Work | Part 1

Proverbs 16:3 | Part 1 | Do you feel frustrated in your work? Maybe you've lost motivation, you cut corners, or go in each day with a negative attitude. What would it look like to worship God at our jobs?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

How would your job change if that was just a daily prayer? I'm committing. I'm committing my work to you. Do you actively, I would even say daily, commit your work to God?

SPEAKER_02 0:19

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. Junior's the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland. And today we're talking about work. And I think a lot of people are already feeling this one because work can be a grind. Yeah, projects, deadlines, bosses, problems, people, headaches. Sometimes those headaches are people. And it is really easy to start thinking, well, you know what? This is just what I have to do in order to get the paycheck. But what if there's more to it than that? What if the place you show up to every day actually matters more than you think? Today we're going to see how Proverbs reframes work in a way that might completely change how you walk into it tomorrow. Wherever you are, thanks for joining us. Now here's Junior.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

He sat on the other side of my desk, burying his soul about his work, his incompetent boss, and his lazy coworkers, and his the rough schedule that he has, his dissatisfaction, general dissatisfaction with just his responsibilities. And and he said, and I had to smile because I get it. He said, Junior, I don't know why I'm telling you this. Because I'm not sure you can help. You're a pastor. You work like what? Two days a week? And I actually get that comment quite a bit. It's like, what do you do for work? You just like show up on weekends and read from a book and then you get paid? And I always say, like, yeah, it's awesome. It's like, it's a great gig. No, there's roughly 50 staff with our church and thousands of volunteers and training and counseling and people drama and processes, not to mention speaking. I love what Andy Stanley said about preaching. He said, preaching is like, imagine you have a 20-page term paper. It must be well researched, multiple sources, and you have to present your paper publicly in front of your friends and your family and strangers and critics. Your paper must be relevant to people, people who've been around for decades, uh, but also people who are just who are just coming, men, women, young, old. It must address the the entire spectrum. It can't be too boring. It has to be applicable. You'll be critiqued and misquoted. So make sure that your you know your wording is very careful. Oh, and you have to do this every single weekend. Now I can't wing that. Maybe some guys can. I can't. And I'm totally not trying to get you to feel bad for me. I love it. And usually I say this because for a pastor to get up here and talk about work, it seems irrelevant. Like, what does a pastor have to say about my career, my job, my office? And I guess we'll see. But I don't know if this helps. This has not been my only job. I've had many. In fact, I remember my first job, I was 14 years old, got a job at a local grocery store. I still remember like the outfit that I wore to my interview because I had to think it through because I really wanted, I really wanted this job. The interview was on a Wednesday. Um, and and uh actually I was at the grocery store last week, but started out stacking soup, 515 an hour, made it big when I got promoted to cashier, and I got a massive raise to 525 an hour. I was on my way to the penthouse suite. Two years later, so I worked at the grocery store for two years. Two years later, when I turned 16, had driver's license in hand, and I left the grocery store to work at an auto body shop, taking used cars and then making getting them ready for a used car lot. And I liked that job, did not like who I got to work with, though. It was a very shady crew, roughnecks, burnouts, fights in the parking lot. Learned a lot about how to work with people who are very hard to work with. Then I got a job at a local uh lumberyard, loved the smell of that job, worked on a farm for a bit, found out later after working on that farm for a bit that I could make more money delivering pizza at a place called Pizza Pit, because that sounds really delicious. Pizza, a p a pit of pizza. And so I delivered pizza for a while, big drug scene there. Actually, one night I delivered pizza to a party. A girl opened a door and paid me. And the next morning she was on the news. Her body was found on a country road. She'd overdosed at that party. French just had ditched her. But I did that job for a year, and then I worked doing residential construction for a while, learned how to swing a hammer better. Actually, the the summer that I worked at residential construction, I worked for one of the hardest bosses. Like there was one day we were doing some work on a roof, and I found this massive hornet's nest hanging from like the eaves uh high up on the roof. And so I saw that and like backed up because like it would be terrible if hornets attacked you. You got nowhere to run. You're on top of a roof. But the so the boss saw me kind of back away. He started yelling. He's like, get back to work, and he was swearing away, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, dude, there's a hornet's nest right there. I'm gonna go get some raid or something. I am not making this up. He rolls his eyes, he walks over, grabs the nest with his hands like an animal, and throws it. I was waiting for him to take a bite out of it. Like, who does that? So I worked all summer for him. That was that was not an easy summer. Actually, his boss later on told me after the summer, he said, I put you on that crew as a joke. I thought you'd like not make it more than two days. We all had bets going on, but that was a long summer. And then, no joke, I went from there to Bed Bath and Beyond on Michigan Avenue, putting displays together. Worked doing traffic reporting downtown, then became a janitor here, and and then and then a pastor. And so that's my resume. If anybody is hiring. No, I share that because I I get the gray hairs that come with work. I get the I get the difficult coworkers, I get the dreadful meetings. In fact, I lead some of those dreadful meetings. I get the difficulty in hiring the right people, I get the difficulty in having like very tough bosses, difficult coworkers, the dread and the absolute drain of just going into a toxic work environment, just like sitting in the parking lot and just making yourself walk in, or the sleepless nights of figuring out if and when we should let somebody go, realizing that being a boss is is pretty is pretty awful often. Confronting difficult issues in the workplace to protect the culture of the team. I I get it. But even with all of that, what does it matter what I have to say about work? It really doesn't matter whatever I have to say. What matters is what scripture has to say about your office, your job, your responsibility. Well, as the lens of scripture zooms into Proverbs chapter 16, we find ourselves where we've been all summer, and that is Jerusalem, be about 950-ish BC. And echoing off the palace walls today are the sounds of mallets striking chisels. A periodic limestone construction dust will make its way through the windows, reminding the king that progress is being made in the capital city. Solomon is most known for building the first temple to God, but his resume goes far beyond that. Solomon reconstructed cities and military outposts and trade routes, and so crews on ships and construction sites and roads all throughout the empire. They're busy at work. Solomon peers out his window, glancing at the latest project. Men wipe the sweat from their brow as they chisel designs into the temple courtyard. See what these men may not know is their exhaustion, their sweat, even a little bit of their blood, it's all worship. And not just because they're building the temple of God, but because they're doing what God designed them to do. Work. And deep in thought, Solomon's pen etches these words right here. He writes, Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. Now that's pretty straightforward. Maybe even looking at this at first glance, it's like it seems a little bit simplistic. So much so we can almost miss the power and the conviction in the simplicity. And I don't want to do that. And so let's take Solomon's invite here and just press a little bit more into this. Commit your work to the Lord. What does that actually look like? To many people or most people commit their work to their paycheck. It's very natural to do. You know, you don't want to work for free, so you gotta work, you know, you need a paycheck, you gotta live. But we work for our paycheck, and our paycheck really becomes the main carrot that we're chasing. What gets us out of bed isn't I wanna make a difference in this world. It's not I want to make a difference at my job. It's not I want to honor God with the quality of my work. What gets us out of bed often is like, gotta go to work because I I need a paycheck. And that paycheck, whether it's big or small, it's never a good enough carrot. This is why 80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs. The most miserable people I know are people who at the end of the day, they're just in it for a paycheck. That's it. There's nothing beyond a paycheck that motivates their work. And so they'll spend, that's what's wild to me is we'll spend 50%, if not more, of our waking hours chasing a carrot that's never big enough. You know anyone like that? And maybe this is you. And here, what Solomon is doing is he's calling us beyond the paycheck. He said, No, no, don't don't commit your work to the paycheck. You don't you don't go to work because it come Friday, some digits are gonna hit your bank account. That's miserable. No, you go to work knowing that what you do, how you do it, how you carry yourself, the excellence you bring, the sweat you give, that's your offering to God. And when you can get there, the paycheck, that's just icing on the cake. Point that he's making, number one, is see your work as worship. See your work as worship. Whether it's formal employment, or maybe you're sitting here be like, Junior, I'm retired. Or, you know what, we're doing just fine. I don't need a job right now, I'm not in work. Okay. Volunteering, parenting. God designed you to have responsibilities, so just let's just apply these to your responsibilities. All those responsibilities, whether they're at work, at home, with a family, they're all spiritual. What you produce is your offering