Am I Supposed to Quit My Job? | Crossroads Church

So glad you're joining us here on "Pando." My name is Nico and I serve as the prison director with Crossroads Church. I got a question for you. Have you ever stopped and wondered why am I the way that I am? Or maybe you've asked yourself, why am I here at this particular moment in time? Or what if I told you that those two questions are actually connected? Think about it. Of all the people God could have created and all the moments in history he could have placed you in, he chose to create you with your unique gifts, your abilities and experiences from such time as this. Not an accident. You were created on purpose, for purpose. And that purpose isn't just about some distant future. God has something for you right here, right now. And that brings us to today's conversation. Talking about work, I just the kind of work that earns a paycheck. But the work that God created you to do and how we can find purpose and what's right in front of us. And the Driscoll is leading us in a conversation that does that mean. (audience applauding) - Hey everybody, I'm Hannah. What a gift and honor it is to be with you. And today we are talking about this giant word behind me.

Work, dun dun dun. Because some of y'all are like Hannah, I love you girl, but it's the weekend and I don't talk about work on the weekends 'cause it's the weekend. And then others of you are like, I don't really understand what a church might even have to say about work. Those two things feel separate. And then some of you are like, finally, this is the son I've been praying for, the preacher gonna tell me to quit my job. God, yes, thank you Lord. Well, I gotta tell you that's not what I'm doing today. That is not what's going on. But I will say no matter where you fall in that, even if you are retired or have never worked today in your life, this is true for you that one-third of your life will be spent on something else. And that's something else is called work. And so you better believe, God actually has a lot to say about it. He actually has a vision for it. He has a plan for it. And so before I say anything else, let's pray God. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to the people that belong to you. You have something that you wanna say and I love that you have chosen to use me and so help my words to be helpful,

not distracting, not disturbing in any way. The Lord, use this moment to talk to the people that are yours. So, so thankful to be here. Bless our time, let's have some fun. Jesus name, amen. Now, before we go any further, I'm just gonna give you a little tidbit of the message because I know that work can be such that all you think about is this endless role of cubicles behind me. No, that's not what we're after today. So instead, I'm just gonna talk about how work is good. I'm gonna give you a vision and the reality that sometimes we gonna be real, work sucks. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about how the gospel, which we'll unpack together, gives us a new vision and a new hope for work. So God has a lot to say and I think he wants to say it today to us. So, no shock, maybe, or it might be a shock. You've never seen me before. So, here's a fun fact about me. I work at this church, at Crossroads Church. I mean, what's called ministry, which people like to say, but it's really just a fancy word for I work at a church. And when you work at a church, here's a news flash for you. You just gonna have more than one job.

We take very seriously here that little anecdote at the bottom of the job description that takes other duties as assigned. We just love that. We love that, that little anecdote. And so back in 2020, this was true for me. 2020 was an era, right, for so many reasons. But one of the reasons that is marked on me is because at that time, we couldn't meet in buildings. And so Crossroads decided, okay, great, we'll meet outside. And so we did in the central Cincinnati area, we had worship at the Cove. And if you were down in Lexington, okay, so people liked that, we had worship in the blue grass. And so we took it very seriously, right? We were out there, we were worshiping. People were six feet apart. And so part of my job is I got to wear a backpack that was about half the size of my body on the back. This is what it looks like. It was full of hand sanitizer. And you would just, it looks like a ghostbuster thing. You would just kind of spray. Now we didn't spray people, but my job was to every 30 minutes go and spray the public Cove restrooms, which was really interesting because people were in there leaving holy offerings onto the Lord, which is just wild to poop in the church, you know, party party, but it was happening. And my job was to go in there

