No Fear - Commitment

In this message, Logan Charles (One of Rocky Peak's Worship Coordinators & Leaders), unpacks how the gift of working hard and following through with our commitments develops our courage and strength to face whatever twist and turn tomorrow takes us on.  

For more info about RPYA check us out on Instagram @rpyoungadults or at our landing page on rockypeak.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it is good to be with you once again, RPYA. And special welcome. There are several of you here that are here for the very first time or for the first time in a long time. And for those of you, I want to go ahead and take a few moments and let you know a little bit of what you've gotten yourself into. First of all, if we haven't gotten a chance to meet yet, my name is Dre. I'm the young adult pastor here at Rocky Peak. And welcome to RPYA. RPYA stands for Rocky Peak Young Adults. We exist because we believe that Jesus wants to unleash a movement of passionate, Christ-following 18 to 25 year olds. And we've been saying this over the last several weeks that there is a lot being written about your generation. And these things being written are using words like anxious, broken, detached. We reject that as a defining feature of your generation. And we believe that Jesus wants to use your generation to transform the world around it. And one of the primary ways that we partner with Jesus in this are these Sunday nights. We meet in this building every Sunday night at 6.30 p.m. And the night is designed for real people, like we talked about at the top, not idealized or fake people, but for real young adults to be able to come and encounter the real Jesus. And when we say real people, that means that we are on all different sides of the spiritual spectrum. There are some of you that you have given your life to Jesus, you are disciples, you are growing, you are passionate. Awesome, we're glad you're here. There are some of you somewhere in the middle where yes, I've given my life to Jesus. But man, life, circumstances, things, I'm hurting, I'm exhausted, I feel kind of numb to God, I'm even doubting. We're glad you're here. There are some of you in the other side of the spectrum going, I don't even know how I got here. Somebody told me we're going to dinner. I didn't know this was church. I don't know if I believe in this. In fact, I think you're all insane. We are glad you're here. And the purpose tonight is we're not going to be able to answer or solve anything. We just want you to be able to encounter Jesus as he is. That's what RPY is all about. And so if this is your first time or your first time in a while, we hope it's not the last time. In fact, one of the best ways that Jesus grows us is consistency, is as long as we have control of it to be able to keep coming in. That's how we break nervousness. That's how the Holy Spirit makes and we we know his voice, is that we keep showing up. And so tonight we're going to be concluding this mini-series we've been in called No Fear of the Future. And we kicked this off just three weeks ago that when it comes to the future, there is some optimism and excitement, but for a lot of us, there's some confusion, there's anxiety, there's downright terror. Because as we've been using this image, sometimes we think that the future is supposed to be this really night, nice, neat, tidy, straight line, and that's not reality. The reality is that the future is often a mess of twists and turns we didn't see coming. But the beautiful thing is not only is God sovereign over that, but he's also given us an opportunity to be able to do things within our power, to be able to calm our fears about the future. Last week, one of those things was to be able to seek out older saints, Christ's followers that have lived a few more tomorrows than we have, to be able to seek their wisdom as we do life together. And today, as we close it out, we're gonna be talking about the next step, the next action that we can take under the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to bring some peace when it comes to our future. And one of the things I love about RPWA, as well as I love about church, is church has never been meant to be one single voice. If you're new, if you usually come, you're often gonna encounter me as the teacher, but I don't want to just own this stage by myself. What I want to do, because we are different people with different stories, is to make sure that we have opportunities to hear different voices in our journey together. And this evening, we're gonna get to do that as we sit under the teaching of my dear friend Logan Charles. And some of you know Logan at Rocky Peak, he's one of our worship leaders. Uh he how he's here every Sunday, actually in the back, making sure that the band is not crying and helping them as they go through, as they go through. But one of the most important things you need to know about Logan is that Logan has been saved by grace because of the mercy of Jesus the King. Logan is one of the most tender-hearted and gentle individuals you will know. And I don't say this with any level of exaggeration. I have become a better man because of Logan. I've become a better father, even though I've been doing it longer. I've become a better husband, I've