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Coffee and Bible Time Podcast
Join host Ellen Krause—co-creator of Coffee and Bible Time—as she sits down with authors, pastors, theologians, and everyday believers to explore Scripture, identity, relationships, and how to truly keep Jesus at the center of it all. Whether you're just starting your faith journey or looking to go deeper, this podcast is a space to learn, be encouraged, and draw closer to Christ.
Coffee and Bible Time Podcast
Christians and Work - Why Your Secular Job Matters: Best Of Coffee & Bible Time w/ Jordan Raynor
This episode was first published on Feb. 1st, 2024.
Have you ever wondered if your life would have more significance if you were in ministry?
In this episode, Ellen and guest Jordan Raynor challenge our idea that only explicitly spiritual activities matter to God.
They discuss:
• The biblical definition of "work" and why your job matters to the kingdom
• Why Christians are necessary to secular workplaces
• How we misunderstand the Great Commission
• Four ways your work matters eternally
Get a copy of "The Sacredness of Secular Work: Four Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You're Not Sharing the Gospel)" to discover how your daily work contributes to God's eternal purposes!
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At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us, hey Jordan. What a joy it is to reconnect with you today.
Speaker 2:I always love hanging out with you and your daughters. Ellen, how have you been?
Speaker 1:Oh my, goodness, there's so much been going on since we last met, but I'd like for you to catch me up on what's going on in your life. So Jordan and I were in a mastermind group together. That's how we met. He's an incredible author and I'm just excited to tell our audience what's been maybe the most challenging thing and the most exciting thing that's happened since we talked last.
Speaker 2:Oh man, it's probably been a year since we connected. The most challenging thing has got to be finding the courage to say, yeah, I'm going to publish this book that we're publishing right now. Because as you know, you've seen an advanced copy of it.
Speaker 2:I'm saying some things that aren't said a lot of times in evangelical circles around the topic of faith and work, and saying some hard things, and I was just really blessed Actually, right before Dr Keller died, tim Keller, we had a great conversation and talking about the contents of this book and just my work in general and him just like blessing that and encouraging me to just, you know, lean into the message of this book.
Speaker 2:And so when I think about the biggest challenge and the biggest blessing, I think kind of that goes hand in hand. The biggest challenge is like finding the courage to beg yeah, I know we're going to say these things and the blessing is having people like Tim and elders come around the book and beg, yes, like this is what the church needs to hear right now. And then, just more on a personal level, I got three young kids right, so a very full life. I have three daughters who are nine, seven and four and yeah, so like there's just like constant challenges and blessings wrapped up in being a father to three girls. I mean you get it, you're a mama bear, you're a mama.
Speaker 1:You get it. Oh yeah, yeah, I have three as well, and boy. I just know those are busy, busy years. A lot going on as they get involved in all their different things, yeah.
Speaker 2:And maybe you can counsel me. We have a therapy session. What's challenging is to push back on the cultural assumption of busyness and hurry.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yes, and just refusing to be in sports six days a week.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah Just like not in the courts and listen. That's fine for some people I'm not. I'm not judging other people who are doing that, but, like for me and my family, I think I would go crazy living that kind of lifestyle. So I feel like, by God's grace, we're living at a really sane pace and, by his grace, this is just like a really fun, sweet season. Yeah, because when they're super young it's not fun. I don't care what anybody says. Everyone's like oh, you're going to miss the baby years. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't think you are.
Speaker 2:I don't think you are. When they get older, it gets more fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I just putting boundaries on your time is so valuable, especially like now that I've come to the point in my life where my kids are half moved out that you know you can't get those years back, right, yeah, so I love that you said that you're keeping tabs on that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Well, jordan, I'm so excited actually to talk to you about this topic today, and I think back now about I wish I would have read your book while I was a stay-at-home mom or while I was working in corporate America, because as I was going through it, I just found it so tremendously encouraging, so insightful. You really turned my head a few times as I thought about things. So let's jump right in. So our goal here today, right, is to help our listeners see how their secular work matters for eternity, and I found it so interesting that, right from the get-go, you first turned around my understanding of the word work. So I think it's important for our audience because we have such a diverse age group here students and moms and all kinds of people. So help us understand what is this definition of work?
