Work | Part 2

Proverbs 16:3 | Part 2 | 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?

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You feel so controlled by all these outside circumstances. Ah, the boss is terrible. Co-workers are idiots. My job is terrible. Like, well, you're not even trying anymore. You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, Junior's elite teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland, and we are picking back up the conversation that we started in Proverbs about work. And this week is where things get really practical. Because it's one thing to say, work is worship to God, which is entirely true. But it's another thing to ask, what does that actually look like on Monday morning when you're tired? When the environment isn't great, when the motivation just isn't there? What does it look like for you to bring your best? Or to grow in your skill? Or to choose your attitude instead of letting your circumstances choose it for you? And maybe even more than that, how do you actually find joy in what you do? Instead of just looking at the clock, counting down the hours until you're done, what does it look like for you to actually make the most and bring the most impact in this world to what you're doing? That's where we're headed today. We're going to unpack what it really means to work in a way that honors God and how that can actually change your experience of work from the inside out. Wherever you are, buckle up. Thanks for joining us. Now here's Junior. 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 and 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, if 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 at 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 is slacking 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 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 workday 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, it's 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 her 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 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. Up at our camp, I've been up living up at our camp all summer, and we have amazing, incredible summer staff. I mean, I've been just so proud of they're just awesome. And I love each and every one of them. They've been great. But there are some that are just like insane work animals, like work horses. And I've noticed this every single summer. The ones who are happy are just the harder workers. They're the ones working their tail off because that's how we were designed. Happy people work hard. I can't remember the Vince Lombardi quote, and I know it's dangerous to vote to quote Vince Lombardi in Bears Country, but he had said something along the lines of there is no better feeling for a man than laying out on the battlefield totally exhausted, yet victorious. And some of you know that feeling, don't you? Like you just hit work so hard, so hard, and then you sit on the couch and you're like, oh, what a great feeling. There's something to that. Solomon wrote in chapter 16, he wrote, the soul of a sluggard craves and gets nothing. They never get that feeling, while the soul of the diligent, richly supplied. Lazy people are dissatisfied, generally unhappy, hard workers are satisfied. Which side of this verse do you fall on at your job? If your coworkers, if your boss was to answer that, what would they say? Where do you land? Do you attack your responsibilities and reap the joy from them? Or do you run from your responsibilities, skirt your responsibilities, cut some corners, and reap misery from it? Solomon has more for us. Proverbs 22, verse 29. It says, Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men. Actually, this is not just in Proverbs. In Exodus, uh, Moses writes about a blue-collar tradesman. I can't remember his name, but he's a blue-collar tradesman who uh scripture says God had filled him with his spirit, with skill. That's a cool thought. You got like a metal worker just filled with God's spirit because with skill. There's this link between being filled with God and doing good work. Part of committing your work to the Lord is craft your skill. Craft your skill. God gave you a skill, God gave you a talent, something you offer to the world around you, something you offer to your team. This is how you best worship by using that skill. And so craft it. God gave you a skill for you to steward, grow, craft, and leverage. Like one of the things that we repeat on Bridge Staff over and over and over. It's probably the one of the things we repeat the most is excellence honors God and inspires people. You think about it, you see something or someone that's excellent, something kind of stirs in us. That's why we'll pay money to go to a museum. You just see the excellence of the display that stirs in us. Or you'll pay money to go see a professional sports game, or you'll pay money to go see a concert, or you pay money to go to like a play on Broadway or something, because you get to see people who've like they've crafted their skill and you leave inspired. Excellence stirs something in us. In fact, this weekend we have a uh we have a team from the bridge that is leaving for Siguette Peque, Honduras. In fact, my wife is one of them. Uh, they're headed to the Just One Center. In fact, I believe they're watching online right now. And so hello guys. I hope you guys are doing all right. But uh Maddie, who who works with me, runs Just One International, and I'm on the board with her. And when this building, when this building was being designed, it was a really, really big conversation because we wanted this building to not just look nice, but to look excellent. Like as you, as you look at this, the the roof was designed to look like an open book. At night, this thing just glows on top of a hill. Like beautiful views, string lights off the patio. Uh, inside is bright and sleek, and and there's art and there's coffee shop, there's