become a better disciple because of Logan. And so it is my excitement and privilege to sit under his teaching with you. And that's a beautiful thing when other voices are up here. They're not downgrades. I love it so much. And so before Logan comes up here, we're gonna go ahead and get started with how we usually do by reading scripture out loud. And so if you've got a Bible, go ahead and open them up. If you got a Bible app, turn it on. We're gonna be going to the book of Philippians. Technically letter, but we're not in class right now. The book of Philippians in the second half of our Bible. It's called the New Testament. We're gonna be in Philippians chapter two. So go ahead and take a few moments to get there. And as you're turning there, by the way, if you're newer to church, if you're newer to RPYA, I would love to encourage you to be bringing a Bible. In fact, I'd love to encourage you to be bringing what I call a classic Bible, which is a physical Bible. Um, apps are great. U version, YOU, those things are beautiful. I love my Bible, but there's something about tangibly holding a Bible that I find to be really, really powerful. For those of you that are new to a Bible, never be ashamed to use the table of contents. That is God's blessing to me still, and so that's why it's there. So Philippians chapter 2, we're gonna start at verse 12. Originally we're gonna go 16. I'm just gonna finish the section. So here we go. Philippians chapter 2, starting at verse 12. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky, as you hold firmly to the word of life, and then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. We're gonna stop right there. RPOA, would you give a warm welcome to Logan Charles?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Hey guys. Wow, thank you. That was quite the introduction. That was really fantastic. Uh yeah, hey, it's great to be here with you. If we haven't met, I'm Logan. Uh and like Dre said, uh I work here. I'm on the worship staff. Uh I've been working here for about five years or so. And uh a little fun fact about me, I actually got uh saved right here in this very room when I was 20, uh, which is approaching uh a decade ago. It was part of the RPYA ministry, and so it's very uh near and dear to my heart. Uh this really I just think this is uh one of the most important uh places that we can be each week is gathering as the church and uh worshiping together and unpacking uh the word of God together and just having fellowship together, and so it's such a special thing. Um yeah, just again, quick uh thank you to Dre for having me. Uh I was super excited when uh we got to kind of work out a date that uh I'd be able to come and unpack the Word of God. Uh very excited about it. So um we're gonna hop in. He just read uh Philippians 2, starting in verse 12, and he read the larger section, but uh for today's purposes, we are going to focus just on uh verse 12. And if you're new here, like Dre said, uh, we've been in this larger series called No Fear of the Future. And each week we've been looking at uh why we can have courage as we walk into uh kind of unknown tomorrows. And so tonight we are going to be looking at this passage of scripture uh and learning that um God's courage is experienced uh through commitment and through strong work ethic. And so, like this passage says, we're gonna we're gonna learn what it looks like to uh to continue to work out our salvation through fear and trembling. And so why don't we hop right in? Uh this is a very short passage, it's only ten words. Uh, but what I love about the Word of God is that it is alive and it's active and it's so rich. And so I believe that these ten words that we're about to unpack really truly do have the power to uh to change our lives. And as like our our lead pastor Michael Ely likes to say, it's gonna give us a paradigm shift. It can change the way that we approach our lives. And so, uh, like we said, Philippians 2, 12. Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. We're gonna start right in the uh the top of your note sheets. And so your very first fill-in for tonight is fear and trembling, awe and obedience. Those are your first two words, awe and obedience. And so you might be reading this passage and going, well, okay, um, what does that mean, right? What is the why do I have to have fear and trembling? What does it mean to work out my salvation? Uh so many questions here. And what we're gonna do tonight is we're gonna work backward through this passage. So we're gonna start with those last two words, fear and trembling. You might be looking at that and thinking to yourself, uh, well, when I was invited to church, I was told that God loves me. I was told that uh Jesus has a plan for my life, and I was I was given comforting words. And so, what is this fear and trembling thing, right? What is what is that all about? And so I want to just unpack this. In the New Testament, uh, there are two main uh ways that this phrase is understood. It has two main purposes. Uh, the first of which is awe, which is your first word up there. This refers to a religious awe of God. It's seeing God for who he is in his maximal goodness, his mercy, his justice, his maximal uh beauty. You know, um last year my my wife and I went