Speaker 2:the biblical way. Yeah, it's good. Listen, the Bible doesn't come with a glossary, unfortunately, so I think we've got to look to Scripture for clues as to how God might define these terms. And I think if God were, if Jesus were sitting here on this podcast and forced to define work, I think he would define it a lot more broadly than the way that we typically do. We typically define work as the thing somebody does for income, but God's definition of work is so broad that in Exodus 20, as he's handing down the 10 commandments, he says that even animals work right. Is he's handing down the 10 commandments? He says that even animals work right?
Speaker 2:The fourth commandment to Sabbath is a command for humans to rest and animals to rest from their labor. So I think the most biblical way to define work is simply to expend energy in an effort to achieve a desired result or stated negatively right. It's the opposite of leisure and rest. And that definition obviously includes what you do for pay as a marketer or a librarian or a teacher, an entrepreneur, whatever. But it also includes the work we do at home, doing laundry and mowing the grass or studying for an exam. All of that is work, and I think the story we see in scripture is that all of it matters for eternity, and that's really the crux of this new book that we're launching out.
Speaker 1:And it's just, it adds so much value to your life when you think of it this way. So the second clarification then that also really broadened my understanding was how all Christians can instantly view their secular workplace as sacred. Tell us what you mean by that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these terms matter right. I'm glad we're defining terms.
Speaker 2:This is how every one of these interviews should start. Ellen, you're doing it right. That word secular literally means without God, with no regard to religion, without God. But we Christians believe we just prayed this before we started recording that God is with us literally wherever we go through the power of his Holy Spirit, and so the only thing you, listener, need to do to instantly make your quote unquote secular workplace sacred is walk through the front door or log on to Zoom. That's it. Now.
Speaker 2:I'll say that with a big caveat. Clearly there's some work that's off limits for Christ followers, right. But I'm going to go ahead and assume that our listeners are not making a living explicitly exploiting the poor or peddling pornography or something else that overtly contradicts God's word. And if that's true and you are seeking first the kingdom of God, then, in the words of the great preacher Charles Spurgeon, nothing is secular, everything is sacred, because everywhere you walk is sacred ground. So for me, there's no question of the sacredness of the seemingly quote unquote secular work our listeners do. I think the more interesting question, I think the more life changing question is okay how does that sacred work matter beyond the present? Because we understand that in the present it's a means of loving my neighbors, myself. It's a means of glorifying God, but how does it matter for eternity? And that's the question I'm helping readers unpack in the sacredness of secular work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well in the book that you say that the Great Commission, as we know, is great and you're not denying that, but you're saying it's not the only commission. So tell us about the Great Commission and the danger in treating it as the only commission that. So tell us about the Great Commission and the danger in treating it as the only commission that Jesus gave us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm glad you pointed out that I'm not saying the Great Commission isn't great. I think the Great Commission is very great. But it is a very new idea in church history, roughly 200 years old, that the Great Commission is the only commission that Jesus' followers are called to, this call to make disciples. And it's really problematic for a lot of reasons. I'll just give you three reasons why it's so problematic to treat it as the only commission, number one, jesus never did. In Matthew 28, 19 through 20, he said go make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you to do right. And the gospels record Jesus giving us about 50 unique commands. If Christ meant for us to interpret the call to quote unquote save souls and make disciples as the totality of Christian mission, he could have said so, but he didn't. Instead he used his final words to reiterate the importance of following the totality of his teachings.
Speaker 2:That's the first problem with treating the Great Commission as the only commission Jesus never did. Here's the second. Ironically, it makes us less effective at the Great Commission. I would argue that for the foreseeable future, just as it was in the first few centuries of Christianity, full-time missionaries and pastors are not going to be the most effective people at making disciples of Jesus Christ. It's going to be mere Christians going to work Monday through Friday with people who will never darken the door of a church to hear about Jesus for the first time. With people who will never darken the door of a church to hear about Jesus for the first time. But when the Great Commission is the only one we hear preached in our churches and when the only people we see on stages in our churches are pastors and full-time missionaries, we, mere Christians in the pews, inevitably feel guilty about working in the very places most likely to make disciples, and I think most dramatically that guilt will drive people to leave those workplaces, but at a minimum it will make us half-hearted creatures while we stay there.
