Navigate Podcast
Welcome to Navigate, we are two long term friends doing life and ministry together. I got tired of the same ole answers when I started looking for help when it came to my walk with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help Navigate your Christian walk with you
Navigate Podcast
Work Ethic
What if work isn’t a grind to escape but a gift to offer? We dive into a deeper vision of labor—how Genesis reframes effort as worship, why comfort is a lousy north star, and how faithfulness over time produces fruit you can actually taste. Along the way, we talk about attention—the hours swallowed by phones and the way quick dopamine undermines deep craft—and share how to retrain your mind for long-haul focus. This isn’t about romanticizing hustle. It’s about restoring dignity to diligence and recovering the joy of building things that bless others.
We pull from the stories of Joseph and Nehemiah to show what integrity looks like in rough seasons: excellence in small places, stewardship when no one is watching, and the determination to keep moving when bitterness tempts you to quit. We also explore practical shifts: why you should never waste inspiration, how to finish what you start, and the difference between band-aid job hopping and bridge-building side projects that open real doors. We talk property, responsibility, and dominion—owning your work, creating value, and handing something meaningful to the next generation.
If your days feel flat, consider this your nudge to pick up the tools again. Read a difficult page. Ship a draft. Fix one process. Build one habit that honors God and serves others. Sweat and stress, when tied to purpose, become offerings that shape you and the world around you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a spark, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What’s the one thing you’ll finish this week?
Hey guys, welcome to Navigate. Justin, what is up, dude? Dude, it is good to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01:You too. You uh you shaved. For all of you that don't know, Tim has shaved his beard off, and he looks more like a ninja turtle now than I think he ever has.
SPEAKER_00:My face is so cold. So cold. It's nice. It's nice. You got a nice uh Donatello vibe. I don't know if you ever had this issue when you go to trim your beard and the trim falls off and you don't realize it until it's too late.
SPEAKER_01:The the issue that I have, Tim, is when I shave my face now, my kids and my wife hate me.
SPEAKER_00:My youngest one-year-old did not want to come near me. It was so funny. Like she knew it was me, but she's like, I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:You know, are you a man or aren't you? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:My three-year-old just laughed hysterically, dude. She's like, da-da.
SPEAKER_01:Beards are the way, okay.
SPEAKER_00:Which which way, white man? Beer beards. They say beards are the makeup for men. So I stick with that.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if that's true. Um, because makeup is something you purchase and put on, and beard is something God gave you naturally. So it's better. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I'm saying it's it's one is natural and one is not. Yeah. Well so when when when men are growing beards, they're doing what God, you know, ordained for them at some level. I don't want to take that to its logical conclusion with women because that could be epic, but you know, take it, take it as it is. I'm I'm happy, my wife. Women everywhere quit shaving their legs in the name of Jesus. Okay. Yeah. Let's just let's move on. Yeah, let's do it. Let's move on. Uh, beards are good. Grow them and uh do that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, unless you're a woman, that's weird. So I don't know how biblical this topic's gonna be. Okay. I feel like this is going to be kind of more helpful on a day-to-day basis, which I hope all of our topics are, to be honest. But yeah, I I've been struggling with this idea, this concept of uh just just work. Work okay just working. And I I have fallen, I think a lot of people fall on this trap of I work for comfort, and then I get that comfort, and then I'm like, okay, I'm good. And then you know, life goes on, then something happens, you have to work hard again, and then it's just kind of like this back and forth almost. Okay, not consistent. I want I'm trying to figure out consistency in life when it comes to work, as being a father, a husband, an employee, an employer, whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I think um there's a there's a love-hate relationship uh with work in general that is definitely uh something that everybody deals with. And sometimes you work because you you like to, and sometimes you work because you have to, and sometimes you work because you're trying to distract yourself, you know. There's yeah, there's all kinds of things that come with it. But I mean tell me a little bit about what you were processing.
SPEAKER_00:Because I well, to be honest, if everything in life was free, just given to us, no taxes, no payments, no anything. Like, would I work? Would I or I just sit around and do nothing like I do when I'm not working sometimes, you know?
