Thriving at Work

Well why don't you grab your message notes in your bulletins and let's continue our series in the book of Proverbs in the Bible called the Art of Living Well. I am loving this study in the book of Proverbs and today let's talk about something that touches all of our lives, work. Some amazing stats about work. Check this out. You're gonna spend about a hundred and fifty thousand hours of your life working. That's about 40% of your waking hours working. Locally the average Silicon Valley professional spends 52 hours a week at work on average. If you're a small business owner you work an average of 57 hours a week. In fact Americans work on average more than any other society on earth. Did you know that? Look at these stats. Americans work 137 more hours a year than the Japanese, 260 more hours a year than the British, and 499 more hours a year than the French. How many of you want to move to France right now? Yes. You will spend more time working and commuting to work than you will eating, drinking, playing on weekends and vacationing combined. Work dominates your life.

Now the good news is if you've been reading through the book of Proverbs in this series you know that a ton of Proverbs in the Bible are about your work. The Bible says God actually wants you to succeed in your work and not just succeed but to love your work. So this morning let's look at four keys to thriving at work. And as we start let me tell you a story. You know what I want my relationship to work to be like? Kind of like what I saw down in Monterey one day. My wife Lori and I were down there and we ducked into this little bakery, one of those little European style bakeries that they have down there. And it was jam-packed with customers, this tiny little bakery. They were all waiting in long lines to get bread so we figured it has to be good, right? And we smelled it. It just smelled just fantastic and I thought what is the secret to the success of this place?

Well it soon became clear that it was a little old Italian man who was working behind the counter and he was apparently in charge of the place. He was bustling around taking bread in and out of ovens and patting the people who were working the registers on the back, giving them instructions. And he was about this high probably, this wiry Italian and he was going back and forth. He was literally whistling while he worked. Just like a cartoon character just popping bread in and out of the oven and "la la la la la, chow baby!" You know this kind of an attitude. And so when I got up to the counter I said, "Hey you know you really love your job don't you? That is great to see these days when so many people don't like their jobs." And he stops like this, this apron on, he looks at me and he goes, "Love my job!" In this big thick Italian accent, "Love my job! This is no job! This is life!" Like he's mad at me.

And then he goes, "You know understand, you know understand!" And I'm like, "I just want bread you know." And he goes, "Let me read to you a poem about a bread." And he takes out, true story, he takes out this folded poem out of his back pocket that's all creased and greasy. Clearly he's been reading it a lot to people. And he takes it out and the whole bakery place gets quiet. Like, "Oh he's gonna read the poem again!" You know? And all these people waiting and he goes, "Hm-hm-hm-hm!" He goes, "Beat, he reads the poem." And I took a picture of the poem with my cell phone and wrote it down here because it was so awesome. He goes, "Be gentle when you touch bread. Let it not lie uncared for. Unwanted. So often bread is taken for granted. There is so much beauty in a bread. Beauty of sun and a soil. Beauty of patient toil. Winds and rains have caressed it. Christ often blessed it. So be gentle when you touch a bread." He's crying at the end of it. The whole place is applauding for him, you know?

Now how long has it been since you have seen somebody that fulfilled at work, right? What was the key? He saw his baking bread, his job as the best job in the entire world, as a mission from God. And he was convincing all of us too. In fact, I'm submitting my own resignation today. I'm retiring to be a baker. That's how convinced I was. But how do I get to that, right? Well, if I want fulfilling, productive work, work that doesn't take over my life, the book of Proverbs says that there's four things I got to do. If you break down all of the Proverbs down to what do they talk about regarding work? How can I have a blast at work and really be successful and make a difference? Here's what the advice and Proverbs breaks down to. Jot this down.