and spray that thing down every 30 minutes. the time that that work mattered to God. I don't think so. And you know what, it wasn't even the first time that I had multiple jobs, because here's another little tidbit about me. We don't get to know each other real well today. Another little tidbit is I love work. Like, I know that everyone doesn't resonate with that, but I think I was just, I love to work. And sometimes, candidly, to my detriment, which will unpack together as well. But because I love work, at one point in my life, I was doing the absolute most, right? And in college, I had six jobs. I thought about asking you guys to guess that number, but you would have never gotten there. I legitimately had six jobs, and I worked in our student involvement office with our students, and then I was in RA, and then I also was a scene shop manager, which means that I built the sets for the theater, and then when I had a bunch of free time, I became a crowd funder for a startup. I became his full-time assistant, and then just because I guess I was bored, I then took on one of those startup companies and helped social media manage for them in their Pinterest page. And then because I didn't have a weekend job, I got a weekend job. And my weekend job was that I would help, there was this church plant that was starting up, and I helped with their students and with their kids' ministry. So, I had these six jobs, and in all of that work, I literally could not tell you that I would have said work had anything to do with God, work had anything to do with glorifying God, or that God had anything to say about work. In all of that work, I would have told you work was probably a means to an end, just kind of a necessary evil, something to dread, or something to offer me total fulfillment. And here's the promise that I want all of us to experience today, and it's going to take a little bit of work to understand, but that God does have a vision for work, and his work, his vision includes hope, and that when we partner with him, we can have a different vision ourselves. Now, if you're in these seats, if you're watching me in some way under the sound of my voice, and you are following Jesus, I want to offer to you that you've actually made a commitment. And that commitment is really, really interesting, and if you're watching this or listening to this, and you have not made a commitment to Jesus, I just want you to know you're in the right place. Maybe you're like, "I don't know about this, Jesus. God, I'm still exploring." That's lovely. This is still a message for you, because you're going to get something out of this. We all are. But back to that commitment. If you have chosen to follow Jesus, then you and I have both we've made a commitment. And that commitment is not that Jesus gets to have a little slice of our

life, but that actually, when we accept what we call the good news of the gospel, is that Jesus came and he lived and he died and he rose again, when we accept that into our own lives, then we say that Jesus can have all of our life. It means that we have chosen to partner with him when he says out of his own mouth in the famous Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come and thy will be done." See, this level of commitment means that when we say yes to Jesus, we're actually going, "Actually, that sounds pretty good. I do want more of God's kingdom, more of the way he wants things to be. I actually do want God's will to be done because his will seems to be good." And so we say yes to that. And so I want to just say that if we are walking in that commitment, then a big part of our commitment is then to see God's kingdom come and God's will be done not just on Sundays, but in the other way that we spend the rest of our week in our work. If God's will is to be done, if God's kingdom is to come, then how we spend our waking hours, that one third of our life, it actually matters. It matters greatly. Now I told y'all, I had six jobs and I know I'm not going to be talking about nobody up in here, but I'm going to just tell them myself because sometimes that's really helpful. So let me just tell them myself. In those six jobs, I will say they fell into kind of three categories for me. Some of those jobs was just me being a weekend warrior. It means that I had that job but that joint sucked and I really was just living for the weekend. I know that's none of y'all. I know all of you have a God vision for your work. I know that's none of you, but me. I was like, man, get me out of here. I cannot wait until the weekend. And then another type of job that I had was I was looking to be fulfilled. I was the fulfillment finder and I would leave, leave one of those jobs. I actually did going, you know, I'm never going to be in there again because they just don't understand my worth and they don't understand my values. I'm looking for that thing to affirm me and to really complete my identity. That was me. I was in that bucket too. that some of my jobs fell in, and that was the working the system. Now this was me because I saw the job might suck a little bit, but I really like that check now. I really like that. I liked what it buys me. I like that it might give me some nice things.

