I do.

And then he created us, and he said, I want you to be kind of like me.

I want you to share in my joy and what I make, right?

And so he creates us, and bless you, he creates us to tend both to the earth and the soil and the and the birds and the animals and and to name the animals and to bring order and beauty and abundance into the earth, because this is what brought him joy, and his desire was that work would bring us joy, and labor would actually bring us joy.

Jesus even modeled this in his very life.

In John chapter 5, Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I am working.

John 5 · chapter mention

Jesus was a worker.

In fact, Jesus was a carpenter among many of his, the many of the things that he was working on as the Son of God and Savior of the world.

One of those things was a carpenter.

And let us not lose the wonder that for 30 years where we really have no idea what he was doing, one thing we know, he's probably building bookshelves and rocking chairs before he got to the work of preaching the gospel, which was only about a few years of his life.

You know, in his early years, he's a student going to the temple and learning.

That was part of his work.

Um and that's why one theologian said it this way, William Edgar, he said, the creation mandate is the ongoing charge to humanity and the power and blessing of God to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and to gently subdue it and cultivate, and to gently subdue and cultivate the earth.

Isn't that good?

Just leaves that leave that up there for a moment.

We're commissioned in the power and blessing of God.

Which means what?

Which means we don't we're not commissioned to go off on our own, but this is ongoing and didn't expire at the fall.

That work in God's original design is part of what He's given us to do in His power and His presence and His blessing.

I love this word, gently, that we gently subdue the earth and cultivate the earth.

We don't just take it over, we don't dominate it.

Whatever God has given us to do on this planet in civilization is to be done with the sweet presence of God to cultivate it so that life can grow, right?

Now, did this charge end at the fall?

No, it changed a little bit, and we'll get to that here in a second.

But even centuries later, when when the when the people of God were exiled into Babylon, they were no longer home, they were completely displaced, they were somewhere they didn't want to be, with people that they did not want to be with, given jobs that they probably didn't want to do, God would come to Jeremiah and and and remind them, like, no, when you're in Babylon, I want you to plant vineyards and to raise families and to seek the shalom of the city.

This is Jeremiah 29.

So, in other words, no matter where you are, you have good work to do.

Whether you chose it or not, this is part of your image, the image of God inside of you.

To be a good worker.

So the guard and mandate was finally restored after the fall.

It was restored again in the Great Commission.

This is fast-forwarding a little bit, but after Jesus, after all things were summed up and unified in Christ, after he atoned for our sins and the brokenness of the human condition, after he restored our relationship to the Father, essentially what he was redoing as he would commission us back out was he was re he was rebooting Project Eden.

That's what he was doing.

Not just, not I should say, not only the savings of uh saving of souls and spirits, but the discipling of nations into the knowledge of God.

Which meant that I'm going to send you out and the very lives you live and the work that you've been given to do is part of how you're gonna disciple every tribe and tongue and culture to know me and to know my goodness, right?

This was his invitation back to us.

And so that's kind of the broad brush strokes, real quickly, as we as we're stepping into some of this conversation together.

But what's really interesting is we have to even to talk about work, we have to talk about what we talk about when we talk about work.

Okay?

So here's a few say here's a few things that we say when we talk about work.

I'm just curious how many of you said in the last week, okay?

Have you referred to your main gig or your side hustle or your day job or your night job or between jobs, your part-time or full-time work?

Have you talked about yourself as a volunteer?

Or have you been voluntold?

Which is a subcategory of volunteer when you're told what to do, maybe by your spouse.

But, anyways, um have you talked about getting back to the grind?

The rat race, making ends meet, your nine to five, clocking in, clocking out.

I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm a stay-at-home dad.

I just stay at home.

Got a case of the Mondays.

Happy hump day.

Thank goodness it's Friday.

I'm retired, I'm semi-retired, I'm bivocational.

Uh, this is this is my it's kind of my passion project, or this is my ministry.

That's my labor of love.

Yep, I'm just bringing home the bacon.