to uh Yosemite, and it was my first time going. Uh kind of a much longer story there. Uh supposed to be uh the second time going, but uh the first time was part of our honeymoon, and I messed up some scheduling stuff, and so it didn't end up happening. It was a whole train wreck. And so last year was our first time going to Yosemite, and uh and I just remember distinctly driving up the winding roads and seeing the beautiful trees, and the higher you rise in altitude and elevation, right, the air starts opening up, it feels cleaner, it feels like, oh, I can breathe. You know, and at some point you get to the tunnel uh before you enter into Yosemite Valley, and uh everything kind of gets dark, but you can tell that something's coming, right? And you get to the end of the tunnel and it opens up, and you're in Yosemite Valley, and you can see just how enormous the mountains are, you can see the waterfalls, and it catches your breath. You know, I don't know if you get show of hands, how many people have been to Yosemite here? Okay, awesome. Yeah, wasn't it incredible the first time you showed up? You drive through that tunnel and it's just it's mind-blowing, right? I I'm not even joking. I actually shed a tear when we when we went through that tunnel. I was absolutely amazed, and I was just in awe of what I was seeing. It was huge, it was incredible, and it was beautiful. And similarly, this is what this first phrase is referring to: this sense of awe that we have for the Lord. We're seeing him for who he is in his beauty, in his mercy, in his goodness, right? And the second part of this uh this phrase uh is obedience, right? And this refers to the attitude of an obedient servant or a slave. And um broadly speaking, this is kind of like being a child, and you come to an understanding of, like, oh, I okay, dad's in charge, right? He knows better than me, he gets it, I'm submitting to him. And you get to see who you are in contrast to God's power, right? And so that is what that is referring to. And these two things can seem, I think, contradictory on the surface, or maybe unrelated, right? And probably a little controversial, right? Especially the obedience piece, if you're new here. Um, but I promise you, they go hand in hand, they're very much connected. And I think a prime example of this can be found in uh the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah. And so if you still have your Bibles open, go ahead and flip to the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter six. If you don't have your Bibles or if you just can't find it, that's okay. We will have it uh on the screens here in just a moment. So this passage in Isaiah 6, if you haven't found it yet, that's totally fine. It'll be here on the screens. Right? A little context is God is giving Isaiah a vision of himself, his throne room in all of his glory. And so, starting in verse 1 of Isaiah chapter 6, says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Right? And we don't often see trains of robes anymore. It's kind of an old school thing. But the closest that we have currently, if you're not familiar with what that is, is just imagine a bride on her wedding day, right? You'll see the the long train that follows up her dress, right? Just all the extra fabric. But notice what it says here the train of his robe filled the temple. And the temple's huge. And so this is just giving you an idea of how large, how grand this image of the Lord is. So, verse two, and above him were seraphim. That's just a type of angel. We don't have time to get into it right now. But uh, each with six wings, with two wings, they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying, and they were calling to one another: holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, and the whole earth is filled with his glory. And at the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. And so, right off the bat, not exactly a comforting sight, right? You see God in his hugeness, right? His train filling the entire temple. But then as the angels are singing, the entire place starts to shake, an earthquake essentially is happening. The place fills with smoke. Your first reaction is probably not like, oh, this is nice. You're probably going, Oh my gosh, what is happening right now? And so um this next part, uh, verse 5, he says, Woe to me, I cried. I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty. And just a quick pause here, elsewhere in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, uh, God is talking to Moses, and he shares with him that nobody can see the face of the Lord and survive, right? And it's not because he's gonna just smite you with a lightning bolt or something, right? It's because of the contrast between God's maximal goodness and our brokenness and our sin, right? It's kind of like when you walk into a dark room, right, and you flip on the light switch. Like what happens? Not a trick question. The light turns on, the darkness disappears, right? And so in that image, we are that darkness. We can't possibly expect to show up and see the face of God and survive. And so this is what's going through Isaiah's mind as he's seeing the Lord. He's realizing, oh, I've I've seen God and I know what the book says. I know this is it for me, right? And