I like that it gives me some nice status. Now I know that's none of you, and maybe you don't fall in any of those buckets. Like I did, maybe you love your job, but all of us need to get on the same leveled playing field. And here's where we have to start. We start with the idea that work, work was God's idea. And when we don't have God's idea of work, if we're falling into those three buckets like I was, then work is not anything about God and it has way more to do with survival and consumption and identity. A famous philosopher and professor at Columbia University, he gives us a vision for why we need a better vision for work. He says at the heart of any cohesive culture is a story that gives it hope. A story that helps us overcome the working suspicion that all of our working and getting and suspending amounts to nothing more than fidgeting while we wait for death. That powerful thing that he's talking about, that hope that we need is a vision, a different vision for work. And so to understand where that hope might come from, to understand what God might have to say, we're gonna actually have to go back to the very beginning of the Bible. And I mean the beginning, the beginning, not just the first book of the Bible, which is Genesis, we are going there. We're gonna go to the first two pages of the Bible

because in it, we're gonna find God's vision for work. A little bit of note about Genesis is that if you aren't careful, it can become a book that you can really oversee the real story that's happening there. You can't really see the forest for the trees, if you will, because Genesis is a deep and complex book and it started many of theological debates and we're not gonna focus on any of those today. My ask is that you would just not miss the greater story because the grand story that's going on in Genesis is that God is trying to connect with his people. And so no matter what, the fact that Genesis doesn't really fill in the details for us, it doesn't, it still holds a truth. And the truth is that God is trying to connect with his people. And so we see in one of the most famous scriptures of all time, right? Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And this is the very beginning of the story of work because the verb in that sentence is God, he created. He does something, he's doing something. And we see here that work is his idea because it turns out he's the first worker. He's the first person actually creating something out of nothing. And so God goes on what I like to call a creating spree. And when he gets on this spree,

he's not just creating for no reason. If you look closely at the book, you will see that God is creating something for humanity. He's actually creating ideal conditions for humans to reside. And so he separates light from dark. He separates land from sea. He gets some grass and some trees. And then finally, enters Adam. And Adam is this first man pine in the book and their view and I are in the story. And the Bible says that he reached down and created Adam from dust. And then he breathed in him his own breath. And so there we are, both dust and divine. And then what happens next is actually wild. God gives us this invitation to imitate him. That is crazy and we know that to be true because God's bringing something out of nothing and this invitation for imitation. After he does all of that, the Bible says he took a break in Genesis 2-1. So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were created. And on the seventh day, God had created his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all of his work that he had done. This is the first time the word work shows up in the Bible. And it is in the context of God creating,

not just haphazardly, but he's creating order. He's creating beauty. And then ultimately he's doing that to benefit us. He's creating order and beauty and benefit. And here is that we understand that work in its own right is actually good. And then we can see that God does something wild. It's basically taking what has potential and forming it in order to yield order. That's our definition that we're gonna work with today because the next thing that happens is God does something spectacular. He doesn't just say imitate me and watch what I do, but he actually gives us an invitation to partnership and to do what he does. And Genesis 128, it gives us his vision for work. He says, "And God blessed them. "And God said to them, be fruitful, multiply. "Fill the earth, subdue it. "Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, "and every creature that crawls on the earth." I just love this scripture. And I love it, not just because it says all this cool stuff and it sounds like humans have a lot of power. Actually, this scripture is often misunderstood and it has been weaponized, unfortunately, for people to usurp power over things like animals and I've seen people maybe kill bees and go like, "Oh, I have dominion." I'm like, "Stop killing the freaking bees.

"We need them." And they've used it as an excuse to maybe enforce or coerce people to have children, but that's really not what this scripture is about at all. That's not what's going on here. What's going on in this scripture is God's vision of work. So let's break it down so we can get past some of that weaponization. The first thing that we see is God blessed. Now, some of y'all don't believe me, so I'm gonna say it again. He says, "And God blessed them." Okay, Hannah. You mean to tell me work is a blessing? You never met my boss, so you can't be saying that. You never see my irritating coworkers and how they always be asking me questions, like, it's not. But it says it, it's right here. It says, "And he blessed them." So this is our first clue that God's definition, his version of work is a blessing. And then it goes on to say, "Be fruitful and multiply." This is a wild commandment. And he gives it to no other species except humans. He doesn't say to rabbits, be fruitful and multiply. He doesn't say to flowers, be fruitful and multiply. And he doesn't because when flowers recreate themselves, they just make more flowers. And when rabbits recreate themselves, they just make more rabbits.