Number one, I need to plan my work. Plan my work. This may seem obvious, but a lot of people kind of look at this as unspiritual or something. They'd rather be spontaneous. Well, the Bible says in Proverbs 13:16, "Wise people think before they act. Fools don't and even brag about their foolishness." Now, I used to be that kind of fool. I actually bragged about my lack of organization. I thought it was more spiritual to just be spontaneous all the time. Well, in some ways it's more fun to live like that, but it's unwise. Proverbs 27:21 says, "A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions." The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. You need to plan ahead. Why? Check this out. Professor Gail Matthews of Dominican University did a study last year, excuse me, found that people who write down specific goals for their future are far more likely to be successful than those who have either unwritten goals or no specific goals at all.

Now, we're trying to do this as a church, right? We have our 2020 vision. Where does God want us to be in 2020? What kind of ministry does He want us to have here in the county? Okay, what does that mean in 2013? What buildings, what ministries should we be planning on doing? And you can do this too. You can start planning by just grabbing a piece of paper and brainstorming. What are my goals for 10 years from now? Okay, what are some steps to get there? Starts with planning. The number two, I must do my work. Just stick with it. Proverbs 10:4, "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." This is a major theme of Proverbs. Pardon me again. Proverbs 12:24, "Diligence brings a man to power." Look, you don't have to be a genius to succeed in life, right? I mean, look around at all the success stories. Clearly, you don't have to be a genius. But you know one thing that you do have to be? Persistent. You have to be dogged. You've got to be determined. You have to be diligent. Proverbs 21:5, "Steady plotting brings prosperity."

Somebody once asked William Carey, the first modern missionary to India, "What is the secret of your success?" And he replied, "I can plod." I love that answer. Reminds me of the missionaries that Adrian and I and Paul visited in Africa, this trip we just got back from. As you heard him say, we put on a conference in Senegal, started the day after Easter. We took off for this. And it was for missionaries over there. And we decided to really try to spoil the missionaries. Our team did everything at the conference for them. We did the teaching. We led the worship. We cooked. We took care of the kids. We handled all the luggage. We even decided one night that we would make one of the meals really fancy. And we brought table clothes and candles from Santa Cruz over there to Africa and decorated the whole room along with food that they can't get over there. It's a 95% Muslim country. So there's a lot of food that they can't get because Muslims don't eat it. For example, any pork product. So we actually put in our suitcases two entire hams in suitcases, which they can't get over there. We got a ham fan over here.

But we and then my wife and my daughter-in-law said, "Why don't we all serve them Downton Abbey style?" You ever watched Downton Abbey where the servants come up with platters? And so they said, "Let's dress up. Let's serve them all Downton Abbey style like old-fashioned servants and even speak with British accents. May I help you madam?" You know, like this. And we did it. And some of the missionaries cried at that dinner because they said, "Nobody's ever treated us like this." But I have to tell you, these people are all my heroes. There were teachers, Bible translators, nurses, caretakers to street kids, and so many more types of missionaries. And some of these people have been translating the Bible for decades, and they're living examples of this point, just steady perseverance. They just do not quit. They have been arrested, invaded, threatened at machete point, carjacked, kidnapped, had their homes destroyed, had to be evacuated because of civil wars. Honestly, I think I would have been out a long time ago. But these people just keep plugging away. They are the living pictures of this verse.

So for success and happiness, plan your work. Do your work. Stick with it. Say, "I can plot." And then the third thing Proverbs says is, "Improve my work. Get better at it." This next verse is one of my favorites, one of my favorite Proverbs in the Bible. That actually comes from another book, the book of Ecclesiastes, but it's part of the Bible's wisdom literature. And it's this Ecclesiastes 10:10. And I want us all to read this out loud together, all right? Let me hear you. "A dull axe requires great strength, so be wise and sharpen the blade." Do you get this verse? You could have a great axe, great tool, but after a day of chopping down trees, the blade's gonna get dull. And so you got to be wise and sharpen the blade.