so he sees uh verse six. He says, Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which was taken with tongs from the altar. Again, probably thinking, oh my gosh, this is it. And with it he touched my mouth and he said, See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. And so what do you see in this passage? In his vision, Isaiah is in the throne room of God, and he sees God, and he has this sobering moment, and he realizes just how awesome God is, just how huge and wonderful he is, and he realizes the depth of his own brokenness in the face of God's perfection. And I think this paints a really beautiful picture of what it looks like to have a healthy fear and trembling toward the Lord. And so this leads us to our second point. This is your second fill-in, the second part of this verse as well. Uh, salvation. Works versus grace. Works versus grace. As the verse says, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. So you might be asking yourself, well, hang on a second. I I I work out my salvation. I thought God worked out my salvation. That's what I keep getting told. But this verse is not making any sense here. What's going on with that? And I think a good way to kind of contrast this, to explain it, is uh to actually compare it against something that we that we don't believe in as Christ followers, but might help paint an interesting picture here. And so in the um in the Islamic faith and their tradition, they're taught that at the end of your life, right, the day that you die, you will face judgment. So you'll get to judgment day, and your good deeds and your bad deeds will be placed on scales and then weighed. And so the idea here is that if your good deeds outweigh the bad deeds, you're good. You're all set. Right? But what this doesn't take into account is what the Bible teaches about how we are saved, right? And so if our good deeds and our bad deeds are weighed, they're in for a rude awakening. Because the Bible says that each of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And that the wages of our sin is death. And so if we're faced with scales, it's not gonna go too well for us. Because we can't earn our way into perfection. We can't expect to outperform the sin and brokenness that's inside. And so every time without fail, those scales would be tipped against us. But there's good news, and just to clarify, we don't we don't believe in the whole scales thing. That's not a Christian doctrine. Uh it's a word picture. Bear with me. So here's the reality each of us has committed high treason against our king, against King Jesus. And capital crime justly necessitates the sentence of capital punishment. Right? The wages of our sin is death. And so where we would agree is 2 Corinthians 5.10. There's a slide coming up for you. It says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things that we have done while in the body, whether good or bad. Right? So you're probably thinking, oh, we're still kind of heading down this negative train here. I'm not liking where this is headed. Uh but guess what? There's good news. Next slide. Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. It says, For it is grace that you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It's a gift of God, not by works, so that no man can boast. Right? And so there's two things there that are gifts. One is the grace, the other is the faith. Both of those are gifts from God. And like it says, we can't save ourselves through our works. It's a gift from God. So we can't even boast about it. We can't show up and say, look at all the good things I did. You know? How great am I? It doesn't matter. Romans 10 says, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you'll be saved. Alright, and so that faith is a gift from God. But what we're called to do is to confess it, right? There's an external and there's an internal. We're meant to believe it, we're meant to confess it to others. And that's the good news, right? Orthodox Christian doctrine teaches that we're not saved by our own good works, but rather the work of Jesus on the cross and his blood that paid the debt that we owed, right? Like we just sang, praise the one who paid my debt. It's a gift from God, and it's a beautiful gift, because the reality is that we have been living our lives in sin. We have been living our lives in a way, kind of maxing out our sin credit card and not paying off the minimums and just hoping it's gonna work out, right? But it's not without the power of God, without the forgiveness of Jesus through his blood. And so this leads us to the first part of this passage where we're gonna spend the majority of our time. So your next fill-in is this. As the passage says, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. So that's exactly it. Continue to work out your fill-in is commitment. And as I was planning this, I was toying with the idea of calling it a long walk. Um because that's kind of what it is, right? It's commitment, yes, but the word picture is the idea that you're headed on this journey for a long time. We're committed to Christ. I get a little bit ahead of myself. But What does it mean to work out your salvation? What does that mean to be committed to Christ? Well, that phrase is in the Greek, it's this Greek term