But when humans who bear the very image of God, when we bear children or reproduce ourselves and other people, we're not just making carbon copies of ourselves. See, humans, when we make more humans or more versions of ourselves, we're making communities. We're making neighborhoods. We're making cities and societies. We're making culture. So God's invitation for us in that moment of being fruitful is actually to go and partner with him and remake the earth. And that's a really high call. And so let's look at the last part of that scripture. The last part of that scripture says, "Subdue." Now I wanna just say that "Subdue" is not a synonym for exploit. Even though it's been used that way. To subdue something means to yes, assert your willpower over something, but so that it yields its full potential. This is a great example is if you have a seed. If I had a packet of seeds up here, this is a packet of seeds. That if I throw out, they're not gonna do anything, they're gonna die. But if I take that seed and because I am a human and assert my own power over that seed and I add some water and I add some dirt and I set it in the right conditions

and all of a sudden, man, maybe it's a fruit tree. Maybe it's a plant that's beautiful for people to enjoy. This piece of wood that was once this table was just a piece of wood until someone decided, let me assert some will over it. And now it is a beautiful piece of usable furniture. It wasn't just potential. And while I love you vegetarians in the room, I gotta say this, cows, they're good in their own right. But God gave a butcher, a God-sized vision to go in and fillet, I mean, yum, you know what I'm saying? That is God, he is real, that's good. He asserted that power, he or she does that and they yield something that is helpful and why. They're just doing this for nothing and doing it for order, for beauty and for benefit. And then we see that God actually invites us into the work. He says in Genesis 2.15 and the Lord took man and he placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and to watch over it. So in short, God has given us things around us, people around us who have potential that by being around us, if we look at their potential and we work with them, then we can yield something for beauty, for order and for benefit. Wow, that is a God's vision of work. And we have this power to be fruitful, to partner with God in this remaking of the earth. And so that means that what we do with our waking hours that it matters.

See, you were given a little patch of garden just like Adam, and whatever that patch of garden is, he's given you a domain to subdue it. So even if you're retired, you still got work to do. Even if you were stay-at-home parent, you've got work to do. If you're flipping burgers, those burgers are a domain that God is giving you to yield, order, beauty, and benefit. Now, that's all real exciting. But you and I know that Monday is coming. And when you come this little beautiful message, that's not going to be echoing in your brain. And there's a reason for that. Because something happened. Like, what happened to this God vision of work? Why doesn't it feel like this idea that you're talking about, Hannah? Why is it that on Monday morning, there is a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach? Well, I got to tell you, this is nothing to do with me, but everything was going really, really good for like the first two and a half pages. The first one and a half pages of the Bible are just delightful. Man is with God, that connection, that intimacy is there. And then we get to that second half of the second page. And I have always said, into this other character in the story, her name is Eve, Eve and Adam, they're married in the story. And I've always said, when I get to heaven, I'm going to find Eve. And I'm going to talk to her and say, you the woman who responsible for childbearing pains, we need to have a conversation.

And one of the things I want to say to Eve is, you mean to tell me that all of this went down because you was talking to a stranger? Girl, don't you know about stranger danger? Come on now. But that's what happens, right? Eve, she gets to talking to a stranger. And that stranger, don't get hung up on this, is a talking snake. And the talking snake is really representative of the evil that exists, right? We've got the serpent and the serpent is doing, he is on assignment. And the serpent's assignment is to convince Adam and Eve that everything that God has given them is actually not what he said, what he's invited them into, that they're still missing a piece of the pie. And the Bible says that God had given them everything except this one tree. He asked them, hey, please don't eat from this tree. And so the serpent's like, yo, you know if you ate from the tree, the reason God doesn't want you to do that is because then you're going to know, well, he knows and he's really keeping something from you. He can convince Eve of that. He's still convincing many of us of that today actually, if we're honest. And so Eve, the Bible says that she looked at the tree and saw it was good for wisdom. I just love the Bible because it's just telling me, she clearly didn't have none before this moment, clearly. And so Eve takes a little bite of the fruit and all this goes downhill, right? Because sin enters the world. And the thing about sin is it's not compartmentalized. When it touches something, it brings destruction.