to God. And when we we begin to see our work in that way, it changes everything drastically. Now your boss is still gonna be your boss, your coworkers are not gonna turn into this heavenly host of angels, but your entire approach changes. Like, man, I'm not doing this for a paycheck. This is spiritual for me. Here's the thing, I know you don't want to admit this. I never want to admit this. But the vast majority of our issues with our jobs, it's really our approach. Vast majority with the issues of our job, it's our approach to it. So you ever watched uh Dirty Jobs with Mike Ronald's show like a while back? I loved this show. Like all these people, I don't know if you've ever seen the show, but like he basically interviews all these people who they do like really, really gross jobs. And many of them, actually most of them, if not all of them, they're just like super happy people doing these really gross jobs. My favorite episode, I don't know if you saw this episode, my favorite episode was the one with the honeywagon guy, the CEO of the honeywagon guy, which by the way, this truck is not full of honey. I made this mistake in elementary school when the teacher is like, I was maybe second grade, the teacher asks us, like, what do you want to do when you get older? And I said, I want to drive one of those honey wagons. Because I thought they were full of honey. Like, that'd be kind of cool, driving around, like, you know, collecting honey, putting it in your truck. Now, honeywagons are trucks that pump out septic tanks. So it's not honey that is that is in here. But on this one episode, the honeywagon CEO, uh, he's standing in this used septic tank. Imagine that. His job, super crappy, literally. And and he was asked, like, they're in this like tank, this disgusting tank, and he was asked, This has to be the worst job. Why are you smiling right now? How are you so happy? And he said something that I tell our summer camp staff all the time. He said, I just bring my passion to it. See, today everybody's everybody loves to say, like, find what you're passionate about and then do what you're passionate about. That's not what he's doing. He's like, No, I'm gonna find where a need is and I'm gonna bring my passion to that. It's not about finding your passion and then doing that, it's about finding where it's needed and bringing my passion to that's a massive, massive mind shift. So whether it's cleaning out a septic tank or teaching or running numbers or changing diapers, it's all spiritual.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziegler. We'll get back to Junior in a moment. We want to tell you about one of his books, The Manual. If you're a man or raising a man, married to a man, maybe dating a man, there's a lot of confusion around what real manhood actually is. In the manual, Junior cuts through the noise. Both the over-the-top macho stuff and the politically correct definitions, and he gets to the raw core of manhood. He exposes the toxic masculinity for what it really is, not manhood at all. This book is simple, honest, powerful, and it might just change how you view men, strength, and leadership. We'd love to send you a copy of the manual. Just visit juniorziglar.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it to you. That's juniorzi at e G at L E R dot com. Now let's get back to Junior's message.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

There's a guy in our church, he's a new believer, he's a garbage truck driver, and he said, He said, when I started following Jesus, my whole approach to driving a garbage truck changed. I was like, really? He said, Yeah, each house I take garbage from, I pray for it. So instead of like just collecting trash, he sees himself as this person who's going into a neighborhood to bless them by removing their junk and leaving them blessings. His carrot for his job is far more than a paycheck. What would it look like to adopt his approach to your job? You ever notice that we, especially guys, not being sexy, it's just kind of true of us guys, and it is true with women as well, but you get a bunch of guys in a room together, after five minutes, have you ever noticed that we're all gonna know what each other does for work? Have you ever noticed that? And that's fine. I'm not saying that like there's anything wrong with that, but it does go to show that we put a lot of identity in what we do, and that can cause a lot of problems. Because then when the boss corrects our work, oh, we take it very personally because that's part of my identity. Or if the job kind of falls apart, or if the job let us go, it's like this massive deal to us because that well, that's part of my identity. If there's drama or if there's politics at work, it gets all into our headspace because our identity is kind of being threatened. This leads to a lot of misery at work. If work is going great, hey, I'm doing great, cheers. If work is going rough, well, now I'm really struggling, I'm gonna struggle all weekend. Solomon is saying here, forget that. Don't commit your work to a paycheck. Don't commit your work to your own identity, commit your work to God, bring your passion to whatever he's called you to, see it as spiritual. Then all of the little things, the ups and the downs, it just doesn't really get to you. Because whether you're working here or working there, whether