God's Good Work

In “God’s Good Work,” Colossians 3:23–24 frames work and rest as part of God’s calling, not as separate from the spiritual life. From creation to fall, redemption, and restoration, work is shown as originally blessed, now affected by sin, and redeemed through Christ. Because God sees and values even ordinary labor, Christians can approach their work with purpose, gratitude, and faithfulness, doing it for the Lord while also receiving rest as part of God’s good design. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Is this thing on? Yes, look at that. Beautiful technology. Good morning, Elmwood. Good to be here with you. My name is Benjamin Jensen. I get to serve on the leadership team here at Elmwood. I've been here since the inception of the new Elmwood, which is now not new. It's seven, eight years old. And it's great to be here with this with you this morning. It always is, but I get to bring the message today from the Gospels, and uh so excited to dig into the Word with you. Uh before I get started, just to give a way of introduction. Um as mentioned, as you probably know, Pastor John and his family are going on sabbatical for about eight weeks, starting now, starting last week technically. And so for the next eight weeks, we've asked some guest preachers, guest speakers to join us and and preach on these Sundays about the next seven, eight Sundays. I am the first to kick us off. I think the strategy there is that set the bar low. So then uh the next ones, you know, look better. That's great. It's a smart strategy. I appreciate it a lot. Uh, but I'm happy to be here. The series we are working on is called uh On the Heart. And so we were given some freedom to pick a topic that is on our heart that we'd like to share with you as Elmwood, as our as our community of faith here. Uh as we do that, I'm going to actually read the sermon text first and then pray for us. So our sermon text for today is from Colossians 3, verses 23 and 24. Uh, you can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible, the blue Bible's in front of you on page 1793, 1793, Colossians 3. Please listen as I read God's word. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward, it is the Lord Christ that you are serving. Here ends the reading. Uh, as we begin, uh, would you just pray with me? Father, you are so good. In all ways, God, that you are good in this world, in your work and give it to us. By your grace, we are saved, by your grace we are set free to live and work and learn and play. Lord, would you open our hearts and our minds this morning as we look into your word, as we dwell on it, as we think through who you are, and who we are, and what you have called us to do. Give us grace by your spirit and in your name in Jesus. Amen. So, on the heart, see if I get my clicker working here. I think, yes, look at that. There it is. Here's our here's our series, then. And and so what I chose for today, something that is large in my life, and and I will make the argument that it's large in all of our lives, whether we realize it or not, as Christians, as Christians who believe in the Bible, that's who we are as Elmwood, we approach life, we follow Jesus from the scriptures as the word of God. It's not always easy to understand everything in the scriptures, but it is beautiful and it is good, and we in faith trust God in all he says to us and all he calls us to do. And as a kid who grew up in the evangelical church, actually, dad was a pastor in the free church in this same denomination. Um, very blessed to be part of a family that loved the Lord, and it has shaped me immensely as much as anything in my life. Uh, and so I'm so thankful for that. And at the same time, I've noticed over many years that uh the way work has been approached is often divided, is often separated, and sometimes we default into sort of something called a sacred and secular divide. There are things that are holy, there are things that God really, really cares about, and then there's a bunch of other stuff. And you just have to do it. Stuff like our bodies and physicality, stuff like what we do with work in the world. I have to work in order to live, I have to make money, I have to provide, eat to buy food and have a car and drive around and pay for that car when it breaks down, and and I have to go to this place and I have to help my family, etc., etc. But when we when we dig into the word, what we find is that there is no such thing as a sacred and secular divide. All things are from God and through God and to God, and all things are spiritual, and all good things are from God. And that includes our work, our vocation. And so uh, as we as we read here, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. That's what our Colossians text was. So there's a word for career and job, it's called vocation. It's a common word, right? It's a word that's really been used everywhere. And I really actually love this word, vocation, because that the root of vocation is a Latin word, vocare. Vocare is the root word of another word, voice, or vocal, or vocalize, because vocation actually at its heart means calling. And calling implies that we are called by someone. And who is that someone? It's God. God calls us to do not just one thing, but many things. And he equips us with gifts and skills. He empowers us with his spirit to do our work. And so God's good work, work and rest in the Christian life, and it does make sense. Work and rest are a symbiotic relationship. They are in balance with each other or ought to be. And so, as even we think about sending John and his family into a sabbatical season, I wanted to also talk about the other side of this work. And yes, there's gonna be things we'll dig into