And the destruction that it brings is not necessarily the ruin of work per se, even though it touches that. What happened in that moment is that the serpent wasn't after just Eve eating the fruit. He was after the intimacy that man has with God. He was after the partnership. He was after the relationship. He was after our connection and he still is. And so we see that when sin kind of enters the world, work really gets messed up because the next thing that happens, it says it clearly here in Genesis 3.7. It says then the eyes of the both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. And so they sewed fig leaves together and they made coverings for themselves. Hold the phone because this is one of those ones you just skip over. How do you know how to sew? They don't have a reference for sewing. They don't understand clothing. There's no understanding of how you should be covering yourself. And right here in this scripture, we see that work becomes way more instead of it being something that is yielding potential for beauty or order or benefit. Work now becomes about survival and identity and consumption. Because those folks have to take what is around them and consume it so that they can hide from one another. Because all of a sudden you're not safe. And all of a sudden I have to do this so that my identity is covered up. And all of a sudden I've got to do this to survive. See right here in this moment, work starts to take on a different aspect. And it only gets worse because the next thing that happens is when man and God have a confrontation, the Bible says in Genesis 3.17, the ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and distals for you.

You will eat the plants of the field. You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground since you were taken from it. For you are dust and you will remain in return to dust. I just got to like sit down after that one because this is why Monday sucks. Right here, right here, right here is what Monday is horrible because we What was once meant as something to serve and be in partnership with God is now something where we have to do something that we were never meant to do, which is work to provide for ourselves. Do we see God's kindness in the scripture? He says three times, you will eat, you will eat, you will eat. And he's saying that because he's saying, I'm not gonna leave you lonely. That connection that we had, it's not there. But now I gotta teach you how to do something to survive for yourself when you were never meant to do that. And so here we see that God is already up, he's actually already up to something in this moment. He's already up to something, but this is where work sorta goes wrong. Now I've gotten to experience kind of this idea of work not matching God's vision of work many times. I've been in many, many jobs that I haven't loved or that have felt crushing. But one of the most memorable jobs is when I was 13 years old. Now don't worry, my mom assigned a paper or something and I could work at 13, it was legal. And you were partnered with basically an organization

that was about kind of training up young leaders. And I was so excited about this job because it means that I was gonna be partnered with an Alderman's office. I grew up in Chicago and so the city's just too big for the mayor to look over all of it. So we have Alderman's that are sectioned out in wards. And so I was gonna be in the Alderman's office and in the case she's watching this, Michelle, it was her office, the eighth ward. And Michelle's office, I never saw her. I was so excited because this is this powerful black woman. I'm gonna be under her. I'm gonna learn so much from her. And that just like didn't happen. I'm sure she was off doing something amazing and helpful. And I've never saw her. Instead who I saw every single day was who I call the complaining crew. And the complaining crew, they were strong. Every day they would come to work with one mission to complain about how much it sucked. And here I am 13 and they would invite me. And I'll be in there like, yeah, must gotta pay bills? What? Like, yeah, it sucks, it sucks. Trying to figure out how I fit in this world. But I remember that my experience there wasn't so great because here it was, these women, they were community builders in their job title.

They literally had the ability to take potential and make more order and beauty and benefit in their job title. And instead what they did was complain and they worked for them was about survival and consumption and identity. And that was a really tough experience. And I'll tell you what though, I still have a lot of empathy for them. Because I don't know, I bet this wasn't their first choice. Maybe they had dreams. I don't know, maybe they were just doing this to make the ends meet and they needed to put food on the table. I don't know, maybe they always wanted to be doing something else. And so just having a space to come and be able to relax and let their hair down was actually better than being at home, I don't know. And I actually have a lot of empathy because some of us in this space and listening to me actually work is terrible and it's crushing you. You live in the reality of the curse every day when you get up and you put on your shoes and you're like, oh, another day of this but I got to do it to survive. There's an empathy there. I totally get that I've been there myself more than once. And so the question is real, what do we do, right? Like, what do we do in this moment?