This is what I gotta do to put bread on the table.

All right, raise your hand if you said any of these this last week.

All right, a few of us.

Um, notice how many of these, the way we talk about word, are really about survival.

And listen for the word just.

I'm I'm just a whatever, it's just a passion project.

I'm just volunteering.

Um, it's just a paycheck, right?

Um, some of the words carry a smile, others are, you know, a little bit more, uh have a little weight to them.

Um, I I like I I kind of started to imagine what it would be like if I actually came home from a day of work and literally put bread on the table and be like, I did it! I did my work today.

We earned a loaf of bread, right?

Um, my wife would probably be like, Yeah, you know, that's great.

I maybe you could put a mortgage payment on the table.

That would be great.

Bringing home the bread and bacon.

It works for me.

But there's a lot of ways we talk about our work, but a couple pitfalls that happen when we talk about our work.

Number one, we over-identify with our work.

And this is this is for those of us, we don't know anything different.

We've maybe been raised in an environment where everything was about.

You gotta go to school to get the degree, to get the vocation, to start the career, and start climbing up.

And so there's this carrot dangling at the end of the journey that usually has to do with retirement or some vision of the future.

And so, so work really, it's everything, and I'm nothing without it.

I don't know what to do when I'm not working.

And so, work, as you guys know, uh so easily can just be the complete source of identity.

It's it's what we're made for, but um it's also our status, it's our sense of self-worth.

And this is what leads to this kind of uh this kind of lifestyle of what we could call careerism.

Everything is just everything is secondary to what I'm doing to make a living.

Now, if if any of us are like you're in between work or you're like scrounging to get a job, it's it's hard to not think about anything but getting work.

And so I just say comp compassion for that, grace and peace to you if you are in between jobs.

But what happens is We so easily start to over-identify it with work.

That's one pitfall.

But on the other side, on the other side of this is we can under-identify with our work.

This is really interesting.

We don't talk about this a lot, but some of us, when we talk about our worker calling, we also think we just for it's it's nothing.

It's you know, it's not really for a purpose.

God's not really in it.

We're just just simply a job that pays the bills, right?

Um living in a secularist society that it kind of adds to this thing of meaningless, that nothing is inherently meaningful.

It's just all kind of utilitarian, right?

There's no deeper eternal dimension to what we do with our hands or our minds.

Um but what's interesting about that is that throughout history, a lot of people, their very name, they were identified by what their contribution was into their to their actual city or country or a village, right?

So last names were actually baked into who they were.

So some of the last names that we know, and we have some last names, we'll put these on the screen.

But like your last name is Baker, that really means you're the guy in town that bakes bread.

Taylor, you make clothes.

We've got a tailor in the room, I think, right now.

Smith, someone who works metal.

A miller is someone who grinds grain into flour, a cook is someone who prepares food, right?

Cooper makes barrels, a mason builds with stone, carpenters build with wood, fishers catch fish, shepherds, ten sheep, right?

And so so every so what's really interesting is you might have that name, but it came from a time where everybody kind of knew who was doing what, who was contributing what in a particular village or civilization.

Uh and our our names no longer have that kind of thing.

We're typically not named around our work or what we do.

And so we have to remind ourselves about what we do or what our contribution is.

So your work is part of who you are.

It's always meant to be a gift to other people.

And it's it is also one of the pitfalls.

We can under-identify when we don't take what God has given us to do seriously, we can actually minimize some of the image of God inside of us.

Not to say that our identity is our job, but but understanding that our work is part of the image of God inside of us.

So let me just ask this question: what would your last name be if it was given for your work?

Okay?

Okay, so maybe it's it's Graham, contractor, maybe it's Sarah, mother of three, maybe it's Noah, high school student, maybe it's I'm Richard Multitasker, right?

Okay, so take a moment, find two people around you, tell them your first name and your last name, just give it your best shot, even if it's not clean.

Give it your best shot.

Find somebody around you.

What would your name be if your last name was your work?

What was it?