about work and its goodness and its badness, right? We all know this. Uh, and so we will we will we will sit on that a bit and look through it. One one framework that's really helped me immensely in my Christian life and my theological understanding is a framework like this. It's a way that stitches the story of the Bible together: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. And so I want to take work and rest and just run it through these four stages for us and see if it can be helpful to draw out what God has says about work and who we are and what our calling is now and tomorrow and for the next 10 or 20 or 50 years. So, work and moving through creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. So let's start then, creation, right? Creation and work. Work is blessed. So if you're in the sermon debrief and you got your little cards out, crew, I can see some of you. There you go. Work is blessed. One thing about creation. So we know some things about what the Bible says on creation. Creation is God's goodness made physical right away. The first thing in the Bible is Genesis 1 and 2. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Creation is the raw materials of God's goodness. Now it's interesting. He didn't create houses, he didn't create uh tires, he didn't create uh hamburgers, he created the raw materials of creation. And at the end of that time of creation, uh, what did God create? He created us. Us, people. Almost all cultures have stories about creation. Almost all cultures and religions. If you look it up, it's quite interesting. I'm just gonna run through a few here just to show a little bit of the uniqueness of the Christian story. So, for example, one of the old ancient Babylonian stories is a god named Marduk fights a giant snake, he kills the snake, he cuts the snake open, he puts the snake in the sky, and that is our sky. That's the that's one of the ancient creation myths. Conflict, death. Another one is the Greek story. I don't know if you know the Greek story about Zeus. We know Zeus and the gods, you've heard of all these things, right? Mount Olympus. But actually, where Zeus came from and what they thought about creation was that uh Zeus had a father named Kronos, and he was this Titan, these huge giant, you know, god people, and uh and Kronos was the ruler, and then Kronos was having kids, but Kronos got paranoid because he actually messed with his father, killed his father. He got paranoid, his kids were gonna kill him. So he ate his children. This is the story, this is the Greek creation myth. Except Zeus got rescued by his mother and hidden away. He grew up, he got his got people together, started a war, then he killed his father and freed all the siblings in the belly of his dad that were still alive. And there you go. That's the Greek, and then there's Mount Olympus in the world as we have it. It's uh not only violent and con it's pretty ugly, pretty brutal, it's not exactly like a um a bedtime story for your kids, right? For a number of reasons. Kids killing his dad and all that stuff, so yes, but this is real. And and the reason I bring this up is because these are the creation stories from so many cultures and religions out of conflict and violence and death. But the true creation story from the Bible is that God creates this world out of an overflow of his own goodness. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternity, perfect love for one another. And they didn't need us, they didn't need to be worshipped, but out of their own goodness, they want to they want to share their goodness. God wants to share his goodness with this, with us. And actually, you see the Trinity in creation immediately. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There's our Father, and what's hovering over the waters? Pop quiz, Bible quiz, what's hovering over the waters in creation? The Spirit explicitly said. And how does God make light? He says, He says, speaks, let there be light. So I'm gonna go a little pop quiz. You fast forward a little bit into the New Testament. John chapter 1 in the beginning was who's the word? Jesus. Like Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are right there in the first verses of our Bible. That is important, created out of his own goodness, an overflow, it's divine exuberance. It's like, it's like they've got a rock and roll show and they're like, let's go on the road. This thing is so good, right? That is how our world was created, the true story of creation and of our God, not out of conflict and death, but out of love and goodness. And that matters for us because we were created in the image of a God who is good and loving, and a God who is creative, and therefore we are creators too, which is why to get to a hamburger from the raw materials, it took some time and work. And really, that is what we're called to do in so many ways. Not only hamburgers, I get it. More than that, yes, lots more than that. But the reality is that that's where we come from. We were uniquely created in the image of God. Here's a couple of these verses. God said, God took Adam and Eve, he blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds and the sky and every living creature that moves on the ground. We were called to be like princes and princesses of this world, to be rulers of this world. That was our calling. This is before sin. And there's work there. There's work there. Work is not a result of curse and sin. Work is a result of the goodness of God. God is a worker. Six days he worked, and on the seventh day he rested and saw all that he did, and said it was good and very good. And so we are to follow that design that we are workers. We are called to work just as God works. And in this way it's even clearer. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it. The Garden of Eden was a representation of paradise and of God's kingdom and God dwelling with man and man and woman and humanity perfectly in perfect union, face to face, as it were, and they were called to subdue the earth and to grow the garden. That was the original plan. The original plan, so just to put a point on that, work is our calling, and it is good and it is blessed by God from the very beginning. But, and here is where it becomes, I think, much more real for us in our day and age. We sinned. Adam and Eve sinned. Don't think for a second that you would have done any different. We are part of the same seed of sin. The real sin wasn't actually just disobedience, was that we wanted to be God and not be obedient. We want to be our own gods, and therefore we disobeyed. And so we have creation, fall, redemption, restoration, and now we have the fall. And fall plus work is cursed. Work is cursed. Our calling has not changed, actually. We are still called to work, but now we're separated from that perfect union with God and work is cursed. If for a second um you were like, I hear you talking about work being blessed and perfect, I'm not sure. But if I say work is cursed, I think we're all like, yeah, there you go, right? It is a meme a little bit. I feel like, you know, it's like, yeah, that's that's one I get. I get it. Work is cursed, work is stressful, work is difficult. So the the total corruption of our world is because of sin. All of the breadth of our work. Not everything down deep. There's not bad, only bad things in the world. There are still good things, but everything gets touched by this. Even things like the sun in the sky, as lovely and warm as it is in our summertime in Minnesota, too much sun, not good for us. That's part of the curse of the curse of creation in the world. Why do we work hard and get stressed out? Why do our joints hurt sometimes from working physically? These are all parts of the curse. But there's more than that, too. So I will make your pains and childbearing. So be fruitful and multiply against cursed. We still are gonna be fruitful. But now it's not so easy. This is the part where me as a husband and a man does not make any jokes about birthing children. This is where I just say, I honor you, and it is incredible, and it is harder than anything any man has had to do. Yes. That's not a joke, that's for real. If you've seen childbirth, it is uh it is a mixed process of beauty and and terror. Uh, of you know, it's just it's uh it's really incredible. And and when you ask parents what's the best day of your life, what do they often say? The day my kids were born. Sometimes they say the day I got married too, but that's usually below a ways. It's the day my kids were born. Um, but that's accursed. It's cursed now. It still happens, but it's cursed. And this is a long one, we won't read through all of this. But cursed is the ground. Our work becomes toil. By the sweat of your brow, you will live on this world. You will pull things from the earth. I don't know what it was like exactly in the garden, but there was a kind of abundance that made childbirth and fruitfulness and planting and growing crops and living and made it building things and made it easier. But here we are, it's cursed. That's one, curse one, and then the second part of this one is at the bottom. You will you will eat your food by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since from it you were taking, taken for dust you are, and to dust you will return. That is a curse of death. No longer will we live forever with God in perfection and dwelling with him as the original garden planned had happened with this sin and the fall. Now we die. That's a major part of the curse. We have no trouble understanding then that work is broken, that work is stressful. Let's let's talk about that a little bit. Uh, we see the brokenness in our jobs. Stress, frustration, anxiety, coworkers. I make a mistake. Am I in trouble? Bad bosses, impatient bosses, at least, and um, is my job secure? Will I lose my job? Here's this new thing, crazy thing called AI. Will this take over the world in many ways? Will it also ruin my job? That's real. I experienced that in my own work and what I do, thinking through these things. How does this all work together? Uh envy. Why did that person get a promotion? I didn't. I'm way better than them at my job, and yet they're the ones who got the bump. What happened? Why? Why did they get treated better than I did? Gossip or selfish agendas or lying and lack of integrity. We see this and experience this in our jobs, don't we? And and I will just say, I'm not above it. Like I have found myself gossiping gossiping or complaining about coworkers. Maybe they really it was real, but regardless, I wasn't acting in a Christ-like way sometimes. It gets us and it infects us and it's hard and it's exhausting. That's on personal levels, right? We feel this. Systemically, we see it too. Greed, where profit is more important than people, where some get massively wealthy and others have to struggle all day, every day, just to just to pay their rent or to live with with family, to feed them. We see this in power in the government, abuse of power, misuse of authority, hurting people, bureaucratic corruption, rampant incompetence, and no accountability. What appears, no accountability, no justice. I mean, we feel that in Minnesota, particularly in so many ways, in our last year, of all the things the government has brought to our state, all the things that have happened in our state. I love this state. I grew up here, and it's hard to see. It's heartbreaking to see, and then to see no