SPEAKER_01:I think the right answer is I would work on what I want to work on, you know, versus um, you know, some people might be like, I'm I'm working so that I don't have to work anymore. I think the goal of work is to build things and do things that you feel are valuable and worth it and matter. And if uh you feel like if you had all the money in the world, you would stop working the next day. I think that tells me you don't understand what work is. Yeah, you don't you don't get what it's actually supposed to be. Um work is a work is a virtue. And work, that principle, that idea, really built um it it really built, you know, the the man, I'm I'm trying to the best way to say this, I wanted to say it built the American world, but really um work is is a biblical principle and a virtue that is just replete throughout scripture. Uh from Genesis, you know, chapter two, where God literally tells Adam, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat uh freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. From the day you eat of it you surely die. This idea is he's saying, um, like, hey, I want you to work and I want you to eat the fruit of your work. Like, there's this labor and uh value that you're getting from your labor, literally built into who we're supposed to be as human beings at the at the dawn of creation. So work is is a really good thing that we are called to do. Um, and we see this all the way later on in Thessalonians. Paul's like, if a man doesn't work, neither let him eat. Well, that seems harsh. Actually, he's referring to Genesis. He's making the point that those who work the land get to eat the fruit of the land, but those who do not work aren't supposed to. That there's a there's a principle there that God has given us that those who work for things actually get to reap a reward. And the Bible has a ton of verses on this topic. Um, I'll give you a couple. Uh Proverbs 10:4, lazy hands make for poverty, but dilute hands diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 12, 25, diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. Which is like choose discipline now or be disciplined later, you know. Um Proverbs 21, 5, the plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. Galatians 6 9, let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. People want to spiritualize that, but he's literally talking about harvest and you know, working hard at something. He's he's giving an illustration of what's you know what's actually going on. Um, Colossians 3 23, whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord the Lord as a reward for it. Uh, is the Lord it is the Lord Christ you are serving. Again, this picture of work producing something. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, right? Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, he'll direct your paths. I want you to see the same idea here that if you're working at something, there's fruit uh that that comes out of that ultimately. Um I mean, I I could get into some other passages on this, Tim, but but I think it's really important that we know ultimately what we do for God and the commandments and scripture ultimately come from this picture in Genesis of God saying, You, O man, are created to work. And I would go so far as to say laziness is rebellion towards God. Laziness is rebellion not just uh towards God, but also it's rebellion to your own identity and who create who God created you uh to be. And that's a that should that should put something in us that reminds us that, oh no, I'm I'm created for I've been given hands, I've been given feet, I've been given a mind, and I'm supposed to use these things to extend the glorious kingdom of God and the dominion of our King. Uh, God didn't put Adam in the garden and was like, man, just enjoy it, hang out, and eat fruit. No, he was working. He was naming animals, he's cultivating this garden, he's growing, he's harvesting. There's an entire process of what God ordained for man to live in in perfection, which is why I think in heaven, work doesn't go away. Work is a gift. God gives us the ability to produce, to be able to bring about new things, to cultivate things. That is the work of God Himself, right? Seven days, uh, six days he worked. On the seventh, he rested. Um there's a there's a time for rest, but we're not ultimately created for uh rest. We're created to extend the kingdom and glory of God. And the the Puritans understood this probably better than anyone else. Though, like the Puritans are famous for their view on hard work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like they they really are. Um when you read Puritans, you understood um something of like the idea that work is worship. Like what they would do, man, they believed that everything that they were doing, everything that they were called to was to build the kingdom. Um most of them, for this reason, were post-millennial. They believed that they were actually working hard to build a future kingdom in which Christ would come back to and return to his saints. So even the even the American colonies, man, were built on this uh premillennial hope with people who came to work hard and gave their lives to build something that was greater than themselves in the name of Jesus. So um they saw diligent work as a as a way to serve God and glorify him. Uh really hard work for them was worship. And there's something about that we know, like if you get to you get to the end of a of a really hard day um and you worked your butt off, there's something beautiful about that. Um you know what I mean? Where you know what I'm talking about, Tim. You ever had that where you get to the end of a hard day and you're kind of just like you sit back and you breathe out and you're like, I did it. You feel accomplished, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but I don't want that every day. What no? I don't want that same like I don't want to feel accomplished every day.
SPEAKER_01:That sounds terrible. No, no, no, no, no, no. What do you say?
SPEAKER_00:I go to work and I do the work, and then the next day it's the same work, and then the next day it's the same work, and the next day, right? Like it just becomes so mundane that it's like I don't want to do this anymore. Like, this is not fun. But then I think of uh like baby boomer generation people, right? Like they had giant families with houses and land, and all they did was work in a factory for you know 60 hours a week. I'm like, how do you get that mindset of just being okay with doing the same thing?