you're doing this or doing that, whether you're working with this coworker or that coworker, whether things are great or whether things are bad, your identity is not in your job. Your identity is something far, far greater, and that's who you're working for. And some of us, our biggest issue with our job is that we haven't actually committed our work to the Lord. We like that idea. Maybe we've even heard this verse before, but we've never actually actively committed our work to the Lord. We're just kind of doing it for a paycheck, and our identity is all wrapped up into it, and that is miserable. And I wonder how different our jobs would be, how how different they would look on Monday if on your commute to work, and I hope you remember this, on your commute to work, you're just praying over the day. You're praying over your calendar, you're praying over your task list, and you're committing each to God. God, I have this meeting at nine. May I think your thoughts, may I speak your words. God, I'm teaching this class at 10. God, I have to make this decision today. I want to do what you want to do. I have this project, may I bring you glory in the excellence that I do. Father, I need to reply to this email. May I have grace and truth like you do. God, I'm interviewing three different people today. Will you guide me to the right person that you'd have for this position? You're the boss, I'm not the boss. Just as prayer, active prayer of I'm committing today's work to you. Do you actually intentionally verbally commit your work to the Lord? Because it's then, Solomon writes, it's then that your plans will be established. Now the Hebrew word for plans here is mahashava, which translates as purposes. So one could say like this: commit your work to the Lord, God's gonna give you purpose. That's that's something. Because to me, not much of a worse feeling than doing something. You feel like you have no purpose. Like being in a meeting and you're doing something, you're like, man, this meeting is like such a waste of time. You ever feel that? You ever feel useless doing something? I feel useless all the time. I volunteer at my kids' school and I do I do parking. I don't know what I'm doing. I just stand in the parking lot and I wave at people. And I haven't caused an accident yet, and nobody's corrected me, so I guess I think I'm doing an okay job. But when I stand there, I often think if I walked away right now, nobody would know. Especially in like sub-zero like weather, I'm thinking like, I could, I could get in my truck right now, drive, nobody would care. Nobody would know. I just feel useless. And maybe you feel that way at work. Like, man, this is just kind of useless. I'm just pressing a button. I'm just running numbers. I'm just chasing these monsters, you know, around. And sometimes those feelings can turn into God leading us elsewhere, and that's totally fine. But before that's even a thought, I just got to do something else, before that's even a thought, it's like, no, no, no, commit your work to the Lord now. Maybe it'll change in the all purpose then. Your purpose will be established. I try to apply this verse to uh before I do the parking at my kids' school. I started praying on the way. God, um, I'm waving for you today. I'm just gonna wave for you. I'm not sure if that's doing anything, but if a smile and a wave could brighten the commute of a mom who's had a rough morning or a kid who's just kind of dreading their day, then I'll just wait. In verbalizing, I know this sounds silly, but just verbalizing that prayer changes my whole approach. I just I feel a little bit more purpose standing there now. How would your job change if that was just a daily prayer? I'm committing, I'm committing my work to you. Do you actively, actively, I would even say daily, commit your work to God. See what Solomon is writing here in this text is this is not like some ethereal feeling, you know, of like head knowledge, oh I know, I work for God. No, this is like this active, intentional, I would even argue, verbal commitment. Hey, no, this day, this task, this project, it's all for you. Let's hit some more verses. Uh, two chapters later, Solomon penned this. He said, Whoever slacken his work is a brother to him who destroys. That's really interesting. So the other day I was uh stopped at a train because it's displays, and the girls were the girls were in the back of the truck, and you know, we're just kind of watching the the train cars go by, and they noticed some graffiti on the train cars. And my youngest, she asked, Why would people just ruin things? She said, They took a lot of time to just ruin that car. I was like, I've never thought about it that way. Like, yeah, somebody went out and bought or stole paint and then took some time to paint a car to ruin it. Like, that's that's really lame. Solomon is saying here, bad worker, lazy worker, you're just as bad. Someone who doesn't care about the excellence that they're putting in, the extra effort, they don't care about that. They're not taking pride in their work. They are just as destructive. They get paid to weigh a team down and destroy. It's giving us point number two, and that is work hard. Work hard. And this is where we want to think. So let me just kind of stop our thoughts for a second. This is where we want to think, man, I wish I could bring my coworkers