katurgasomai, which is just a really fun word. Katargasomi. It's kind of fun to say. It's up there on the screens. And so if you have a place to write it down, I would recommend writing down katargasomi, because we're going to come back to it a couple times. And it means to bring about or to bring out or to produce, to work diligently toward a goal over time. You know, in uh 2023, um my wife and I went to Italy, and uh it was awesome. It was so much fun. Um but uh it this was a little sidebar, this was actually the makeup honeymoon for the first trip that I screwed up. And so it was way better for the record, guys. It was awesome. But um on this trip, we went to uh we went to a museum and we got to see the famous marble statue of David at what is called the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. Yeah, there he is. I chose that image because if you if you've seen David, he uh he's he's uh anatomically correct, for lack of a better word. And I like my job, and so I'm not putting that on the screens. Uh yeah, there's our boy David. He's based on the uh the biblical character of King David, obviously as a young man. And the most amazing thing about this statue, right, is it's in this historic museum, and it's beautiful and it's incredible, right? He's kind of framed with light, and he's kind of in this dome thing that you can sort of see in that photo. But you walk in, and what strikes you is the fact that our boy David here is 17 feet tall, and he's 12,000 pounds of pure marble, which I didn't know until I Googled it. But he was created in 1504 by the artist Michelangelo. And it took Michelangelo about three years to sculpt David out of what was a junk rock. So the slab of marble that he was created out of had been tossed by other artists. It was deemed unworthy of being used for a project. And little did they know, Michelangelo would take this nothing block of marble and turn it into one of the most famous pieces of artwork ever created. And so what strikes you when you walk into this museum and you see David is obviously it's breathtaking. He's huge, 17 feet tall. Um and it's just incredible. You you look at him and it's it's kind of it captures your attention in a lot of ways. Not because he's not wearing any clothing, um, but because the attention to detail is just remarkable, right? Even you can kind of see it in the photo here, but on his forearm, there's a muscle that only is visible if you flex your hand in a particular way. And so he's got it. So the incredible thing is the artist took account for that and paid attention to it as he was creating this marble statue over several years. And what really struck me is how much effort went into creating this statue, is the hours that Michelangelo must have put into taking what was a block of rock and seeing the vision and then putting in the work to actually bring it about. And it's incredible. And so, in a way, you could say that Michelangelo lived out the principle of catagasmi, like we were just talking about. And so, this concept, in short, it involves translating theological reality into lived experience. Another way of saying that is we're meant to take the truth of the gospel, the truth of what we believe, and meet the rubber to the road. So put it into action. That's what it means to live out catargasmi. And so what does this mean for us? Well, I want to take a moment and kind of put on dad hat, uh, which I can do now. I'm dad. You know, it's fun. Not old enough to be your dad, but uh I know this is unrelated. I played Wildlife, our middle school thing recently, and uh one of the kids thought I was 37. I'm not, uh, for the record. Um 29, thank you. Uh anyway, dad hat moment. So, um like I said, I've been part of this church for about 10 years now, uh, this upcoming year, and it's just been the most amazing thing for me. I've loved every moment of it, and I've spent the majority of those years serving in this very ministry, in RPYA. And I think uh something that's stuck out to me recently has been a trend that I've noticed among young people, and that is a decreasing ability for us to make commitments and keep them. And I have kind of affectionately coined the phrase uh phobo. You know, my my generation, the kind of zillennial, if you will, uh our thing was FOMO. We wanted to say yes to absolutely everything because we were afraid of missing out, right? But what I'm seeing in this current generation, and this isn't to come down hard on you guys, this is coming from a place of like, I really care about you and I want what's best for you, but what I'm seeing right now is a lack of commitment in people. And I think that stems from the fear of better options coming along. And so we don't commit to things because we're afraid of something that we'd rather do coming up. And that's a hard thing to to kind of take into consideration, but I I think there is some reality to that. And I don't think that it helps that uh some studies have shown that uh our attention span is dropping too. Our ability to just sit down and focus on something and actually finish the job is rapidly decreasing. And so some studies that have been done on Gen Z's attention span have been really scary. Uh any guesses on how long Gen Z's average attention span is? You can just call it out if