Well, the world says to quit. The world actually says that we should create a utopian society where there's no work. Works the problem, we'll get her out of here. And you know, the guy that made SpaceX and put a car in the air, no matter what you think about it, I'm a flying car, it's pretty freaking cool. Here's what he had to say. He says, my prediction is that work will be optional. That's Elon Musk. Now, here's the thing about Elon Musk. I mean, he has a lot of money to the point where I'm sure nobody in his bloodline will ever have to work again. So it's actually really easy for him to say something like that. It's easy for him to say, oh, work should be optional. But the other problem with viewing work as just something that only has economic value is that it demeans God's vision of work. It means that whatever you're doing right now with your hands only matters in so much that it can provide for you. But we just read and found out together that God's vision of that is actually couldn't be further from the truth. And God doesn't just have a vision of like overarching work. It's not just like only certain work fits in this mode. No, he says it together in Ephesians 210. It says, for we or his workmanship created in Christ Jesus

for good works, which he God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That means whatever you're doing with your hands right now actually matters to God. Now, whatever work you find to do if you're a personal trainer and you're lifting weight, If your job is a checkout clerk at the local Dollar Tree, if your job is to wipe noses because you've chosen to stay home and that's what works for your family and the work that you are doing actually matters. Now that's bizarre because the world says that work only matters, right? As much as its economic value, but when work receives its redemption, then work matters to God and that's what's next. Is that God, because of Jesus, he redeems work. He can redeem our work. That word gospel and good news that we talked about earlier is just means that when Jesus came and lived a perfect life, he died a death he didn't deserve and that when he died, he didn't stay dead. He rose from the dead and because of that resurrection, the Bible says and I believe that he has all power in his hands over death, hell and the grave. Now that's crazy because work falls in that death category, right? That thing that looks dead, that thing that feels inevitable is not inevitable because of Jesus. See the gospel changes everything and it changes our work. And so what do you practically do?

Some of you are like, oh thank God, she finally got to the part where she's gonna tell me to quit. Yes, write that down. Well here's the reality. Some of us need to quit. It's not a lot of us, but some of us do because it's not actually allowing us to show up in a godly way and maybe even harmful for us to be in that space and so it's just not a good space. But most of us, some of us, we don't need to quit. We actually just need to show up different. We need to make a decision that the gospel affects every area of our life and so it's going to affect our work and we need to put on our boots and put on our coats and put on whatever the uniform is and the most important uniform being our attitude and show up different. And then there's some of us. Some of us just need to find the one thing and the one reason why God has us at the work we are at. It's probably a person. It's probably that annoying person that you avoid in the break room and say, please God, don't let me run into Jim, Jesus, please. It's probably Jim, it's probably Jim. It's probably Jim. And then some of us need to reorient ourselves so that work is not our first priority because it's actually crushing us

and crushing our families. We need to reorient. Some of us need to do that. But most of us and all of us need to be open to the idea that because of Jesus, because of the gospel, our work can look different and be redeemed. See, there is a better way not to option and operate later but to operate right now. When you leave out of your spaces wherever you're watching this and go into the nine to five or the seven to 11 or the seven to seven, if you work 12s, whatever your situation is or the 24/7, if you're a parent or retired, whatever that is, when you walk out of it and out of here and into that space, you can show up differently because according to Colossians 3, 23, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. Did you hear that? Whatever you do. Many people don't believe that. You think, oh, I need to be in ministry, maybe like Hannah and then that'll feel like I can give God glory with my work. Actually, I just wanna let you in on a secret. It's plenty of pastors all over the United States that are not giving God glory with their work. So don't worry about that, all right?

You can do whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, you can give God glory with your work. How? You can simply say, God, how do you want the gospel to be where I am? God, I'm getting ready to see Jim. Is there anything you wanna say to him? You can just say, how can the gospel be where I am? There's many people who believe that, you know, work doesn't matter because when God comes, he'll actually gonna destroy the whole earth and everything will be new. And I gotta tell you, that's actually not the picture that we get in scripture. The picture that we get in scripture is that our work not only matters right now, but it matters later in Revelation, the very last book of the Bible, 14, 13 says, "And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Write this, "'Bless are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. "'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, "'that they may rest from their labors, "'for their deeds follow them.'" Now, that's kinda crazy. I'm not really sure how work is gonna show up in heaven, but I got the news right here is that whatever you're doing today and tomorrow, it matters because your deeds are going to follow you. He's using your work to build you. When God was in the garden with Adam, it was never about the seeds and the grass and the trees.