in. I gotta shoot them a text. You gotta be here tomorrow. Okay, point number two is I'm just for you. It's like, man, I wish I could, you know, bring my lazy son-in-law in here to hear this. Okay, all right. But what about you? Are you a hard worker? And don't just, because we're terrible at self-judging. Would others say that you're a hard worker? You have that reputation. Like you're an excellent hard worker. You you you use each minute very wisely, each opportunity you leverage. Like, would a typical work day for you be the sacrifice that is pleasing to God? When I think of this, I like to think of Chick-fil-A. We have a few Chick-fil-A operators in our church. They are doing the Lord's work. I love Chick-fil-A. I love the chicken, I love the sauce. Unpopular opinion, Chick-fil-A ice cream is the best ice cream out there. But more than any of that, I just like the store. You walk in and people like they don't want to kill you. They're they're smiling and and they're they're working hard, and they'll say things like, my pleasure, and somehow I believe them every single time. Like, yeah, it was their pleasure to get me a napkin. That's awesome. And of course, management has a lot to do that with training, but there is this direct link between what scripture teaches, this is what scripture teaches, between hard work and our happiness. People who work hard are happier people. Contrast Chick-fil-A with some other fast food joints that I will not say out loud, but you walk in and the garbage is like overflowing and the cashier looks like they want to kill you because you just walked in and you you interrupted them on their phone. They're like, you know, you order and they're just kind of annoying, is that it? Is that it? All right, is that it? And they take five times longer to get your food. It's like the DMV owns a burger joint. You know, everyone is slow, everyone is angry, because there is this direct link between work ethic and lack of happiness.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. That was part one of Junior's sermon work, part of our proverb series. And that one point alone that Junior said could change everything for you. See your work as worship. Do you think about work like that? Do you actually think when you are heading into the office, when you're walking through those doors, or maybe you're online, you're logging in, do you see everything you do as worship to God and good for your Your community around you. I mean, if you could do just that, it could change everything about your career. Just a picture that you are not just serving your boss. You're not just serving mankind. You're serving God Almighty. As a pastor, Junior and I both, we have had so many people over the years, and they're usually new believers, usually new Christians who come up to us and with great intention in their heart, they usually say, you know what? I think I'm going to quit my job, but I need to quit teaching. I got to quit my business. I got to quit construction. I'm going to quit because I need to go into ministry because that's what good Christians do. They go into ministry. And every time I say, wait, go into ministry. Do you know what ministry is? The word that the Bible uses in Greek, the word ministry, it means service. Are you not serving people by the way you teach? Are you not serving people in your business or in construction? That's the whole point. And maybe your heart wasn't there. And I hopefully this message and juniors pointing out Proverbs to you started to move the needle of your heart to starting to see that everything you do, it can be used as worship to God. This world needs Christian teachers. This world needs Christian businessmen and women, Christian tradesmen who pour themselves into their craft as worship to God and service to their fellow man. If you're listening, maybe this is really hard because you're thinking, I just am not that passionate about my job. If I had a different job, maybe I could be more passionate about it. I I would encourage you to see your work as worship, and then you can start to bring a newfound passion to your work. When you start to see that you are working for the Almighty, everything that you do can change. Well, what an encouragement and inspiration this message was. I pray it changes your work. As always, great to be with you. Can't wait for the next time. Well, you have been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcast. Junior is the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland, and we're so glad that you joined us today. As we told you earlier, we would love to send you a copy of Junior's book, The Manual. Whether you're a man, you're raising a man, married to a man, dating a man, this book cuts through the noise and gets to the raw core of manhood itself. All you have to do is jump on Junior's website, juniorziggler.com, and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it right to you. While you're there, you'll also find great resources like today's message, all of Junior's books and podcasts, plus a link to our church, The Bridge. If you're in the Chicagoland area, we'd love to see you at one of our services. Again, that's juniorziggler.com, junior z-i-e-g L E R dot com. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

The Bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multicampus church in Chicago.