SPEAKER_01:You know, there's something interesting here I'm gonna bring up. All right. So I think um I think maybe we've gotten some things wrong. Yeah. Okay, so so like before I get to let's say the who they call the greatest generation and you know, some of that, um, God ordained for us a six-day work week, not a five. And we have a we have a five-day work week where we're at now. And I think I think I I wonder sometimes if the reason people are working for the weekend is because the weekend has become something larger than it's supposed to be. Okay. It used to be a day where it was Sabbath, you know what I mean? It's like uh the the Friday evening into Saturday evening. That was your time of rest and focus and joy. And then by Sunday, you're back after it, getting after it. Now, again, our our Sabbath because of Resurrection Sunday in Christ is now Sunday. It's the beginning um where we start the week with Jesus instead of finishing the week with rest because Christ is our rest. And you can go back and listen to our uh podcasts on Sabbath and all that stuff if you want to. Uh, but but I would say uh I think in some ways we've we've gotten we've gotten really bogged down uh with this idea that work is somehow a bad thing, or uh we're not supposed to be working as much as we are. And again, I could get into balancing statements here, but I don't think the average person is working too hard. Yeah. I I think the average person uh probably has a wrong perspective on work, and that's making them exhausted when in fact there should be some excitement about what it is that you're building and what you get to do and why it matters to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but see, I think that's the problem is that this work isn't exciting, so I must not be in the right job, or it's this is why this is so hard. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, stay with me. Look let me come back to that. Uh, another thing that I was gonna bring up, Tim, is like um the amount of time that men in the past would spend at war. Yeah. Like, like it was a it was it's a it's a fairly new thing in the last 200 years that our country has helped establish some semblance of peace, you know what I mean, where we're not fighting all the freaking time. But if you read scripture, it's like in this, you know, in this particular time when with the kings would go out to war, as soon as you know the spring would hit, armies are getting ready and they're defending their borders and they're fighting for stuff that matters, and they might be gone, you know, three months, six months, nine months battling and getting stuff done. And I just I don't think men were around nearly as much as uh they are today. Um, and I think there's some weird, like there's I don't know, you get what I'm saying? Like there's some weird stigmas around men are supposed to be home, you know what I mean, like at least 40% of the time. And if it's more than that, something is wrong. And I love my family, I love my kids. I think you should spend time with your family, I think you should raise up the next generation. But God created men to work outside of the home. Like what I'm gonna say, if you work at home because you have some mobile job, that's fine. Okay, don't be weird with me. My point is that we're supposed to, we're supposed to go out, we're supposed to be working, we're supposed to be getting things done and building something uh of value with the gifts and abilities that God has given to us. I was um uh talking with uh Fred about this, our producer last night. He was just talking about spending time processing and thinking and and seeking the face of the Lord because he has some unique abilities. You know, when you work on a nuclear sub, you got some cool gifts that not everybody has. Uh can I get an amen, Fred? Amen. There you go. He's got some unique abilities, and he's trying to think through how do I best use the gifts that God has given to me uh in a way that honors him and also uniquely uses who I am to be able to do something for the kingdom. And when I say for the kingdom, I I don't just mean uh it has to have Bible verses plastered all over it. Guys like Isaac Newton famously uh were doing science because they believed God had given us a universe that was meant to be understood and explored and put together in a way where they could rationalize it. They believe that God created a rational universe, and because there was a rational universe, we had the ability to understand it and take greater dominion over it, not just in understanding, but how that understanding uh turned into uh efficiency and growth and all the things that that come along with it. Um so I I guess I would uh what I'm saying by that is whatever you're working on, whatever, however you're wired, however you're gifted, you should use those things to the glory of God uh to try to um use the fullness of who you are to glorify the Lord and what you put your hands to. Um and and I think maybe in a lot of ways, we have overemphasized the value. I'm uh I'm I'm gonna say this. We have overemphasized the value of sitting at home and watching the TV. We've overvalued uh sitting at home and doing nothing and calling it calling it rest. You know what I mean? We value, you know, yeah, yeah. And it's not like uh let's let's just be honest, sitting in front of a TV for the whole weekend is not better. And I'm I'm guilty of this, all right? Because one of my favorite things to do is plop on the couch with all my kids and watch movies. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing once in a while, but if you're telling me you're home and you could be working on something, you could be growing, you could be uh, you know, getting into the word, or for you that could be I'm I'm building something at my house, or I'm growing, like we're supposed to put our hands to things and work at things. Now, again, we've done podcasts on rest. This is not a podcast on rest, this is a podcast on on hard work. And uh the Puritans believed that we were supposed to build societies, um, uh Christian communities, uh, the kingdom of God itself through hard work. And so their hard work hard work ethic drove them into the Bible, it drove them to church, it drove them to know God um in man, really beautiful ways. When you look at their writing on vivification and mortification, like they knew the Lord, but they were also building um Western civilization, you know what I mean? And you know, I was looking at um some of the some of the the original like qualifications for getting to getting into Oxford like a hundred years ago, Tim. You know, it was like there was like 18-year-olds who had to know at least five languages before they could get in. They had to have, you know, one of them had to be, you know, fluent in Koine Greek and Hebrew so that they could read the scriptures and be able to, you know, translate them. They had, I mean, they had to have crazy amounts of things memorized. Like we look back and we're like, those people were so primitive. No, man, they were way more intelligent and way more dedicated than we were. And ironically, we've created uh like a good example of this is um uh like in the home, like uh vacuums and toasters and ovens and microwaves and all of these things that are supposed to make our lives easier and give us back more time so that we could do stuff that was uh, let's say less trivial, maybe. Although I'm not trivializing raising kids or cooking or any of that. I'm I'm just saying the goal is to give people back time. And instead of them taking that time back and using it for something valuable, they took the time back and are now just scrolling on their phones or reading papers or you know what I mean, things that things that don't actually have uh the same value.