you have any idea. Fifteen, twelve, four, oh wow. Two, two, I sure hope not. One nanosecond. That's crazy. Yeah, no, these studies said that Gen Z's average attention span is eight seconds. Eight seconds. How in the world are we gonna make David if we can't focus for eight seconds? How in the world are we gonna have a life following Christ if we can't focus for eight seconds? And so my fear is that as this is permeating in our lives, as it's affecting our workplaces, our school, our relationships, my fear is that this is going to very deeply and very negatively affect our ability to follow Christ long term. And so in his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, uh, the late Eugene Peterson says this. He says there is a great market for religious experience in our world. There is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. And I think he's right. And what's crazy is this was written in the 80s. Imagine how much more true that is now. And look, I think it's easy, we can blame social media, we can blame kind of our lost COVID years, but it doesn't matter what the cause was. At the end of the day, we gotta figure this out, right? We have become too comfortable with only praying or attending or serving or showing up when we feel like it in that moment. This uh this next slide is my daughter. It's Clementine. She, I know, she's so beautiful. Uh she's eight months old, she's actually here somewhere. She was crying a little bit, so I think my wife took her to the other room. But um, yeah, this is Clementine. She's she's I don't even have words, she's like the most amazing thing in the world, right? And I think aside from Jesus and my wife, like she's it for me. You know, I just love my daughter. Um and so imagine what her life would be like if, as her father, I decided that I didn't really feel like it today. If she's crying in the middle of the night and I went, ah, I'm tired. I don't really want to. She's hungry, and I decide to go do whatever I want to do, right? How would that go for her? Not very well. After a time, she would probably starve. I mean, my wife wouldn't let it happen. But you get the you get the point I'm making. But speaking of my wife, like, think of that relationship, right? The marriage that I have. What would happen if I stopped talking to my wife? If I stopped showing up for my wife? If I decided day in and day out, like, ah, don't really feel like it today. Yeah, like what if I wanted to hang out and do something else? You know, I don't really want to show up and love you like I committed to. That relationship would starve too. And how much more do you think this would happen if you stop showing up for the Lord? If you stop showing up in prayer, if you stop showing up in your word, if we only do it when we feel like it, that relationship is gonna starve too. And after a time, it's probably gonna die. And look, I love you guys, I care about you deeply. I don't want that for you. I know firsthand the beauty of following Christ and knowing him. And like Brie was saying earlier for our band, uh Huddle, she was talking about having an experiential faith. Like, I want that for you guys. I want you guys to know Christ firsthand. I want you guys to know that his promises are true. But it doesn't just happen. God's always gonna be good, but are you gonna position yourself to actually receive that goodness? To live in a way that's honoring him, that's cultivating a relationship. I think I have time for my little sidebar here. Um if not, we'll figure it out. So speaking of work, um, if you spent any amount of time online, you've probably seen uh the way that work is being talked about, just generally, right? There's kind of this air of like, I don't really want to do it. You know, I don't want to work, I shouldn't have to work, why can't I just have stuff? Um, you know, for example, one of the biggest websites uh in the world uh is called Reddit. And on Reddit, uh there is a subreddit, which is just another way of saying it's a forum that people follow. Uh it's called anti-work. And it's got 1.5 million people subscribed to it, with over 3 million people who are regularly visiting this subreddit, which is insane. The whole thing is just about how much work sucks and how much I don't want to do it, I don't want to show up, why can't I just have my needs met elsewhere, right? And I and I think it's important that we just briefly pause on what the Bible has to say about how we're meant to approach work. Um, because it has a lot to say about how we're meant to approach work, in fact. From the very beginning in Genesis 2, what we see is that God designed man to work. And if you don't believe me, Genesis 2, verse 15, it says, The Lord God took the man that he had just created, he took him and he put him in the Garden of Eden to work and keep it. This was pre-fall. This was pre-sin. Work is not a curse of our existence. We were designed to have responsibility and things that we show up for. 2 Thessalonians, I didn't know Michael was going to quote this one this weekend, so it was kind of a fun little Easter egg. I was like, oh, me too. Yeah, it was really awesome. Uh 2 Thessalonians uh 3, verse 10. It says, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Yeah, I think somebody said preach. Amen. You