Listen, you may have had great work skills when you graduated from college. You may have had awesome work skills when you got your contractor's license. But do things change? Is there new knowledge? Are there new methods? Is there new technology? Of course. And so what you got to do is keep sharpening the blade. These days you can go to conferences. Online for free, you can watch things like TED talks and all kinds of university classes. Be wise and keep the blade sharp. Be the sharpest employee at work. Why? Because if you get out of step, out of date, you get out of touch. Kind of like Dilbert's boss in this comic. Dilbert is a great go-to comic when you're talking about work, but he's stuck in 50s technology. He says to Dilbert here in this one, "My laptop is locked up. Can you help?" And Dilbert says, "Well remember, you have to hold it upside down and shake it to reboot." And he says, "Oh, that's right." And as they leave the engineers say, "I wonder if he'll ever realize we gave him an etch-a-sketch, you know now?" You got to stay up today.

Now some of you going, "Yes, I love these first three points. Preach it. I love my job. I am like that little old Italian guy. And so when you tell me to plan my work and do my work with diligence and improve my work and sharpen my skills, I'm on it, man. And so many of these lazy bums here need to hear that. Preach it. Yeah, work is good. Yay, work." But most of you are going, "There's days I hate my job." And I came to church and I'm hearing you say, "To try harder basically? I hate this message. This is not inspiring because my job is a drag." If you feel like that, then what is the answer? You know, maybe you feel like your job is so draining that you feel like the guy in this other Dilbert cartoon where he says, "This job has taken my dignity, my self-esteem, my creativity, and my precious time on this earth. You've taken all I have. There's nothing left to give." And the boss says, "The blood drive is next week. It's mandatory and it's a three-pint minimum."

You know what? What keeps you going are the days that you feel like that at work or at home or in your marriage or at school because everybody feels drained at different times. Well, that's the fourth key and I really want to focus on this this morning. I need to reframe my work. Reframe my work. The question is, why do you work? Just to provide? Just to make money? Just to get ahead? Well, Proverbs says, "Do not wear yourself out to get rich. Why not? It'll burn you out." Look at page 2. Even Solomon got burned out by work. He said, "I undertook great projects but I hated life because the work that is done under the Sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless. Chasing after the wind." You ever feel like that? Like what's the point of my job? It's like Groundhog Day. It never changes. It's chasing after the wind. Vain repetition. What's the cure for that feeling? Well, you don't necessarily need a new job but you do need to find a new framework, a new way of looking at your job, a new narrative to explain what your job is all about.

First of all, you need to reframe the purpose of your work. The purpose of your work. Why does God even have you at work? Look at Proverbs 8 starting in verse 1. It says, "Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? At the highest point along the way where the paths meet, she takes her stand. Beside the gate leading into the city. At the entrance, she cries aloud." Now, there's a lot of lines here that are gonna rush right past us in our 21st century context in America. We don't get them but this would have been very obvious when this was written 3,000 years ago. Let's look at these lines. "Besides the gate." The city gates in those days were the place of the courts, the justice system, where the trials took place. The phrase, "Where the paths meet." Where the two main streets met in a town. This is where the merchants met. This is the marketplace. These are the business people. At the highest point, every ancient city had a high place, a hill or a platform where there was a temple. In other words, it was a place where they stated, "This is the meaning of life in this city. In this city, we worship the God of war or the God of commerce or whatever."

Now, in our world, churches used to play that role but if we're honest, these days most people get their sense of the meaning of life from the media or maybe from the educational system. And so the point in this verse is, through us, God's wisdom is crying aloud in the courts, in the marketplace, in businesses, in the media, the educational system, the influencers in society, the public places. And God is calling people back to wisdom, calling people to God's values right there where they are at. It doesn't say wisdom calls aloud in churches. I hope that's true but it says wisdom calls aloud in the courts, in the marketplace, in the places of influence, in your culture. This is your mission at work. You don't have to be a pastor to serve God as work. Go into your business world and your education world and your legal world and you show them how you're doing your best, how you're being creative, how you're being skilled, not just to make a profit or advance your personal career, but for the glory of God and for the good of other people.