SPEAKER_00:So what's on that topic, I read this article just last night about like how the printing price back in the 17th century, right? Yeah, they were printing like six thousand books a year or something. By the end of the 18th century, there was over 60,000. Yeah. And reading became such a huge deal for like middle class and lower class people that IQs skyrocketed like crazy. And you compare that to today, where people spend an average of nine hours a day on their phones. Yeah. Somebody I read, like, we will spend 25 years of our life scrolling on our phones if we continue this way. Like, that's that's scary to me. Yeah, and you can see it in the kids, they said, where most kids can't understand Charles Dickens' novels. Like they can't understand, they could read it, they just don't understand a word of it. I would say most adults can't. Yeah, yeah, and that that worried me. But because I'm like, I like to read, but they even said most adults don't care for it anymore. Like it's like a 40% of people don't read anymore, they just don't want to. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it and we're like I brought this up on the podcast before, but we're moving back. I don't know if it's back, but we're moving again from a literary society where books and literature were the primary way of communicating thought and communicating new ideas and things like that back to an oral society. We're doing a podcast, yeah, instead of me publishing a bunch of books, um, because I honestly believed as a pastor, like that people would listen to something before they would read the book that I was trying to give them on the topic.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So we have all these podcasts on different theological topics from Trinitarianism to apologetics to how to read your Bible to marriage and counseling and all this different stuff because I I really I can't get people to read books, it's not something that they they normally do. And I'm I'm happy to record podcasts um because I'm happy to communicate this information to people, but um I think books are work. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's it's a lot harder to read something than to listen to something. And now it's harder to listen to something. Like I think for most people, just sitting and listening to something now, yeah, but there's a no, I want to scroll through this, or I get bored with it, so I start doing something else. Like we've created in our brains this need for a dopamine hit, or we don't feel like it was worth our time.
SPEAKER_00:Every like 10 seconds because of the shorts, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think like think about that with our own work ethic. So if we get bored of something valuable and good, even though we enjoy the topic, it's just not doing it for us. We'll go and find something else that'll stimulate our brain for a minute and just apply that to our work ethic. If I'm not seeing fruit immediately from what I'm doing, this meant this must not be worth it. Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh it's just I'd I'd rather find something else that's more uniquely stimulating. Well, it's like, well, you're not, you're not uh in in the in the words of The Rock, you're not tired, you're uninspired. And and I'm not saying you should be inspired by lights and you know, watching the next Avatar movie, and that man, that really did it for me, which is another thing with movies, Tim. Everything's explosions now and CGI and absolutely no depth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's all so.
SPEAKER_01:Like it is really hard to make a movie with that has rich dialogue and like a good storyline and developed characters without people getting really bored and annoyed by it and just feeling like it's some philosophical mumbo jumbo. But that's actually that's actually the best stuff. Is like where you have uh, you know, something of substance and not just more explosions in your brain saying, yeah, shiny colors. Um, it's it should be concerning to us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But if we take that same mentality, that ADD that we're training our brains to have, um, and we apply that to our work ethic, we end up with the culture that we have today where most people are bitter about their work, they're bitter at their employers or employees, they're frustrated about their circumstances, they're not looking for a job that they enjoy doing, they're just looking for more money, hoping to get out of the need to, you know, to ultimately do work. Um, and it's it's it's ultimately it's a kind of rebellion against God. And and I think that's um the the Bible, the Bible really is a giant picture of people working hard to follow God. And I mean, I don't know if you realize this, but you know, we we brought this up um when I had a podcast with uh Tiffon the other day where I was talking about the idea of peace and how psychological wellness has now become equated with what our idea of peace is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And Jesus had like let's just take the Israelites going through the desert, all right? Was there a lot of psychological wellness? You know what I mean? How many people were out there like, I'm depressed? Why are you depressed? Well, I'm in a desert eating manna, you know what I mean? Like, God is not nearly as interested in your idea of psychological wellness as he is in actual blessing and the promised land and the promises of God and you following him and finding your fulfillment and joy in him, and then that working externally into everything else that you do, which is why uh the Ten Commandments are so important, right? The first table of the law starts with loving God and how you love God, and then the second table of the law is how that then flows out into everything else that you're doing. Well, if you love Jesus, your workplace becomes an opportunity. If you love Jesus, your life now becomes an opportunity. Uh, if you love the Lord, your relationships are now an opportunity for something more than just the the mundane that people are involved with to become something great. And um man, I'm I'm in the middle of planting a church right now, Tim. Yeah. Ask me if it's a lot of work. Is it a lot of work? Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, it's it's a ton of work. When do you start doing that exactly? Um when do you start doing work?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, when it is a little bit more than a lot of things. Listen, I I love you, but yeah, I don't know if we can keep going. I don't know. The uh the thing that God has called us to do is usually not an easy thing, and it usually takes more time than you want, and there's usually more hiccups involved than you think there's gonna be, and it is the glory uh of God that men would work uh that men would work with their hands and their hearts in full allegiance to Jesus and get to see things actually built in their lifetime. Yeah. And this verse where he's saying, Whatever you do, don't work for men, work like you're working for God. Well, what does that mean? Okay, I have a king, I believe providentially that he has placed me here at this time and this place with these abilities. Do it, do it well. You know, show yourself worthy. A word uh a worker is worthy of his wages. The the garden produces fruit for those who will work the ground, and then you get to see the fruit of your doing uh if you actually put that work in and see those things happen. And how many people quit way before uh they get to see fruit because they're just not satisfied? You know, how many people quit on really good endeavors and good things that they're supposed to do just because they didn't, you know, they they weren't enjoying themselves enough or it's just not working out the way that I thought it was gonna work out. No, like like keep working, like keep keep doing what you're supposed to be doing. And I'm not saying that means if I'm in a job that's a dead end job and it's miserable and literally I can't even support my family, well, just work harder. I'm I'm not saying that, but it it might be that laziness is keeping you from adding something else that can become something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like I'm a fan of telling young guys, especially, Tim, look, find bridges, not band-aids. All right. So if you have a job and you don't think it's a long-term solution, don't quit the job and then just find another job, and maybe it will work out. Work at the job that you're at, do a good job, work like you're working for the Lord, and then in your extra time that you have, start building something else in the process that you'll be able to transition to over later on if you want to. Now, we called things like, you know, side hustles now and things, which is just this is the thing I do on the side. You should. You should do some other stuff on the side if you can. You should you should have things that you're working on and not just I'm in a job that I don't like, and then the rest of my time goes to me sitting and scrolling or doing nothing.
SPEAKER_00:One of the podcasts we did was uh opportunity favors they're prepared.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah, I that's one of my favorites we did because to me that's that's work ethic. You know, are you prepared for the opportunity of what you're looking for? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because because luck, luck is is is rarely a thing. We look at people and we assume it's luck, but actually it was years and years and years of study and hard work that suddenly put somebody on the map. Yeah. Um, I think about this with guys like uh Jordan Peterson, you know, he he he exploded out of nowhere and suddenly, you know, everybody is listening to the guy. Well, it was you know, 30 years of studying and books and papers and work with people and everything else. And then he says an idea that he has in an environment where he has an opportunity to say it to more people, and it seems like some revolutionary, crazy thing that he's done. No, this has just been his life work, right? This is the area that he's been involved with. And uh, I think um I think somebody who will work hard, you get to you get to see some pretty amazing things work. It I'm trying to think which proverb it says, but if you see a man skilled in his work, he'll stand before kinks, right? And and I think there's a there's a real truth there. Yeah, like if you're willing to work and become great at great at what you're doing, think through how to make it better. Don't just do the bare minimum all the time. If you're doing that, what you're ultimately saying is I'm bringing my bare minimum to God every single day because I'm more interested in spending on, you know, spending time with myself. Right. Well, it's uh just Mia Maya, right?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, he clear example of what you just said.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. He's got a burden in his guts, and it leads him to go do something that nobody else would have thought of doing at that time. They would have felt like it was a terrible idea and it would have worked out, and he gave his he gave his life to it. Well, all he was was a cupbearer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but he was as far as job titles go, it's like, ooh, that's exciting stuff.