Megan, get it done.

All right, shout me a couple good ones.

Was it?

Oh, Chloe Chick-fil-A, all right.

Shannon Jack of all trades.

Shannon Jack of all trades.

Awesome.

That's a great one.

Sean Grinder.

Is that what I heard?

Oh, a book?

Oh, looking on a book for 42 years.

Hey, bless you in that, man.

Was that Didi Holy One?

Wow, okay.

Some of us really have a high esteem for what we do.

That's awesome.

I love that.

Okay.

Anyways, that may have not gone so well for you if you're trying to think of how I would do it.

And listen, if you're retired, here's what I'd say.

Um, retirement is something we have in our culture where we have a designation for what happens when we end our paid work and we begin a different season of life.

But from a biblical vision, we never retire from being creative and generative in the kingdom of God.

And that means that there's work for us given in any season, even if our physical capacity diminishes, even if our paid capacity diminishes, it's just our work changes in different things.

So if you are retired or somewhere, I just want to challenge you in the way you even talk about that.

Um, because if if somebody were to ask you, what do you do?

And you say I'm retired, you're basically saying, here's what I don't do anymore.

Well, that doesn't work.

Um, the absence of what you do.

No, no, let's not talk about what God has given you.

And it might be, I am a I'm a grandmother or I'm a great grandmother, and that's my current work.

It might be I care for my spouse.

It might be I pray for the church or I pray for my neighborhood.

That's my work I'm given into the season, right?

All of us have been dignified with work from the very first day to the very last day.

We are given something to do.

If you're a student, your work right now is to learn and to absorb and to and to and to study so that you can be generative, so that you can bring beauty and order and goodness in the kingdom of God into the world with whatever that looks like in your life.

But the reason that we have such a negative relationship with work is because we get to Genesis 3, and there's this fallen counterpart of work, which we know is this word called toil.

I want to look at that just for a second.

Genesis 3, 17.

This is what happened after Adam and Eve stepped out of loving union with God.

They decided they wanted more than what God was offering them.

They wanted to grasp to become like God, and Piper talked a little bit about this last week.

But here's the response back to them Genesis 3:17 curse is the ground because of you.

Genesis 3:17

Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground.

Super encouraging.

Okay.

And then they can't it's a few verses later, verse 23.

Here's what it says.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

How haunting is that?

That Adam was made from the ground.

He was the raw substance of the dirt, was what he was made from.

And he was meant, he he was created, his created purpose was to tend to the same ground that he had been created from.

But now he's gonna be banished from that and uh and spend the rest of his life making what he could from the dirt, but outside of the presence of God.

That is toil.

I'm gonna start making from the dirt, but without the power and the presence of God.

And so the scripture gives us, he could that kind of names these two different counterparts.

And we could say work is the creative, life-giving participation God gave us in the garden.

Toil is the part that wears us out.

It's the thorns and the thistles, the grind, the scrambling to prove ourselves.

Uh, Pastor Tyler Staten puts it this way in Genesis, there are two kinds of work, the creativity God gives us, and the toil that comes when we are busy with the serpent's lie.

And we can experience both, sometimes in the same day.

But here's how we can tell them apart.

We have to understand the difference between work and toil.

Okay?

Here's some marks of work and some symptoms of toil.

Marks of work, you lose track of time.

But when you're toiling, you're watching the clock.

When you're working, you forget yourself in it.

But when you're toiling, you you are proving or protecting yourself.

When you're working, you are building something.

When you're toiling, you're just getting through it.

When you're working, it gives you energy and rest restores you.

But when you're toiling, it feels heavy and sleep can't touch the tiredness.

Even in the night, his heart does not rest, it says.

When you're working, you could keep this up for years, but when you're toiling, you're running on fumes.

When you're working, you joyfully co-labor with God.

But when you're toiling, you're on your own to figure it out.

When you're working, you can stop and gladly come back.

But when you're toiling, you cannot stop and fear it will all fall apart.

Okay, so quick temperature check.