Let me give you just one example. There's a new movie out right now called "42." Anybody here seen "42" yet? Aladi, it's about the baseball player Jackie Robinson. He was the first African-American player in the major leagues. He broke the color barrier that existed at the time. Unfortunately, what the movie leaves out is why he did it. What was his motive? Well, a week ago there was a column in USA Today that set the record straight. It says Jackie Robinson was a man of faith. Christianity was integral to his success. But the article says you wouldn't know it from watching "42." This was in USA Today. It says there's a mysterious hole at the center of this otherwise worthy film. The man who chose Robinson for his role was Dodger's general manager Branch Rickey. In their initial meeting, Rickey makes it clear that he's looking for a man with guts enough not to fight back. But where did Branch Rickey get that idea and why did Jackie Robinson agree? The film doesn't tell us. But the answers to these questions lie in the devout Christian faith of both men. Branch Rickey himself was what he called a Bible-thumping Methodist who sincerely believed it was God's will that he integrate Major League Baseball. And he saw his career as an opportunity to intervene in the moral history of this nation, as Abraham Lincoln had done. And Rickey chose Jackie Robinson because of that young man's Christian faith. And as much as it pains me to tell a story where a Dodger is the hero, I have to say these two Christians changed the culture of Major League Baseball, right? They saw their bigger calling.

And you can do this too. In fact, I don't know if you saw this yesterday in the Santa Cruz Sentinel article on the front of the sports page, "Warriors Lean on Their Faith." Did you see this? It's an article about the Golden State Warriors and about how as a team, they are, ten of their starters are devout Christians. And as a team, they state in this article that they're trying to change the culture of NBA basketball. It says many NBA players identify as Christians but the Warriors feature one of the more devout rosters. Locker rooms are usually the NBA's version of man cave, chock full of millionaires engulfed in the life of luxury. Comparatively, the Warriors acquire boys almost literally. And it talks about how the whole culture associated with the NBA as a team, they feel like part of their job from God as a team is to change the NBA's locker room culture. And you know what? You can do the same thing at your job. What industry are you in? Maybe you're in the restaurant business or you're a scientist or you're a professor or you're a teacher or you're a manager at a local business or you're an investor or you are a financial manager or you're a lawyer. Whatever you do, someone is going to change the culture of your industry. It's happening every day. The culture of your industry is being pushed toward the world's values or toward God's values incrementally every day. Why don't you play a role in that? Because somebody is pushing the culture of your industry.

Now some of you are going, "That sounds great, but what if I'm a stay-at-home mom? You know, how am I going to change the culture?" Well, I mean, being a stay-at-home mom or dad, you're changing the culture by raising kids who are going to impact their culture. In fact, Tony Campolo is one of my favorite authors and his wife said she got so tired of people looking down on her when she said she was a stay-at-home mom. And so at one fancy Manhattan cocktail party where they were at, she was ready with an answer when somebody asked her, "And what do you do?" And she said, "Well, I am socializing two Homo sapiens into the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition so they can be used to accomplish the glorious eschaton predicted by New Testament authors." And the other person went, "I've heard of that." You know, reframe the purpose of your work. It's about something much bigger than just like not complaining and being nice, right? You're impacting the culture.