SPEAKER_01:But serving kings is he was serving kings, but also to be a cupbearer for the king, like you know how faithful you had to be to get into that circumstance, right? Like where you're the guy that's in front of the king and you're you're in charge of making sure that his table is set and he's not getting poisoned and everything going right. Like you're his you're his sidekick. Yeah. And how is it that a Jewish guy ends up in a Babylonian kingdom in that kind of position? Then I I would just say work ethic has a lot to do with it. He was already working hard and being excellent at what he was doing in the position that he was at, and that gave him the opportunity to do the thing that God uniquely called him to do. Um, when I think about work ethic from a biblical perspective, though, Tim, I think of Joseph before I think of anybody else. Whether that guy was in Potiphar's house, just sold into slavery, he's not sulking, he's not a victim, he's not looking to do the least he can or find a way to murder Potiphar because he can't believe that this has happened to him, he makes it flourish. He he makes that place um something that he himself is able to run and work hard at and do to the point where he is literally like the second in the guy's entire household running everything. Right. Then something else terrible happens to him. And what does he do? He takes the gifts and abilities that he has and he takes them with him into a prison and begins to do the same thing until literally he is running the prison. Christian, you should have that mentality that wherever I go, what I put my hands on, at some point I want to be able to run this thing so efficiently that that my enemies would be able to leave it in my care because they know I am that diligent and that honoring uh that that honorable of a man that I can continue to do what God has called me to do. Yeah. And then he gets betrayed again uh when he has the opportunity to get out. The guy doesn't say anything to the king, and he's there. Uh longer, and then finally somebody remembers him later on, and at some point he's he's running the kingdom again, right? Right. But I think um something that stops hard work, Tim, is I mean, it's just sin. And I I've talked about this before, like, action trumps fear. Action also trumps bitterness. Bitterness gets you to stop doing what you're supposed to be doing. Anger usually makes you stop doing what you're supposed to be doing. Uh unforgiveness makes you stop loving the people that you're supposed to be loving. Like all of these sinful ideas kill the motion in the thing that God is trying to build through you and with you. And I think if you're not willing to consider that hard work is supposed to trump my opinions about what I want to put work into right now, you would see a lot more success and victory and harvest more fruit in the garden that God has put you in. But you know what I'm talking about? Like, Tim, you ever just you ever get bitter at something and you just walk away from something good because you get jaded? Yeah, yeah. You know? Um, and and I think that's look, it's it's not right. Like the idea is if God has called you to something, I'm gonna do it. Wherever you go, there you are. And if you stop being who God has called you to be, it's no longer the circumstance that's the problem. You have been defeated. The inner man has lost the fight far before the external man did.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was uh he just reminded me of this actually. I've been emailing back and forth with a listener of ours, and he used to work at the church, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and he was telling me how he always chased titles in his job. Like that mattered to him, and I I get that 100%. And he said eventually he got to the point where he's like, I it mattered more on how I did my job than what it meant. Yeah. And that always stuck with me. Like, yeah, yeah. That's it. You know, it matters more of how I do my job than what the job means, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Or or another way to say it would be it matters more uh how God perceived the work that I did than how everybody else did. You know, and and scripture is pretty clear that either you're gonna get your thanks uh both from God or you're gonna get your thanks from people, but it actually won't be both. This is why he says when you when you give, don't you're don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Don't give in front of everyone else, because it because if you give in front of everyone else, oh well then ultimately uh that's your reward. Yeah. But what you do in secret, how you work for God, the little things that you refuse to compromise on, the little things that you do in faithfulness, God rewards those people because he ultimately sees what they're doing when nobody else does. Nobody knew what Joseph was doing in a prison. Nobody cared about that. Nothing, you know what I mean? Like nobody is in a prison, like you know, thinking, man, I'm can't wait to share this next reel. You know, like that's that's not a thing. And normally what rules in in prisons and situations like that is bitterness and frustration and a jaded feeling that keeps people from doing what they're supposed to be doing, unless they've learned through uh discipline how to harness that inner person, how to harness who you fully are in your guts, and then continue to do what you're supposed to be doing, yeah, uh, to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna actually kind of bring that up too, like certain habits that we probably have that we don't realize we have, or addictions that we might not call a problem, but get in the way too, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I think um all of it is just maybe a better word is just distraction, right? Yeah. I think uh I think there's a um there's a myriad of distractions in our life that are supposed to keep us from doing things that are actually solid. Look, one of my favorite um one of my favorite authors is a guy named Rushdoney, and he's got uh these three he he is a ton of literature he's written, but his books, The Institutes of Biblical Law, are fantastic, fantastic books, big old fat, meaty books. And in the the the beginning of his third book, he says, after I don't know, what does he say? After 90 years or whatever of working on this particular topic, or maybe it's maybe it's 70 years of working on this particular topic, alas, I have so much more to say that I would like to say, but I no longer have the ability to say it. Like he's he's like, I'm I'm communicating everything that I can. I have put so much work into this, and there's so much more I could do, but I'm running out of time. You know what I mean? Like I've I've put a and man, I hope that I hope that is our lives. The at the end of it, we would be able to look back on mountains of hard work that you've put in that other people are able to benefit from and grow with. And and I mean, Tim, I think we forget like how amazing it is that you can just look stuff up on the internet now, right? And and glean from work that other people did. We have so many internet warriors now who are getting into arguments with people, not with things that they actually know, but impromptu research on Wikipedia. You know what I mean? And then I can go back and give this great comeback for what I'm saying or whatever. And it's not it's not education.