might not have, but maybe in my head it was, right? So, yeah, if anyone's not willing to work, great, you don't have to. But you shouldn't expect a handout. Right? As Christians, we're meant to be generous. We're called to be generous to people who need it. And like Michael was saying earlier today, we've also got to define who needs it. Because there are some people who are gonna try to take advantage of generosity or be in a position where whether it's entitlement, whatever it might be, they don't want to work, but they still want to be taken care of. At the same time, there are people who cannot work and they should be taken care of. And there's a fine line there, there's a very clear distinction, because we should take care of the people who really need it. But if you don't want to work, don't do it. But don't complain about it. Uh 1 Thessalonians 4, 11 through 12. It talks about the heart that we're meant to carry, uh kind of regarding our work. It says, lead a quiet life and work with your hands and mind your business. And as an introvert, this is like written in my heart. Like, mind my business, lead a quiet life. Okay, all right. Can do, you know. But it speaks to the way that we're meant to kind of approach this work, right? We're not meant to seek our own glory, we're not meant to seek our own gain. We're meant to be diligent. We're meant to commit, like we were just talking about. And do it faithfully for the Lord. And this one's fun. This one says uh, rise in the morning and get after it, which is just my wife's translation of uh that same verse. And so uh I love that one. It's pretty fun. Anyway, moving on. Plid bar over. Thank you for listening to my talk on work. Let's keep going. Colossians 3.23. It'll be on the screens here. It says, whatever you do, whatever you do, whether that's your jobs, your relationships, whether you're serving here, whatever you do, do your work heartily. Other translations say, with all of your ability, with all of your heart, as for the Lord and not for people. Right? So the idea is that you are working for God, for the glory of the King of the universe. Knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward of the inheritance. That is eternal life with God. It's the Lord Jesus Christ whom you serve. And so, whatever you're doing, if you're at work, if you're stocking shelves, if you're cleaning the floor, if you're leading teams of people, if you've got a terrible coworker, as everybody does, I'm not looking at Wyatt. He's right here. I love Wyatt. Uh joking, I do love you. You're not working for your boss, you're working for the Lord. And that's the mindset we're trying to carry into this. So do it as though you're serving God directly. Think about the impact that you can have on the world, on your life, on your workplace, if you showed up and actually put this into practice, right? If you showed up to work and instead of just doing what's required of you, doing the bare minimum of just getting the bill paid, right? If you showed up and you actually put this into practice, imagine what that would look like. Imagine the impact you could have on your workplace. If as Christ followers, we put this into practice, we could change the culture in a way around the way that Christians are viewed. I think if enough of us put this into practice, we could get to a place where people look forward to hiring Christians because they know that they're going to show up and be the best that they can possibly be. Not because of any inherent gift or talent, not that I can stock a shelf better or sweep a floor better, but I'm doing it for someone else's glory. I'm doing it for the glory of the king of the universe. There are tremendous implications with this. And what that means is that we do it to the best of our ability, with excellence, with integrity. I mean, even Jesus himself said that I've come not to be served, but to serve. And we're meant to model this. And a friend of mine told me this story, and I really tried hard to find it online, and I couldn't find it. I don't know where it came from. He could have made it up. It's likely knowing this friend. Um, but I really liked the story, and it's just about this Christian shoemaker. Um, and it's talking about this guy who is a shoemaker, he's a Christian, and he has gained a reputation as being a Christian shoemaker. And in a conversation, he's with a friend, and they're saying, like, well, what is that? What is that reputation? And his friend share the shoemaker shares this wisdom with his friend. And he says, I have gained this reputation as a Christian shoemaker, not by making shoes that have big old crosses on the side, not by making shoes that have Bible verses tucked into them, not even by necessarily preaching out loud to those around me, but I have gained this reputation by making the best shoes that I can make. And I think this principle is directly relevant to what we're talking about here. What does it look like for you to show up and make the best shoes that you can make when you're at work for the glory of God? You know, in his book, The Practice of the Presence of God, there's this amazing quote by uh this monk from the 1600s, which is just kind of fun to talk about, monks. Um The Practice of the Presence of God. And