Speaker 2:I've spent the last two years writing this book about how our work matters beyond the Great Commission, and the irony is in those two years I've shared the gospel more than in the 10 years prior. Why? Because when you understand how a whole of your time, the end of the time that you're walking somebody through the Roman's road, it makes you come fully alive, and fully alive people attract the loss like honey attracts bees. So I promise three reasons why it's so dangerous to treat the Great Commission as the only commission. Number one Jesus never did. Number two we're ironically making the church less effective at the Great Commission when we do this.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, and most relevant to the topic of this book, when the Great Commission, when we treat the Great Commission as the only commission, it is impossible to see the full extent of how our work matters for eternity. Because if the Great Commission is the only commission, then our work only has eternal value when leveraged to the instrumental end of saving souls. And if our work only has instrumental value, then most of us are wasting the vast majority of our time. That's deeply depressing. More importantly, it's deeply unbiblical. And so the purpose of this book readers, our listeners. Right now they understand that their work matters because they could share the gospel.
Speaker 2:What about the other 99% of your time at work? How does that matter for eternity? And that's what we're really sinking our teeth into with this book Absolutely.
Speaker 1:More definitions here, but it also really helped me when you talked about instrumental value versus intrinsic value, and both of those lend additional insight into this whole topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and this is kind of what we were just talking about. So I define instrumental value and I think this is what most Christians understand already. My work has value because, let's say, as a barista, right, my work has eternal value because I can leverage that job as a barista to the instrumental end of sharing the gospel with my coworkers or writing a check to my church. Instrumental value, right. What I'm arguing in this book is hey, yes, your work has instrumental value, Absolutely 100%, but it also has intrinsic value to God. On the days in which you're making a latte and don't have a chance to share the gospel with somebody, that act of making a latte has the potential to matter for eternity, right? That's the crux of this book.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's a perfect lead into this idea of the abridged version of the gospel versus the unabridged. So tell our listeners what you mean by that. Because, wow, this was like a pop the cork out of the bottle moment for me when I read this section.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the introduction of the book is really setting up the problem. It's like, okay, we're treating the Great Commission as the only commission. How do we move away from this lie? And I would argue there are two thick roots feeding that lie. Number one are these half-truths about heaven that we've begun believing in our current day and age. And number two are these half-truths that we bought about the gospel, or what I call the abridged gospel, which I would argue is the dominant version of Jesus' good news preached today.
Speaker 2:Here's what it sounds like the gospel is the good news that Jesus came to save you and me from our sins. Listen, every word of that statement is praise God. Gloriously true, but it is a tragically incomplete and truncated version of the gospel, hence the name the abridged gospel. And there's tons of practical implications for this right, because if the gospel is only good news for our souls, as the abridged gospel suggests, then the great commission to save souls and make disciples is the singular mission of your life, and most of you are wasting most of your time, including myself. Right, but this isn't the good news. This isn't the totality of the good news we see in scripture. Right, the unabridged gospel says that in the beginning, god created a perfect world and invited his children to be with him first and foremost and to rule over this world with him. First commission that we see in Genesis 1. Right there in Genesis 1, god doesn't just call our souls good, he calls all of creation, including this material world and our work with that material world, very good.
Speaker 2:Turn your Bible over to Genesis 3. We sin, we usher in the curse that broke every part of creation, ensuring our need for a savior and Jesus' resurrection fast forward thousands of years proved emphatically that he was the savior that God promised in Genesis 3, who saves us by grace, through faith. And while we are not saved by our works, we have been saved for the good works God prepared in advance for us to do all along. And what are those good works? Go back to Genesis 1, working with this material world to cultivate heaven on earth. And if that's the gospel, this indescribably great news, not just for my soul but for the cosmos, right For this material world, then we can be confident.
Speaker 2:This is kind of where I land in the book. In this dual vocation we have in the present yes, the great commission to make disciples, but also the first commission to make culture and make a world that oozes God's goodness over the face of the earth. Right, there's this lie that has crept into Christianity that says that somehow, post Genesis three, the great commission has replaced the first commission. That's a lie, you know why? Because Jesus's blood paid the price to redeem the spiritual and the material world, to put us back to the work we were meant to do from the beginning in the garden to cultivate this world and make it more useful for other human beings' benefit and enjoyment. And because of that you can start to see how a hundred of your life matters for eternity, not just the explicitly spiritual tasks of evangelism and prayer.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. One of the things that you talked about that really solidified this for me was when you talked about how they used the parts of the earth to create things with right, like the stones and gold, and then you refer to it, then look at the end story, right, the new creation, and that's what we see as well. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on that? I would love to.