SPEAKER_00:People do that with theology too, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not, it's not actual education or life or like real study that you did in those fields. It's I'm gonna go find somebody at the click of a button who has studied this, whether I know this person's life, their work, whatever they did, and I'll just use this and call it research and post it on this thing or whatever. And it's like, man, this is this not only are you neglecting the reality of what that person was trying to do with their own research and what they were building from, but you're you're treating it like this is a trivial thing, which you know, obviously anybody can get their hands on at any time, and you know, it didn't cost anything. And if it doesn't cost you anything, it's not it's not work. You're you're you're taking the fruit from somebody else's field and using it, which is why things like plagiarism are a problem. This is why people stealing music is a problem, this is why um that is such an issue. It's when somebody else puts a ton of hard work into building something and then you go and take it and use it as if it's yours and you didn't work for it. Now that like intellectual property is it's a real thing.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's ecclesiastic, is what you just said. Yeah. It's meaningless. It's vapor. There's a verse that's like you will toil under the sun the rest of your life, and those who did not earn it will reap the reward of it or the benefit of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And that's not ultimately um what God has called us to do. I mean, the whole Marxist ideology, Tim, really denies the mandate in Genesis. This whole idea that you work and you get the fruit of the ground. Like you in the in that beginning statement, you have property, you have work, and you have, you know, income for the work that you're doing. And when we have people coming in saying, yeah, but you know, this ground, this land, this stuff, other people should get this because they're less this, that that is not a that's not a biblical principle at all. God in in creation and giving man uh dominion and giving him identity, gave him land, gave him property, and gave him the gift of hard work. In fact, the original statement isn't uh um life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it was life, liberty, and the and property. It was literally like you're allowed to have these things and work them because in creation itself, God gave those things to mankind as a gift and and a and a and a job that he was supposed to work and do something with. Wow. And um I I get that there can be corruption and people can do all kinds of shady things and make wealth in ungodly ways, and I'm not again I'm not going down that wormhole, but God has given us those things, and I think Christians from the beginning, and even if you just read through scripture, man, they weren't doing nothing uh in the space between the pages. You know what I mean? These guys were building kingdoms, they were working, you know, hard, they were fighting off enemies, they were loving their families, they were honoring their fathers, they were building civilizations. And um it's just one of those things that frustrates me when you have all these um these all these people who hate Christianity, all these people who hate Christian thought, and it's like, do you realize uh Christian thought is what built the Western world? Do you realize like these ideas, they're not, they're not trivial ideas that should be mocked. They literally built society in the Western world, and one of the most, you know, powerful uh countries and a set of countries that's ever existed in all of mankind, in a in a way where we're actually able to have some semblance of peace, less and less now as we're seeing Christian framework melt away. But Christianity built the Western world as we know it. The the morality, the work ethic that we see, the desire to build and create and be entrepreneurial and do something more and rise out of the dust and and take dominion, those are deeply Christian values. And um, the more we hate the world that we live in, the more we get caught up in other kinds of philosophies, the more we disdain work and we see it as something that is uh unhelpful and unfruitful. And and I would say no, work is a good thing. But uh I again I would throw this out there, Tim. I do think a lot of people are in a mentality where they're not building something for themselves, they become a cog and a machine. And I would say uh civilization has become in a lot of ways a giant mechanical machine where you can you end up being a cog and a machine without the ability to build something for yourself in a lot of ways. And I think as Christians, we should want to buy land. I think we should want to own our own businesses, I think we should want to own things for ourselves and build things for ourselves so that we're not just constantly contributing to something that um that has nothing to do with our family or our heritage or anything that we're handing off. And uh there's um there's some difficulty there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. Do you have any uh I don't know, I guess. Um what is the word I'm thinking of, man? It's a good word, I bet. It's not is it punct punct punctilious? Any helpful things for uh God, dude, it's on the tip of my brain.
SPEAKER_01:Like habits?
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Jeez, like like unique habits for work ethic?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Like wake up at six and go on a run and then drink coffee and then read the Bible and then go to work and then so one that I brought up a lot is don't ever waste inspiration.
SPEAKER_01:It's one of my favorite things to tell people. If you have a moment where God gives you a really cool idea or you're inspired to get some work done, I don't care if it's two in the morning, just do it. Because you don't always have inspiration, but you will always have work to do. So if you have time or it's in your guts to start something, or you have an idea of something that you want to begin, just do it. Just just start doing it. Don't waste the opportunity to begin something. And then follow it up with this finish things that you start. That's a good idea. Okay, so inspiration will help you start things. Discipline is what will see it through to the end. And a lot of people have a lot of inspiration and they'll continue to come up with new ideas and cool things, but never have the ability to do anything with it. And they end up discouraged because other people will end up getting to those ideas and things as well, and then having the discipline to finish it, and then they'll sit back bitter, frustrated, like I had the idea first. Right, but you didn't work for that fruit. Right. It was a cool idea. You had the field, you just didn't do anything with it. And discipline, man, discipline is is uh obviously it's it's it's one of the fruit of the spirit, right? Self-discipline. You have to be willing to be faithful, and that is the word I'm gonna use for it. Faithfulness is continued repetition in the same direction over long periods of time that produces a reward. God rewards those who are faithful, God