He could have sneezed and made that. Instead, he gave it to Adam to work it. Why? So that Adam would learn to trust him, so that Adam would learn to be connected to him, so that Adam could know what it was like to cultivate something. See, God is the first worker. And if you let him, he's actually working in you to yield your potential for beauty, for order, for benefit. That is what he is doing. There's a monk who is famous now. He wasn't famous when he was alive because he was a dishwasher. And the monk, what do they call it? In the monk compound, he was a dishwasher. And after his life, they found his journals and someone put them all together. His name is Brother Lawrence. And I love him because he actually understood what it meant to have a God-sized vision for work. He says we ought not be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. See, the fall does not get to dictate God's design for work. God's redemption means that his design for order, for beauty, and for benefit is still available to us through Jesus. That when we choose to be co-laborers with God, co-partners with God, and put ourselves in his shoes and say, "God, how do you want the gospel to be where I am?" That not only does our work matter now, it also has eternal value. Now, I know that when we leave here, this message will be like, "Oh, that was a nice little anecdote, but I still got to face Jane, and Jane don't like me." I still got to show up and somebody's going to be have took in my parking spot. I still got to go in the break room, and somebody took my lunch. I still got to show up, and my kids are going to be up at 6.30 AM saying, "What we doing today?" I still got to find meaningful work even after I thought my work was over because I retired. See, I know that when you walk out, that's what's waiting for you.

And so I'm going to end this message with a blessing. And if you want a blessing, this is really simple. All you have to do is maybe close your eyes if that's available to you, and put your hands out, maybe just on your lap. Because I think God wants us to receive, because imagine. Imagine if every hiring manager in all of our cities that we are in was like, "Yo, if that person goes to crossroads, you need to hire them because, I don't know, it's something about them. They're easy to work with. They know how to do order. They know how to do beauty. They know how to do benefit. Imagine that would flip a city overnight. We're asking God for revival. What if he wants to bring it to our jobs? What if God wants to bring revival? Because we are showing up differently at work. If you want the blessing, you can just put your hands out. God, in the name of Jesus, what a gift to have work. And Lord, I just know that everybody doesn't feel that way. And so Lord, I just want to pray right now for the people who need to be blessed with the ability to create more order. And if that's you, you could just say under your breath, "Lord, I want to create more order." That could be in your home, that could be in your job. Lord, would you bless these people with the ability to imitate you? Give them wisdom. Give them wisdom that they don't even know where it came from, on how to create order. And then there's others of us that need to create beauty. If that's you, you can just say, "God, I want to create beauty." The artist in the room, the people who can look at a mess and go, "I can repair that." The surgeons who maybe are, "Let that dream die." Go back and get it. Gotta bless this group of people with the ability to keep creating, to imitate you, Lord. And Lord, all of us, all of us need to create for benefit. All of us need to add more benefit and more glory for you and the earth. Would you help us to do that?

If that's you, if you want that, you can just say, "God, help me to create benefit." And God, I thank you that you've given us work to partner with you and to show the world who you are. In the name of Jesus, amen. It's been taking a minute to spend some time with us today. My encouragement is simple. Don't just hear God's word today. Take one step because of it. Maybe for you, that's opening your Bible. Maybe it's spending a few quiet minutes in prayer. Maybe it's forgiven someone or asking for forgiveness from someone. Or simply saying yes to whatever God is put in front of you today. Whatever that next step is, take it. And if this message encourages you, we love to hear from you. Send us a video gram or write to us at [email protected]. Our team reads every letter. We love to walk alongside you. So next time, keep pursuing Jesus, keep opening his word. Keep saying yes to him one day at a time.