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"Work as Worship: Embracing God's Gifts in Our Daily Lives" · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
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  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what
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  we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life welcome back
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  to another episode of relish i'm rowan miller and this is don patterson how
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  are we doing don all right yeah we're doing all right yeah still got a lot of
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  energy this morning or where?
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  Oh yeah. I took my vitamins this morning. Yeah.
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  Yeah. And I've had two or three cups of coffee somewhere, somewhere in there.
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  I think you watched me consume a couple of them. So yeah, we're not falling
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  asleep now. Okay. Yeah. That's good.
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  All right. We'll get right into it here. We got, I like, this is a good question.
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  Good series of questions here.
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  So So is work a good thing? Is there work in heaven?
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  And is there a purpose in like meaningless work? Oh, meaningless work. Oh, man.
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  Well, yes, work is ordained. Did you know that?
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  Ordained. Yes. Maybe I did, but wouldn't have been able to tell you that.
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  I'm looking at Genesis chapter two and I'm, there we go.
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  It is in verse five, six.
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  And the, okay. No plant of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord had not sent rain on the earth.
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  And there was no man to work the ground, but streams came from the,
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  from up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
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  God, the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground,
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  breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.
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  And he planted a garden. And that's where he put the man.
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  So, looks like man was there for work, eh? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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  The Lord took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work and watch over it. Right.
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  And I think, of course, people probably will look at me and say,
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  well, yeah, you're a workaholic.
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  But I think God ordained our work to be in reflection of our gifts.
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  In other words, as we are created, we're created with certain gifts,
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  and we use those gifts, and then our work doesn't seem much like work, right?
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  So if you're doing something you love doing, it doesn't seem like slavery, I mean, work.
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  And that's basically a lot of what we think work is. It's slavery. It's hard. It's not fun.
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  But God created us to enjoy work.
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  Enjoy the work of our hands, live from the work of our hands, meaningful work.
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  Now, the second part of your question was about not meaningful work. Yeah, meaningless.
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  Meaningless activities. Yeah. Yeah.
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  I don't participate in a lot of meaningless activities. Yeah.
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  Going through the motions is not inspiring to me. And so I'm not sure that's quite as blessed.
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  Maybe, maybe it needs to happen. Okay. Administration.
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  Nobody likes to do administration, you know, all the paperwork and things that
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  behind, but if you ever get into a situation like, oh, what did we do on January
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  5th? And we made decisions.
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  What was that all about? And if somebody didn't record it, how would you know?
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  Yeah. And so somebody has to do that kind of work. And do you know,
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  there are actually people who enjoy detail work,
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  administration, they they really go for
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  that kind of thing yeah not me but anyway
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  so what might be meaningless to me might be meaningful to someone else meaningless
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  work yeah or like the notes that they take are meaningless and until you need
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  to know right i i think of romans chapter 12.
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  And Paul sort of illustrates it this way.
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  For the grace given me, I ought to say to everyone, don't think of yourself
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  more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself in sober judgment in
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  accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
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  Just as each one of us has one body with many members, and these bodies don't
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  all have the same function, so in Christ, we are many and we form one body,
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  and each member belongs to all the others.
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  We have gifts according to the grace given us.
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  If a man's gift is prophesying, is yours prophesying?
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  Let him use in proportion to his faith.
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  I've never heard you prophesy yet. We'll have to work on that.
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  If it's serving, let him serve. If it's teaching, let him teach.
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  If it's encouraging, let him encourage. If it's contributing to the needs of
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  others, let him do so generously.
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  If it's leadership, let him govern diligently.
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  If it's showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
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  And so, basically, as I look down through that list, there's a couple of those
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  that I get excited about, and there's a couple of those I would rather not have to do.
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  So, I think we're uniquely put together in the body of Christ,
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  the church, that not all of us have the same gifts, and that's intentional that we not.
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  And so, what feels meaningless to me feels meaningful to someone else. Yeah.
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  So I'm hoping that came close to answering your question. What was the question again?
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  As we got to the end of it, three parts. Is work a good thing?
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  Which we learned it was. Is there work in heaven?
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  Oh, is there work in heaven? Forgot about that part. You got the last part,
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  but. Yeah, is there work in heaven?
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  Yes. It's worship. We'll be worshiping.
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  Is worship work, though? Well, it's activity of our, it's activity.
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  I mean, what is work anyway?
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  I mean, if your definition of work is, it's that which causes me to sweat.