justice, what appears to be that is the result of the fall of the curse of work, and it is really hard to see it. Um, insurance companies not paying when they should, or lawyers twisting the law for profit, or exploiting people, all of this, right? It's all this massive parts of both individual and systemic ways in which our work is cursed. We feel this as exhausting. It's real, it's real, right? We are exhausted. And then uh this is also seen all broadly. We know this too, even if it's not from a Christian lens, we know there are ways in which people understand that uh that work is a problem. Look at this. The meaningless of work without purpose, I said on this one. Like, I'd like to start each workday by visualizing how my work will make the world a better place. Ah, my life is meaningless and nothing I do will ever matter. Okay, good to get that out of the way early. Classic Dilbert style office cartoons, or the other one about meetings. Meetings. Hey, what's your take on this, Dilbert? What? Sorry I was using this time to think about something useful. I mean, it's it's funny because it's true. The meaningless, the feeling of meaningless in work and wastes of time. But the good news. Jesus came. He brought about a different kind of grace and redemption that's ever been seen in the world before. Creation goodness, lost to the fall, corrupted completely, and now, now Jesus comes and brings a new creation and a new lens for us about what do what are we called to do and what does it mean to work in this world, in big things, in famous things, things that are recognized perhaps, and coming up with new medicines or or or huge cures or innovations. Sure, but the reality is God doesn't care about how big or how big or small it really is. He sees the value in all of it, even in the smallest things, even in the things that you do in your daily life that you are called to, that feel sometimes, especially in America, they feel insignificant, but God sees them and they are not insignificant. And I want to camp here for a moment, because this is where it really changes, where the gospel brings good news to us in our daily lives, in our work and in our rest, that we have good work now and the capability to do it empowered by the Spirit, and we have good rest too, and the ability to rest the right way. The work of Christ. So uh here we go, let's see. This one right there. The work of Christ begins a new creation. It's a big deal. Like we said in John 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The writer, gospel, John, the writer of the gospel, wants us clearly to go back to the beginning of the world of creation. And he's saying, In Jesus, everything has changed. Everything has changed. There is now a new creation, and that includes us and our calling and what we do and all the gifts that God gives us and how we use them in the new creation. We are now empowered again to work in the world in a way that honors God, that also brings joy and peace and satisfaction. Will you be tired? Yes. Tiredness exhaustion does not go away. Will there be people who are jerks to you? Yes. Will you be jerks to other people? Yes. Well, I mean, I will. Maybe not all of you, but the truth is this is real. It doesn't mean that sin is completely gone, but does mean that our whole perspective changes and we are empowered. The world has changed, and now we get to do in the gospel more and better things to see this as work from God. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. And we see God working redemptively in the world all throughout scriptures, right? Just let's do a quick quick flyby. Noah, right? Noah, one of the first big stories of the Bible after the creation and fall account. What does Noah do? He saves humanity. God calls him to do what? To work, to build a big boat. And by the way, it took a hundred years to build it, with people mocking him the whole time. And yet he was faithful and did it. And humanity was saved from the flood, which killed all wickedness. God promised I'll never do that again. But that was one act of work. Think about Abraham and Sarah, the fruitfulness part of this, seeing the curse on fruitfulness, but now we start to see it pushed back again, God's kingdom breaking to the world. I will make you a great people. I will make you the father of nations. They get old and they're like, God forgot about it. But he didn't. He was faithful. And we see that promise coming through Abraham and Sarah. One example I really like is in Exodus 35 and 36. As the Israelites have now been freed from Egypt, as Moses calling to lead them out of bondage, and freed from Egypt, they are called to build a tabernacle, which is a place where God will dwell with them, his spirit actually, and it's sort of like a portable temple. It's a precursor to the permanent temple that will be built in Jerusalem hundreds of years from now. But this tabernacle is called to be built. And he calls the best of the best of all these craftspeople from all of Israel. And it says this, see, the Lord has chosen Bezalel. I don't know if Bezalel's on your like hero's list of the Bible, right? But here he is. Bezalel, son of Yuri, son of Hur, the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, with all kinds of skills. I believe this is the first time in the Bible where the Spirit says it fills someone, like internally. And how does what is what does the spirit give Bezalel? Not visions and prophecies. He gives him skill, knowledge, probably for his whole life, that he's a craftsman that can be a leader of building this temple to honor God in his work. I think that's powerful for us because every single person sitting here, no matter what you think of yourself or not, I want you to hear the truth. God has made you to be who you are, and he loves you in the way he has made you. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect. We know we're all sinners and broken, yes, but he has given you gifts and skills. Some of you are young, and maybe you know a little bit of what you're good at or what you're interested in or what your passions are, and maybe, maybe not yet fully. Some of you are old and you can look back on your life, and more of life is behind you than in front of you. And yet I want you to have hearts that are full of gratitude because God has used you, and it's important that you understand how you were used, that your skills and gifts, whether they felt like that or not, were actually part of God's plan and calling for you, that you have done good things in this world, and in Christ all things are redeemed. And then all of us in the middle, in the middle of careers, the beginning of careers, or going, going, uh, looking back and in our retirements on our careers, they're all blessed by God and the redemption of God. And this is all done through the best, most important work that's ever been done in the world, which is the work of Jesus. The work of Christ, the summit of all of a good creation and new creation, is that Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life and healed the blind and the lame, and he fed the hungry, and he and he was compassionate to the poor, and he fought against injustice, and he spoke truth to power, and he was crucified on a cross for our sins, and he rose again to conquer sin and death. And this is the start of a new age, of the new creation that John was talking about in John 1.1. And that is all hinged on Jesus. And this is made really clear in Ephesians. Ephesians 2.8 says, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. One part about this, it changes our timeline too. Not only in what we do and how we do it, not only in our gifts, it changes our timeline in thinking bigger and longer. No longer do we have to be recognized by the world or make lots of money or lots of recognition and fame about our work, be prestigious. But in fact, if it is God who is our audience and watching us, then we bring ourselves and our work to him and we honor him with that. And so there is a poem that I think is quite lovely from a Christian poet named Wendell Berry. It says, So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord, love the world, work for nothing. Love someone who does not deserve it. Invest in the millennium, a thousand years. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest, practice resurrection. And this is a sequoia tree that I got to see less than two years ago. Probably 150 feet tall or more. Incredible. The arrow there, that's me and Zoe, my daughter. That's how big that thing is. That sequoia. It's incredible. And they live for a thousand years or more. Some sequoias now were saplings when Jesus walked the earth. Plant sequoias. Think about things beyond ourselves and our own lives, knowing that God sees them and is honored by our good work. Another one is this, a cathedral in Cologne, Germany. I think the tallest two-spire cathedral took 600 years to build. Started in the 1200s, ended in the 1800s. Now that is a project that really feels like it hit some building code delays. I'm sure there was lots of stuff that happened to make it last 600 years, but my point here is there were people who worked on this who will never ever even come close to seeing it finished. Was their work worthless? Did their work not honor God because they didn't get to be part of the finish of it? No. Their work was good. And they honored God. And together this beautiful thing happened that is supposed to honor God in what it is. And this is called common grace. Our ability to see all the ways that God works in our world through us. Let me ask you a question. Does I see I see you and I know lots of you out there and the jobs you have or have had or what you want to do? And I have this question: does hammering a nail or making a house square, does that glorify God? Is there any connection to Jesus when a nurse is dressing a wound for the hundredth time in a week? What about a driver who's making his normal deliveries day after day after day? Or the craftsman who's cleaning or flooring, or the preschool teacher who's chasing down cute but snotty little kids and trying to wrangle them? Or uh writing a project brief for a marketing campaign for a new beverage, does that reflect the goodness of God in any way? Does a lawyer filing a will for a family have anything to do with God? Is it spiritual? Or a seventh grade teacher trying to teach kids pre-algebra? God bless you, that is incredible as a task, somewhat miraculous perhaps. And yet, does it honor our creator? Engineers working to make something a few percent more efficient? Does any of this have anything to do with a redemptive story? The answer is yes. All of you have worked and do work and have a role now and will work. And it's important that your heart knows, your mind knows, that God sees what you do, and in Jesus we honor God, we glorify God in everything we do. As 1 Corinthians 10 said, I think we read it last week or two weeks ago: whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Paul wouldn't say that to us if it's impossible. It is within our grasp to honor God in everything we do. Common grace and special grace, it's a category. Special grace is how Jesus saves us, but common grace is another beautiful thing that I will say for me, growing up in the church was not always fully understood. That uh the grace that God gives in all things to us is enjoyable. How do we get milk? Does it float down from heaven? No. This is Martin Luther touched on