How does that sit with you?

Just square that up with your actual life.

And where do you find yourself on that grid?

You don't have to answer out loud, but I'm just saying, just do a quick check and where do you find yourself in the difference between work and toil?

Now, across the room, I get that for a lot of us, and I pick this up in my conversations with you guys, we have a lot of questions about when you look at your current job and is that work or is it toil?

And maybe it's hard to kind of understand what have I been given?

Maybe you're in a position you never asked for, and you're trying to feel faithful, you're trying to be faithful, but it feels a lot like toil.

And I get that.

And we're gonna talk about that over the coming weeks.

But listen, I will say this.

Anything that we can that we do, anything that we are given to do can have a redemptive purpose when we're doing it with God.

Anything that we're given to do can restore us and bring us back into the work God's created to do when we're doing it with God.

One other caveat here, I'll say this, is hard is not the same as toil.

Hard is going to be whether you're working or with toil.

It just has to do with what you're left with after the hard, right?

Both work and toil can be hard.

You can be a hard worker, but you can still work hard in communion with God.

And you also can be work hard and be completely checked out of communion with God.

So hard work is given to us because we get to let labor diligently and with all of our heart and all of our faculties to the things that God has given to us.

So let's not confuse the two.

But the vision here, the vision of the garden, is that we see ourselves as sons and daughters, commissioned by God and powered by the Spirit to partner with God in the restoration and renewal of all of creation.

And if we were just asked this question, what would it be like to end each day?

If you think about coming home tomorrow, assuming most of you are going to work tomorrow, you're going to something tomorrow, what would it be like to ask the question at the end of the day, where did I create and where did I only toil?

Where did I create and where did I just simply toil?

Because again, I believe, just as we're starting this journey together, and just as here here's wall land.

In God's perfect world, we are all participating as makers and as workers, as craftsmen, craftsmen and creatives, laboring with him to bring beauty, order, and abundance into the world.

And I'll add, for the glory of his name.

Is anybody on board with that today?

So the world that God is restoring and remaking, there's a peace in all of us, but it does start with us challenging the way that we talk about our work.

And I will admit, in church world, we haven't done the best job at talking about work in a way that's particularly helpful for you.

Okay, this is the first sermon series I've done on the theology of work and calling.

A lot of times what happens in church world is we talk about work is hey, you go do what you do so you can earn money and go bring your money back to the church.

You know, and try to be a nice person while you do that, by the way, right?

But a lot of times the messaging in the church is about, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go do that, but then come back to church.

Church, the church, the word the the community of the church is a beautiful community.

But listen, I believe, and this is something God wants us to get, is that the work that you're called to do isn't a secondary purpose.

It's primary to your creative participation with God in the world that He is remaking for the glory of His name, so that all can see Him and come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Come on.

Okay, so here's where I want to kind of land here today is just give it a chance to again locate ourselves and where that finds us in the season we're at right now.

And I'm just gonna ask some questions.

I just want to invite you, close your eyes with me today.

And over the next few weeks, we're gonna get into some more of the nuances.

What does it mean to be called by God?

How do we know if we've found our calling?

How do we know if we've missed our calling?

What to do, if we don't love what we're doing, all of those kinds, we're gonna get into these, but for today, let's just, if you're able to, with your own words, invite the Holy Spirit and say, Spirit, we invite you now to show us what's on your heart and your mind for each of us.

Holy Spirit, you are the best teacher.

So in light of this picture in the scriptures, we just thank you to show us what we need to know today.

If you feel discouraged in your work, and maybe you're in a season where your work or lack of work is striking to the very core of your identity.

And you're you're you're it's it's stirring up these questions of who actually am I?

And have I missed something?

And what have I made for?

I just want to speak peace over your heart.

And say, you're right where you need to be.

You are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.

You are not your job, you are God's masterpiece, and he hasn't abandoned you.

I just want to speak those words over you words of comfort and healing.

Maybe you're transitioning, you're in between, or you're discerning a transition, and that's just stirring up a lot of things.