he says, we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. And what's really profound about this is when you consider who wrote it. So, Brother Lawrence, like I said, was a monk in France in the 1600s, but he wasn't head monk, he wasn't a famous author, he wasn't anybody of fame or note. He was the chef at the monastery. He was the cook and the janitor and the repairman. And this book that he wrote, The Practice of the Presence of God, is just a collection of his journal entries that were compiled something like a hundred years after he died. And so at no point in his life did Brother Lawrence receive any accolades or any affirmation for the faithfulness that he cultivated in his life. But this book is all about exactly that, cultivating faithfulness in our lives, of learning to commune with God in little moments, in every moment, especially in uncomfortable workplace environments. And so his whole life exemplified catargasmi. He was committed to faithfully serving with what was in front of him, with his task that he's been given. It didn't need to be grand, it didn't need to be entertaining or incredible in all of the ways that we would measure it, but he did it for the glory of God. And like we were just saying, after he died, people began to recognize that. We got to look back on this and go, wow, how incredible is it that you can just be faithful to God. That you can show up and follow through on your commitments for his glory. That we can say yes to things and actually show up and do it. Or we can say no to things and actually not show up and do it, which is just as important at times. And so if I have anything that I want to leave you with, and somehow I'm actually a little early, which is astounding to me. I was expecting to go way long. In a moment, we are gonna go into a prayer section of reflection. We're going to go before the Lord, and there'll be some kind of quiet music playing in a moment. But I have two questions for you as we are kind of closing out. The first of which is a fill-in, and it'll be on your screen. And it says, What kind of person am I? It seems like a really simple, obvious question. But I think there is a depth to this question that when you sit with it and when you invite the Lord into prayerfully leading you, he will reveal the type of person that you are. And so as you're, in a moment, when we're in our prayer, as you're considering your life, be really honest with yourself and with the Lord. Like, do I say yes to things and actually follow through? And when I do follow through, am I actually giving it the best that I can? Am I actually living in a way that honors and glorifies God? Am I living in a way that says, hey, I'm not working for you. I'm working for the king of the universe. He is my ultimate authority. He is the one I want to please. Or do you not? Do you sometimes say yes and don't really feel like it? Maybe I'll stay home. Maybe I'll not, I don't know, not write it down and just not show up. You forget, right? At work, do you show up and do the minimum just to give by, just to finish the shift? Or are you giving it your all, your excellence that comes from the Lord? And I think if we invite the Lord into this process, he will reveal to us who we are. And it might be uncomfortable, it might be reassuring, who knows? Might be uncomfortable, though. But invite the Lord into it. So, second question: What kind of person do I want to be? So, after reading all of this, after unpacking this passage of Scripture, as we continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, what kind of person do I want to be? If I think about my life next week, tonight, ten years from now, twenty years from now, what kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be someone who's unreliable? Do I want to be someone who doesn't follow through? Do I want to be someone who just gets around to reading the word when I feel like it? Or do I want to be the type of person who honors not only God, but one another with our commitments, with our excellence? Do I want to be someone who knows the word of God? Who's transformed by it, who, like we were saying earlier, has an experiential knowledge of the word of God. Do I want that for my life? Is that the kind of person I want to be? If it is, ask the Lord to reveal to you what to do about it. Because like we said earlier, it's not a foot race. It's not a get rich, quick in the Lord thing. It is a long obedience in the same direction. But if we want to be able to bring David out of the block of marble, we gotta commit. We gotta figure out what it looks like to show up day in and day out. And let the Lord do that work through us, right? So just a moment, we're gonna have uh music come on. But I think I don't want to just leave you with this, right? It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. And so train for endurance, not speed. So spend some time asking the Lord to bring to mind the areas of your life where you feel that you need to grow in, that you need to implement catagasmi. Ask him to reveal to you what are the areas of my life where I need to grow in my commitments? What does it look like for me to be a person of integrity in all of the areas of my life? And where can I live my life as though I'm directly serving the Lord?