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  I mean, if that's your definition of work, well, we probably won't sweat it in heaven.
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  But if it's an activity with which I invest my time, yeah, there'll be work in heaven. Yeah.
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  There was also, Right Now Media had a whole...
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  Conference in 2018, I think it was, 2018, 2019, talked about work as worship, work as worship.
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  And the concept was, you've been given certain gifts, I've been given certain gifts.
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  As we exercise those gifts to the Lord's honor and to the Lord's glory,
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  it's actually worship, just as if we were singing a hymn on Sunday morning,
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  which is in some people's gear house and not in others.
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  But our work actually then becomes our worship. And a lot of entrepreneurs were
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  part of that conference and talking about how God had led them into a business.
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  And in leading them into that business, they glorified God, openly glorified
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  God for what He had done in their life and what He was doing for their employees through the business.
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  And so they saw their work as worship.
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  Can you imagine what that would change? Not only in our church environment,
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  if we're all leaning into the gifts we've been given for the church,
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  but if we did it for our community, if we as Christians were leaning into the
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  giftedness that God had done in our lives for our community, it would change things.
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  It would change not only things, it would change our attitude about things.
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  And that, I think, is as much important as anything else.
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  To treat our work as worship.
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  Yeah, good question. Whoever gave that question, make sure you give them a hug for us. That was good.
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  Kind of the same thing. How can we, not the same thing, but how can we serve
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  God or live and fulfill our purpose in a non-missions way,
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  Not going overseas? Yeah, non-missions career or just some random job like an
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  engineer or not a pastor, not a worship leader, not-
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  I don't think there exists such a thing. Okay.
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  I think, okay, here's my attitude. You guys can keep me on check on this.
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  I don't call the church building a building. I call it a mission station.
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  Okay. so that as we dismiss from our worship, we're all going into missions.
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  Some of us may go to Haiti and some of us may go to Congo and go across the ocean.
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  But most of us are moving from the mission station into our mission.
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  It's our family. It's our neighborhood. It's our workplace. That's where we're living out Jesus.
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  Yeah. And so, in that way, it doesn't matter whether you're shoveling manure
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  or whether you're designing the Golden Gate Bridge, you can do it to the honor and glory of God.
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  Not only for the benefit of all humanity, which, you know, a bridge helps quite
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  a few people out, but you're doing it for the relationships involved.
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  So that in your workplace, you are representing Christ, if you will.
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  I know a pastor who has this term and I love it.
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  You are revealing Christ well, right from where you're at.
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  And I don't think anything, I think anything you do in that format,
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  the attitude with which you do it makes it a mission.
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  Yeah, you could, you know. So church is essentially like a, or you refine your
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  skills and then you're sent out. Missionary meeting, yeah.
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  Every Sunday mornings, missionary meeting. Yes, let's get recharged.
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  Get ready to go again. Yes.
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  You know, that would change things on Sunday morning too, wouldn't it? Yeah.
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  If we approached it as a missionary meeting and a recharging.
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  Yeah. To get us ready for the week.
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  Yeah. More of a thing for your personal spiritual health rather than like,
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  oh, it's Sunday, I have to go to church. Yeah, I got to go to church.
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  I got to preach this morning.
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  Yeah, it changes. It's amazing how if we put Christ in the middle of our attitude,
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  how it changes our approach to everything else.
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  If if if our time for christ is on sunday morning for maybe two hours we've
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  minimized the impact jesus has not only on our own life but on everybody everybody around us,
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  so if we would put christ in the middle of our work in the middle of our family
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  that changes everything yeah i heard if you if you eat once a week you'll starve
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  so that's right yeah yeah Yeah.
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  And this book is available daily. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Well, mine I'm going to keep, but you could, you probably have one like
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  it. There's another one that you could get. Yeah.
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  You can have your own personal copy in this nation. Isn't that wonderful?
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  And you can look at it anytime you want to. Yeah. Or all the time you want to.
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  Mm-hmm. Isn't it neat that as Christians, we really only have to be proficient
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  in one major literary work?
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  It's true. I mean, I've got gobs of books in my library, but I only need to
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  be proficient in one. Yeah.
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  That's cool. I can handle that. Well, you're selling in it, so.
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  I can handle that. Yeah. That's good.
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  All right. Is it okay for us as Christians to sue?
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  Oh, man. We really shouldn't. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 talks about, is it 5 or 4? 6.