And then here's another way to reframe your purpose, Proverbs 3:9, "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops." Listen, do you wish your work had more of a sense of value to the world? Well, you know what I do? I tell myself with every dollar I earn, I think to myself, part of this is going to support an Indian orphanage that my family and I have decided to support. Part of every dollar. Part of this is going to support God's work at TLC, which I so believe in. Part of this is going to support the food bank at Second Harvest. So it's not just like you usually you look at your money and you go, "Oh man, so much of this is going to the government, taxes and bills." Well, reframe it and go, "You know what? Part of this is going to support ministry. It refrains the purpose of your work." And then I reframe the importance of my work, the importance of my work. This is huge in the book of Proverbs. And I just want to show you how unique this is. Look at Proverbs 27:18. In fact, let's read this out loud together. Would you read this with me? "He who guards a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who looks after his master will be honored." Now, there's a deliberate contrast in this verse. Because to guard a fig tree is the lowest skill level needed working in an orchard, right? What do you do? I guard the trees, you know. It's, there's not a lot of skill needed there. And to look after your master means you're a servant or a slave. Both of these jobs are very low status jobs, yet what is the last word in this verse? Honored. It says these people who do these jobs are honored.

There's so many verses like this in Proverbs lifting up the most menial jobs and saying, "God honors this kind of work, and we need to honor this kind of work." And I have to tell you, this is something totally unique in ancient religious literature. All ancient cultures had religious texts dealing with work, but I don't know of another religious work of literature in the ancient world that talks of menial labors as glowingly as the Bible does. Let me just give you a couple of examples. The Greek myth of Pandora's box. Humanity's living in paradise until they open Pandora's box, and all of the ills of modern society come pouring out of the box, including manual labor. Work! It's, it's evil. Or the Babylonian creation stories. The head god is called Marduk, and Marduk looks down to the earth and he says to the other gods, "Look, there's a lot of manual labor to be done on earth, a lot of gardening, and a lot of building houses, and so on. And we all know that gods don't do work, so let's create these slave beings that we call men. And men are slaves. They'll do all the work because we're not gonna do work."

And in absolute contrast to every other religion of ancient times, you go to the book of Genesis, and almost the first thing you see is God with his sleeves rolled up in his hands in the dirt, working, manual labor, making us. And you go a little bit further and you realize that when God creates paradise, the absolute perfect environment for human flourishing into paradise, he puts work. Work's not a result of the fall. That's a pagan idea. He says to man and woman in a perfect environment, "Guess what I'm gonna give you next in this perfect world. I'm gonna give you a job to tend the garden." And they're like, "Right on!" You know, it's a good thing. Work's not evil. Work is part of what makes us human, part of what makes our souls thrive. Now, the fall, sin corrupted work, but work is a good thing. And then to take it further, when this God shows up in the world, when he comes down and becomes incarnate on our planet as Jesus Christ, what does he show up as? Not this glorious glowing king or this invincible conquering warrior like he might have in the pagan stories, but he shows up as a carpenter and does manual labor.

And then in heaven, I don't know if you've noticed this, but in the stories of heaven in the Bible when it says God creates a new heaven and new earth and you have no more sickness and no more sorrows and no more diseases and no more tears, but what do you have? You have work. It says, "And in the new heaven and the new earth, we'll be tending vineyards and we'll be eating, making and eating meals and drinking delicious wine and we'll be building our buildings and homes." That's in the new heaven and the new earth. That we are creating things, things of beauty and delicious things and things as a result of the fruit of our labor. So what the Bible says is work is not a necessary evil. Work is a necessary part of having a healthy soul. And what this perspective does is it dignifies all work. It dignifies and blesses your work, whatever you do, to dig a ditch or to compose a piece of music or to find investors for a new business venture. These are all spiritual ways to work because in the Bible God's a gardener, because God's an artist, because God invests in creation and I could go on and on.

There's no other ancient text in the world that looks at work like that. It is awesome. And you know the Bible says that Jesus Christ came to redeem the world, to rescue the world from sin. That means all the world, every aspect of it, not just your soul inside of you. He came to redeem the world and that includes to redeem work and to make work back into the glorious thing that it was originally meant to be, you know, in Eden and that it will be in heaven. And part of our role as Christians is we can give people a sneak preview in our lives of what it looks like to love work and to do work out of love for it and for God and for other people like that little Italian guy in the bakery, you know, and we change the culture when we work that way and ultimately this helps you reframe the Lord of my work.