rewards those who are self-disciplined. Can you get yourself to do things that are hard? Can it is there something greater in your life than just your desire for selfishness and comfort? Is there something more that you're fighting for in your life? Do you believe that God has called you to build something and to work the land and to grow things and build kingdoms? Do you believe that it is part of your responsibility, Christian, to bring about the kingdom that God has said will happen? Do you believe that it's part of your responsibility to share the gospel? Do you believe it's part of your responsibility to create businesses and create opportunities for other people? Do you believe that that's part of your responsibility, or is your life only about just you all the time? And um, Ian Rand's book, Atlas Shrugged, is actually pretty fascinating on this particular topic because she makes the point that people who have unique ideas and work really hard at those things are almost always prey for weak people who just want to collect on what somebody else did. And it's it's it's a it's a it's a fair point when people are let's say leeches. But in a lot of ways, I would say when you create good things, it creates more good things and more people are able to take those good things that you did and do even more cool things with it. But it takes somebody who is one, inspired, and then two, was willing to finish the job that they set out to do. And if you will be inspired, find inspiration, take time to work at that, uh, you will end and finish what you're called to do. You're gonna see fruit from it. Now, if you are uninspired in general, I would say there's probably something in your heart that is keeping you from faithfulness. So I would say I would be looking for what am I mad about? What am I bitter about, and what is what am I pushing down that I was called to do and feel passionate about that I'm not doing to spite the the system or the thing that I'm frustrated with. God will use where you are and and turn the chaos into a garden if you are willing to allow him to use your hands and feet and mind to do so. And uh, I'm not saying everything will always turn out the way that you want all the time, but I will say this no matter what you're working on, and even if something failed and didn't go exactly the way that you thought it was going to go, God isn't wasting any of the character that you developed during that time, the skills that you developed during that time, or the, let's say, the um the connections or whatever other resources you may incur while you are in that process. Like I brought this up on the uh podcast, I think before Tim, but there's so many things in my life where I was like, nobody's ever gonna ask me about this. And um, oh, now I'm writing this whole thing and I got to teach on this thing for these people. And it's so interesting because now uh half of this is gonna be about the the difference between diothelitism and monothelitism. And no, I don't think anybody would ever ask me about that in a million years. And guess what? I have to teach 35 pastors about this topic because this question came up. God's not gonna waste it. So the work that you put in and the things that you do, even if all of it isn't um, even if what you start in the prison um isn't where you end, all the gifts and abilities and dedication you put into that prison will come with you where you go to the next place and begin to help you where you're at. This is why uh I want to tell I should be careful like I said, I want to tell some of the young whipper snappers out there, if you're working a job and you know it's not where you're gonna land, work hard, build something there and grow as much as you can. I don't care if your boss sucks and you can't stand him, I don't care if it pays less than you wanted to, what are you learning? Your wealth when the money is less than you want, is primarily in what you're going to glean and grow and learn from those situations. And even when I was back in uh kitchens, Tim, doing like kitchen stuff, I always worked and got all of my work done ahead of time. And then I would go make my chef give me other stuff to do so that I could learn new recipes and new things and try other things that other people didn't get to do. But it's hard work that gets you to the place where you get to learn extra. Yeah. But if you're only doing and you're stretching out that time to fit whatever it is that you have, you're not growing, you're just checking a box, and I don't think that honors God. Nice, nice.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thanks, man. Thanks for this conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, dude. I um I think one other thing that I would want to tell people as they're processing through this idea of work. Um, it's a good thing to sweat. It's okay to have late nights. It's okay to have to work up, you know, wake up early. It's okay to to carry an amount of stress because you're trying to do something that matters. I actually think um in in some ways, and I want to be careful because like people could get at me about the language, but I I would say um uh stress and sweat and loss of sleep over things that matter, honor God. They do. Those aren't those aren't things that don't matter. That that's actually what gives them the value, is it wasn't just that you did something that was easy and checked a box, it's that you gave of yourself to see something more happen than just what you had going on at the moment. You you are um I'm trying to think who said it, but he said that the glory of God is a man fully alive. And what that means is operating with all of his faculties and ability to use what he's been given to build something for the kingdom. And um, we're down here working on building King's Banner and getting this thing off the ground. And um, in a lot of ways, Tim, it feels like I'm back on the ground floor, you know, of what I was doing before, where I got 10 guys around a table and we're getting into a study there, and I'm filling my house, you know, with people as we're gathering and I'm back to cooking all the time and making food and because this is what we're doing. I'm getting to use all the skills that I learned in my past to help me build the thing that God is calling me to now. And I'm eager to see the reward when that happens, but there's a great contentment in just doing work by itself and knowing that progress honors God and it is worship. And if I keep my heart in a good place and use who He has made me to be, um, there's fruit in that. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks, man. Cool, right on, buddy. Hey, I love you, man. And um, for you guys that uh are listening to the podcast, I would say, man, follow it, send it to somebody if you can. Um, let people know there's good stuff going on, and uh, we want to encourage as many people as we can. And as always, we're we literally pray for you guys at the beginning of our podcast and just want you to know we love you, we care about you. And uh I pray that these things would help you navigate your Christian life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, awesome. All right, guys.
SPEAKER_01:Catch you all next time. All right, have a great week, everybody.