just like beautiful tile inside the building. Like we wanted this building to stand out and to pop and sig with the peque, to be the pride of the neighborhood. Why? Because just one likes to flex? Hey, look who we are. We're no, no, of course not. Because the students that walk into this building, many of them, they're the first in their family to go to high school. They live on dirt floors. They left a dirt floor to come to this building. They have no running water at home. We want them as they come to this building to be inspired for something to stir in them, that they're they're worth a nice place to work. We want the excellence of this building to stir something in them, to reach more for their life. So that so actually during the building project, there was like no cutting corners, just top-notch anything. We recruited the most skillful craftsmen in our church, and we took them down to Sikwitapeke to go and build this thing, to make it this place look excellent. And today it's not just the pride of the students that come here, it's the pride of the neighborhood. It's the it's the pride of the whole, I mean, really the whole city, because excellence is inspiring. What about you? When you work, when people say, no, that are people inspired by the excellence that you bring? Do you daily bring excellence to your tasks? Or are you kind of okay with just, we'll cut some corners, kind of phone some of these things in? Do you find yourself saying that's good enough quite a bit? Like when's the last time? Here's a good question. When's the last time you intentionally try to get better at what you do? I feel like in the tw in our 20s, maybe even in our 30s, we're really working at getting better at what we're doing. And then at some point we kind of feel like we peak. We're like, yeah, no, this is good enough. I think I can make a living here. And we just never stop crafting our skill. That's not okay. We will answer for the skill that God gave us. Another verse. Solomon also wrote this. It's not in Proverbs, it's in Ecclesiastes, but Solomon wrote it. He said, There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. Find enjoyment in his toil. This all also I saw that's from the hand of God. Now that seems like an oxymoron. Find enjoyment in unenjoyable things. Solomon is saying, you better make your work fun. Stop allowing outside circumstances to dictate whether you like your job or not. Just go make it fun. Find enjoyment in it. Make it fun. Make it fun. Like, oh Junior, you should totally go to my office. You should visit the factory I'm at. Well, God has you there for a reason. And this is one of those reasons. Go make it fun. 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 juniorzir.com. Now let's get back to Junior's message. Years ago, there was a study done where they placed a pike, a bigger fish. It's like my favorite fish to catch up at our camp. Pike was placed in a tank with all these little minnows. But there's this glass barrier between them, between the pike and the minnows. And at first the pike would keep on ramming into the glass, trying to eat the minnows, but after a while it realized it couldn't enjoy minnows, and so it just stopped even trying. Then they removed the glass barrier, they lifted it out, and then the minnows and the pike swam together. Pike didn't even try eating them. The pike felt so controlled by outside circumstances, he just gave effort of trying to satisfy himself. Like dinner is right there, but he didn't take it. Some of us, we go to work like that pike. You feel so controlled by all these outside circumstances. Yeah, the boss is terrible. Coworkers are idiots, I always get looked over for everything. My job is terrible. It's like, well, you're not even trying anymore. Solomon says, go find enjoyment. Stop believing that all these external circumstances determined your career. True leaders go in and they change the temperature. They make things fun, they unite and they find enjoyment. If you think about it, think about Jesus. Hebrews 12, 2 says, For the joy, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Now, maybe you have a tough work environment, but I guarantee it's not as bad as being crucified. Is it and yet Jesus found joy in the cross? If Jesus can find joy in the cross, do we have an excuse? What was Jesus' joy at the cross? It was you. Jesus saw joy in torture because his heart was set on you. If we say we follow Jesus, our assignment is that we must too find joy in where he's called us to. You gotta go make it fun. This year we we launched an initiative, uh Hoist the Sail. It's actually what I got my 1136 shirt on. Um, just getting our church ready for uh where God is leading our church. And there's just exciting stuff ahead. And I'm not complaining because it was just an incredible season, but that whole initiative, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work on our church staff. We had vision nights at each location with all these displays and food and and hundreds and hundreds of extra meetings and extra videos to make. And most of our church staff worked many hours over time. Uh, many did not take a day off a day off like during that, during that that season. And so for a so a couple of months ago, we gathered some of the workhorses that they just really put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into um into Hoist's sale. We brought them into a room and we just we wanted to thank him. You know, the extra hours and the thought and the creativity and excellence that you guys brought. So we thanked them. And I loved what a few said. They said, thank you for the thank you, but it was fun. It was fun. Like, what are you talking about? The extra hours were fun, the loading and the unloading and the setting up and the tearing down, sometimes until 1 a.m. That was that was fun. And then and then the team started sharing stories of what was going on. Like, hey, remember when we used the carts as scooters and we were