this, and milkmaids are the ones, these young women who went and milked the cows and brought the milk in. We as Christians, do we have to only drink Christian milk from Christian cows? In a cup that's got John 3.16 on it, so it's a Christian cup too. No. That's God's goodness as common grace to us, and we can enjoy this world and all the common grace that is given to us. God doesn't need our good works. That's true. God doesn't need anything but our neighbors do. And calls us to be workers in this world, not to earn grace, but because we've been given grace that we work. This is a little shot of a global ventilator supply chain. Now you're like, what in the world? Where are we going? But I just want to take a second to say that the way in which this world is made and the way God uses us as creators in this world is quite incredible and quite involved, and there are so many ways in which it happens. This this is actually from a Medtronic uh version of a ventilator, and in it there are 700 parts, over a hundred different touch points or locations, thousands of people involved over a 10-month timeline to be able to bring a device to bear. That's not even counting all the design work that went in at the front end of it in order to help someone breathe better. What does this have to do with you? I think there's a supply chain of grace and goodness of God that we touch, you're part of something. You may not see the full result of all of it all the time, but what you do matters, and your good work in the world matters, and it will be reflected at the final stage: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Restoration plus work, all things are made new, finally and fully. He's be he's starting to make things new now, Jesus is, but all things will be fully made perfect. We dwell and work and rest with God forever. And that is the balance of work and rest reflected here as well. Work for six days and rest on the seventh, and as God has done that, we also follow that rest. And we work and dwell with God forever. And so here is the beauty of all of this that we get to be with God finally again, just like in the garden, but now it's a garden city, and we are, I think, working and resting with God for all of time with no more sin, no more pain, no more joint pain, no more gossip, no more, no more jealousy or envy or stress or tiredness. But we still work. And I think it's a beautiful thing to help us understand what we're doing in this world and how God loves us and uses us. And so, just a couple questions here to close. Do I see my work and my rest as part of God's calling? You're like I'm serving someone coffee. That's not a spiritual estate. It is. It is, it's beautiful. It's a real thing that God is honored by, especially when you do it as a Christian with your heart to God. Am I balanced in my work and rest? Am I working for my identity? Or am I running from something? If I could do anything with devoted time and energy, what would I do? That's a challenging one. Something to think about. About calling. Am I in the right place? Maybe God's moving you somewhere to do something else. And who is the primary audience of my work? It is God above. And so uh now I want to actually take a moment here because uh as we send the Strombergs out into the sabbatical, uh, I'm gonna ask them to come on up, the Stromberg family, and um, we want to take a moment as we thought about work and rest and through the gospel of how good God is to us and how he empowers our work. Um, and I'm also gonna call the leadership council up, please. Would you come and join us at the front? We're gonna take a moment here in light of good work and of rest, and we're gonna pray for the Strombergs as we send them out onto their sabbatical. So uh just wanna say that uh we absolutely are so thankful for you, Strombergs. We love you so much, and we shape our lives by the design that God has given us in the Bible, which is work and rest, which is which is Sabbath involved. And so that is why we are so thankful we get to send out John and family. And so um I'm gonna ask Chad to pray for them. Would you all pray with us as we pray to bless the Stromburgs?

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Father in heaven, we are so grateful that you are faithful. God, you have been so good to us and this entire church family. And a big part of that, Father, is your faithfulness expressed through the Strombergs. Father, we thank you for this faithful family who love you, who desire to serve you, and have served us faithfully for many years. Father, as we send them out to rest, we thank you that good work and good rest were your idea from the very beginning. And God, we pray that this time of rest and renewal would bless them, would bring their family together in a stronger way to glorify you, would refresh their spirit and their heart and their mind and their body as they rest from the good work that you have for them to do, God. We pray that as they come back, they would come back refreshed as people desire us to serve you all over again. And Father, as we send them out to take a break, we pray that you would raise up the Elmwood family to faithfully carry on the torch in their absence. And Father, we pray that you would bring them back with a new heart and a new love for you and for your people. Father, bless them in Jesus' name. Bless the work of their hands, and bless their efforts. For Father, you are the one that redeems our work and makes it fruitful. So we pray that you would do that in and through the Strombergs in the next several weeks, that you would bless their rest, multiply it, strengthen them, renew them, and bring them back ready to serve and to glorify you all over again in Jesus' name. Amen.