The Bible says whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord not for human masters. What's that verse saying? You remember you do have a human boss but he's not your real boss. Your real boss is the Lord and no matter what your human boss does, he's gonna reward you because that's the real master you serve. Now I know some of you are going, right, this all sounds very idealistic and kind of pie in the sky but how's this work out in real life, in a real job, in America and the 21st century? Well I'm glad you asked because I've got a little four minute documentary for you to watch. Look at the screen.

We're given 24 hours a day. We sleep one-third of it. We spend part of the time with family and friends and the rest of the time is at work. We spend more time at work than we do doing any other single thing. I just can't believe that God doesn't have a higher purpose for us. I own a design intensive construction company and most of our work focuses on older residential buildings, mostly from the 1920s in our neighborhood. There are properties that have been completely neglected for many many years. We love this neighborhood and where there's the potential to restore a house rather than tear it down, we're gonna pursue that. When I go to work each day I just pray that God will help me to do my very best. The closer in relationship I am with God the better able I am to be my best at work.

How many do you have your tape? Tell me how deep it is again. This wall. Ooh that's tight. This wall gets shorter. As the person in charge of the site I want to exemplify high quality relationships and I want to do excellent work. When I meet a new subcontractor at work I want to be an authentic relationship with that person. Hey Ena, how are you? Well, you okay? Good. I don't see my very best friends as often as I see the people with whom I work on the job site. So I take those relationships very seriously. It looks great. Looks great. Thank you so much for doing that. There's a responsibility towards excellence because I wouldn't be comfortable putting myself out there as a Christian and doing shoddy work. You know I was originally really hoping to get glass up here. How hard would that be? Well I can get those out for sure.

I've heard so many times from people who've said that they really could not stand their contractor by the time their construction project was completed. I certainly don't want to be that contractor. I want my work to be a reflection of my faith in God. We often get the message that in order to do godly work we need to be pastors or evangelists or Sunday school teachers. I don't feel gifted to be a pastor but I do feel strongly gifted to build homes and I want to use that work to honor God. It's satisfying to have taken a property that was an eyesore and a problem within its community and to restore it. I built great relationships with my team and we did excellent work. We as people, as God's creations, are a reflection of Him. If our output to the world is our work then we want it to continue that reflection. I believe this process is a high calling. You can be part of God's kingdom spreading across the world at work no matter what job you do.

Now some of you are going, "Yeah, this is really helpful. I really needed to hear this. I'm motivated." But some of you I know today are so burned out, so exhausted from work, that first you need to be reminded that Jesus does not judge you based on your performance at work or on your performance anywhere else. He says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." And this right here, this is the core understanding that changes me at work from somebody frantically trying to prove my worth. Look how important I am to somebody quietly confident that I am loved, loved, loved by a gracious God. If you don't have that core understanding you can't add on to it any of the principles we've been talking about. So let's talk to that gracious God in prayer right now. Would you bow your head with me?

Just with our heads bowed right now, let me ask you, we talked about perseverance in this message, but what are you being tempted maybe to give up on right now? Maybe it's your work or maybe it's something else, your marriage, kids, school, family, health, finances, life itself. Well today God is reminding you, don't quit, persevere. It's diligence that brings someone to power. Endure wherever you're at. It will pay off at work, in marriage, in child rearing, outlast the rough waters, right out the storm. But again, some of you are going, "I don't know if I can't. I want to have that kind of persistence, but where do I get it?" Well there's only one source, and that's Jesus Christ. When you say to Him, "Lord, reign in me, rule in me, be the only boss that I really work for," when you commit yourself, not just your work, but your whole self to Jesus, and you receive His grace and power, He will give you persistence, power, that will fill you with supernatural endurance. And so Father, I just want to pray for those who are here today that they might commit their whole lives, including their work, to you, and that you might bless them, because I know whatever we give you, you bless. And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.