like scooting around on those and having races? Remember when we saved a bunch of videos of Scott and Jr. and we made a bunch of bloopers to make fun of them? You know, we it we just kind of made it fun. Solomon is saying, Right on, do that. Do that with your work. I think too many of us were guilty of all of these self-fulfilling prophecies with our work. Ah, work's gonna be terrible. I'm just dreading work. It's so terrible. It's so quick to complain and cast this dreary cloud over our days. Like, well, yeah, of course it's gonna be that way. You're making it miserable just by how you're talking about it. Just go bust it. Go bust it, work hard, do excellent work, but my goodness, go make it fun too. Be the coworker that everybody wants to work with. Be the coworker that's just like the like a sunshine in the office place, the sunshine in the fact that people just look to when they're having a hard day. Ah, I get to work with this guy. That's great. Sometimes the best way to model Jesus is being fun while getting stuff done. Some of us we get a lot of stuff done, we're not very fun. And that's not Jesus. One more. This next verse is not from Solomon. This is this is from God, but technically God wrote through Solomon, so it's the same author. But right after, right after God creates the earth, right after God gets done designing and building and and coding DNA and mapping planetary orbits, he looks at creation. And Genesis 131 says, and and God saw everything that he had made, the work that he did, and behold, it was very good. Now, the word good here in Hebrew is the word tov. I don't know if that sounds familiar to you. Have you ever heard of like Mazl Tov? Like cheers, that's the word here. It's like this this idea of cheer. Like, what is God doing here? He's standing back, he's looking at his hard work, a job well done, and he's like, Cheers. And he gives us point number five. Love the product. Love the product. Learn to love what you produce. What do you produce? Learn to love that. It's the older ComEd worker I met years ago, worked for ComEd for decades, and during a storm, instead of cuddling up with his family, it's like the best, isn't it? During a storm, cuddle up with your family. Uh he wouldn't, though. Instead, when a storm hit, he got his boots on, jumped into his comed truck, drove out into the storm to work on fallen power lines, blue collar job. He said, I just love turning people's lights on. He smiles every time he hit that switch, thinking of all the families in their house going, yeah, yeah. He just loved the product of his work. Or see uh the doctor who treats terminally ill patients, depressing job. He said, I just I love when they leave my office because they have a plan and they have a little bit of hope with that plan. It's God looking down on what he made, saying, Behold, it is good. Tove. We're not in this for paychecks. Stop going to work for paycheck. Yes, get a paycheck for sure. But don't make that your carrot. Work is not a necessary evil. Stop counting down the days to retirement. No, work is life and life is work. It's not something to run from, it's something to run to. It's connected to our happiness. And it's on you to bring your passion to it, to find pleasure, to craft your skill and to love the product. Because the moments you do, those moments you step back after a job well done, exhausting week, exhausting day, where you hit it hard and you plop down on that couch, take a deep breath, and you let out a little smile, muzzle to have to a job well done today. It's in that moment that you are mirroring your creator because God smiled when he created you. Scripture calls you his masterpiece. And maybe you don't feel like that, but you are. And so actively commit your work to the Lord. This is your worship. Actively do it daily. Commit your work to the Lord, work hard, do excellent work, craft your skill, make it a blast. And don't forget to step back and enjoy what is ultimately your offering to God. Because in those moments that you step back and you smile about a job well done, you can know that he is too. And man, was this sermon gold. Such practical ways to bring your best to your work. Work hard, craft your skill, make it fun, love the product. There's so much to work on. One time in college, I was working construction. I was trying to prepay my way for school, and I was doing the job simply just to get a paycheck to support the thing that I eventually wanted to do. Oh one day I was painting a theater marquee and I I just remember trying to finish it as fast as I possibly could. After I was done, I went to my boss and I said, Boss, it's finished. You think I'm done for the day? My boss, he didn't even have to look at the project. He just looked at me and he said, Are you truly satisfied with how it looks? Deep down I do. I was nowhere near satisfied with how it looked. It reminds me of what Junior was talking about when he referenced how God, after creating the heavens and the earth, God himself takes a step back and just enjoys his creation. Just think about that. Even God Himself takes immense pleasure in his work. To those listening right now, do you do that? Or maybe a better question is can you do that? Are you working hard enough? Have you grown your skill and service to a level where you can honestly step back and you can draw appreciation from the way that God has used you? If not, let God's word inspire you to take your work to the next level. A level of faithfulness that spans beyond just a mere attitude of just getting it done or just doing enough to get by. Let's make a commitment to let all of our work be done in a manner where we imitate God, our Creator. As always, thanks for tuning in today, and we'll see you next time. Well, you have been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcaster. 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-A-R.com. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multi-campus church in Chicago.