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  This is where it ends. If any of you has a dispute with another,
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  dare he take it—I love Paul—dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment
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  instead of to the saints?
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  Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge
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  the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?
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  This is 1 Corinthians 6, verses 1 through 6.
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  Then, he adds number seven, the very fact that you have lawsuits among you means
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  you have been completely defeated already.
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  Ooh, ooh, ouch, ouch.
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  And so, yeah, probably better not do a lot of lawsuits, at least Christian to
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  Christian, and that never goes very well.
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  Yeah. Christian to Christian. It usually separates the churches.
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  What I think we'd like to go back to is Matthew chapter five.
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  And Jesus talks about this in the midst of, I mean, basically lawsuits are because
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  we get tiffed at each other, right? Yeah. Yeah.
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  And he said, you've heard it said from people long ago, don't murder.
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  And anyone who murders is chapter five of Matthew. Got it? Yep.
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  Anyone who murders is subject to judgment. But I tell you, anybody who's angry
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  with his brother is subject to judgment.
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  Anyone who says to his brother, Raka, is answerable to the Sanhedrin.
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  But anyone who says to you, you fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell.
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  He seems to be fairly strong on this point. Did you notice that?
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  Therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar, that'd be worship, right?
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  And there and remember that your brother has something against
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  you a tiff okay leave
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  your gift there in front of the altar first go
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  and reconcile to your brother then come and offer your gift settle matters quickly
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  with your adversary who's taking you to court don't do it while you're still
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  with him on the way or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand own into prison.
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  I tell you the truth. You will not get out until you have paid every last penny.
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  Jesus has a toot on this, doesn't he?
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  That being the case, we are still human. And we get in tiffs with each other.
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  So how do Christians handle tiffs? I hope better than the world does.
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  But if there's a tiff in the church, if there's that kind of thing that you
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  would take somebody to court with, you really need to talk to the elders of your church.
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  And both parties need to be part of that.
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  And work it out at church. I know that I've been a part of these kind of discussions
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  over the years time and time and time again.
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  And sometimes it was between brothers in two different churches.
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  And so I would call that pastor and he and I would get together and then we'd
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  meet with the people and we'd work it out between.
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  And sometimes everybody was happy and sometimes nobody was happy.
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  But we were trying to make sure that we were honoring these scriptures because
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  we should be able to do this.
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  And uh yeah we i've worked with everything from wood piles.
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  They were mad about wood piles situation where
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  coming up to communion and there was a disagreement between those two brothers
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  and was obvious they would not speak to each other because they sat on separate
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  sides of the church and they go out separate doors and they wouldn't talk with
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  each other and so when it got to communion time there was a question about are
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  you going to get them these guys together.
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  And so I, I listened to what it was all about and they had a joining ground.
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  And the guy on the, we'll say the right side wanted to take out the hedgerow
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  that was between the two properties.
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  And he asked the other guy if he would help pay for the bulldozer.
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  Says, no, I don't want, I don't, I'll let you take the hedgerow out,
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  but I'm not going to pay for the hedgerow.
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  I'm not going to pay for the bulldozer. That's your doing so the
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  guy paid for the bulldozer had the hedge taken
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  out and he takes all the wood on his side
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  and he takes care of the posts he keeps the posts all the firewood he keeps
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  and this guy was the guy on the left was ticked because he thought he should
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  get part of the wood and i i sort of looked away and i thought wait a minute
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  you didn't pay for the bulldozer yeah why do you think you get the wood.
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  Well, I've ended up, he wasn't very happy, but he heard us. And yeah,
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  it's, yeah, it's interesting, but,
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  It seems like it happens. It happens. That's reality, folks.
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  That's reality. And if you think the pastor only works on Sunday,
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  come to my office. Come catch up with me in the middle of a week.
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  Cool. Good question, though. Good question. Good question. Well, are we done? I think so.
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  You know, since we've redone the studio, we're missing one element.
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  Did you notice? Yeah, the clock. Clock!
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  So this may be a 30-minute episode. We don't know. I'm sure.
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  Oh, God bless. I kind of look at the phone and see what time we start,
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  but end up forgetting because— We had it in the other studio.
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  We had a clock, and so we knew.
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  Closer. We'll get it for next time. Yeah.
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  All right. Well, thank you guys as always for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing with others our goal is to help each other grow deeper in
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  our understanding of who god is and is calling to us in our daily lives thank
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  you again for joining us and may god bless your day.