And same thing.

How beautiful is it to know that there's nothing you can do to step out of your identity as a beloved son and daughter of God.

He's got you, and he surrounds you.

Maybe you're in the room and it feels a little bit like survival mode right now.

You just need good paid work.

I don't need it to be a calling, I just need it to bring a paycheck.

I have ex you have expenses, and they are real expenses, and so you're praying for that.

So nothing I said this morning diminishes that.

And I just pray, I just if if you're in the room here today and you're like, man, I need a miracle.

I need I need work that provides.

I just want to bless you in the name of Jesus, that God, that you would you know every need in this room and that you will provide for every need according to your glorious riches.

We pray for jobs and promotions across this room.

We pray for the work, those who are submitting applications as their main job right now, day after day, waiting for the callback, waiting for interviews, going through rejections, wondering what is it that God, I just speak grace and peace and life over you.

We thank you for the favor of God to meet us in all of our needs in this room here today.

Thank you, Jesus.

But for those of us and you've been given good work, and maybe you haven't seen it, you haven't been processing it each day through the lens of Jesus, what do we get to go co-create today?

I just want to pray a blessing over you and over us.

That tomorrow morning, starting tomorrow morning, your prayer would change as you are waking, as you're in the shower, as you're on your way to work, that the prayer of your lips would be about anticipation of discerning the heart and the will of God and the people that you go get to bless in your day's work.

So, Jesus, I just thank you for all the workers in this room.

I thank you that you're a worker and that we are workers, we're makers, and maybe in ways that we didn't even know.

And I just thank you, even now, this week and in future weeks, that you are going to restore a creative imagination, the dignity and the honor of what you've given us to do, that nothing is outside of your purview, that no kind of work is considered not good enough to be done with a high call and a sacred call.

So I bless my friends as they leave this place that you would restore the excitement, the joy, and the anticipation that we get to be sons and daughters working with you for the restoration, renewal of all things, God, recreating this earth until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.

We thank you for the discipling of nations with the work of our hands and the work of our lips.

And I just pray for blessing and order and beauty and abundance to follow us all the days of our life, especially the Monday through Friday days.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, somebody thank Jesus today for giving us such a good now.

Listen, a couple of things I just want to, just quick things just to practice.

Just how are you gonna bring this out?

And maybe again, surprisingly, we don't do this enough, but just like I said, practice this tomorrow morning.

Maybe even put a reminder in your phone.

Start your day with a prayer.

Thank God for the work he's given you.

For the amount that we complain about our work.

What if you thank God for the work he's given you and ask him how he wants you to contribute with him and to give you the mind of Christ and the power of the Spirit for what he's given you to do.

Okay?

Second thing is this next time you're at the grocery store, tell the person who's checking out your groceries that you're thankful for them and what they do matters.

Next time you see your Amazon delivery driver, thank them for delivering the package safely to your door.

High five and just remind them what you do matters, right?

Think about the people you interact with.

Look them in the eyes, thank them and dignify them because that's what God would want them to know.

Amen?

All right, let's stand up.

And listen, as we end our time, we are gonna have our prayer and ministry team available on the sides of the room, and these are people you can trust to pray with.

And as we're talking, some of you maybe do need prayer for work or prayer over a really difficult or toxic job situation.

This is a good time.

Just go to somebody and say, Hey, would you pray with me?

And so you're gonna see people with a badge on.

Um, you can pray for anything, though, pray for healing in your body or a difficult relationship, or just even to come to know Jesus if you like.

If you don't know Jesus, this is a great Sunday to learn about him because you were made for more than you think.

All right?

You were made to be a part of his story and his plan.

So, that being said, as we go, make sure to stop by the Western Roundup table.

Sign up.

We have a bunch of booths.

We still need you to sign up.

Don't just walk by the table, sign up for a booth.

This is something we get to do together.

And one last blessing.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He make his face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you rest.

Go in the peace and the strength of the kingdom of God.

Love you guys.