Speaker 2:Nobody ever asked about this. It's one of my favorite details in all of scripture. I'm so glad you appreciated it. Okay, so there's this little detail in Genesis 2 that I skipped over for years. I'm like I don't know what this means, I don't know the relevance, and it's a perfect symbol for Christian mission. Okay, genesis 2, a human mission, really.
Speaker 2:Genesis two, 10 through 12, says flowed from Eden. It winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. Aromatic resin and onyx are also there. Okay, so in the second chapter of scripture, we find these three elements underneath Adam and Eve's worksite gold, aromatic resin, which is also translated pearls sometimes. And onyx, which, for those of us who are not geologists, is this beautiful precious stone right? Where else do we see these three things in God's word in the second to last chapter of scripture this could not be more poetic which describes the new Jerusalem, god's eternal city, as having streets of gold, gates made of pearls and walls decorated with every kind of precious stone, including onyx.
Speaker 2:I've read a lot of theologians who argue that these materials were placed beneath the ground to be discovered by Adam and Eve or their descendants for the literal construction of what would become the city of God. I think that's right. I think this is God's poetic way of illustrating the first commission of saying hey, kids. I think that's right. I think this is God's poetic way of illustrating the first commission of saying hey, kids, I created this world good. I created for you to fill it and subdue it and rule it with me for my glory and your joy.
Speaker 2:And somehow miraculous is the resurrection of a couple thousand years later. Somehow, all of your labor is not going to be in vain. Somehow, I'm going to take all that labor and use it to build our eternal home. Right? It's just this beautiful symbol of what we were meant to do in the beginning, what Christ has redeemed us to do today. I don't think we're literally constructing the new Jerusalem now, post Genesis three, but this is what we were made for in the beginning and fast forward to our eternal vocation. This is what we're going to be doing forever and ever. Right, and I talk a lot about this in the book. Eternity is not a vacation but a perfect vocation.
Speaker 1:Yes, I laughed when I read that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Working with King Jesus without the curse.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, incredible, incredible. Well, let's talk a little bit about the half truths about heaven and the five whole truths that are really relevant to our work. Yeah, you don't have to go to all of them.
Speaker 2:but oh man, let's no, let's do it.
Speaker 2:Let's. I don't think we can get to all of them. There's so much impact. Here's the problem, and I had this problem for years Most of us spend more time planning a one week vacation than we do thinking about eternity, and what happens is that inevitably will lead us to settle for wishy-washy half-truths about heaven that are full-blown lies but are half-truths peddled by culture, rather than the epic whole truths that we find in scripture that are essential for fueling our hope for the future and, I believe, our purpose in the present. Let me just unpack a couple of them. One this half-truth that earth is our temporary home Kind of true. The whole truth is that Earth is our temporary home until it is our perfect and permanent one.
Speaker 2:Contrary to what the American end time tabloids might tell you, the earth is not going to be vaporized like the Death Star in Star Wars. Right, this is all based on a single verse, taken out of context in a very, very old translation of this passage of 2 Peter 3.10, where it says that the earth and everything in it will be burned up. Right, new Testament scholars will tell you, and this is why we see in newer translations of the Bible, that word isn't there Because, based on the new manuscripts of the Bible that we have, the newest manuscripts we have. That word isn't in there. The word that's there says the earth will be found out, will be disclosed, will be revealed, and that's consistent with God's character. God is not a creator who obliterates and destroys. He reconciles and redeems. That's true of our souls, that's true of human bodies See the risen Christ and I would argue, that's true of this earth. Our hope is not for a whole new world, but a whole renewed world, and more and more Bible translations are actually translating new earth to renewed earth, because that's a far more biblical picture of this.
Speaker 2:Now the listener is asking why the heck does this matter? Here's why this matters. If this earth is truly going to be obliterated in the end it's going to be destroyed cosmic destruction Then our work with this material world of planting gardens and typing on MacBooks made out of aluminum from the earth does not matter in the grand scheme of eternity. But if this earth is eternal and the things I'm working with are eternal, oh, suddenly my work has a lot more eternal significance. So I got a lot more purpose in the present and a lot more hope for the future, realizing that nobody's gonna spend eternity in heaven. As we think about heaven today. Nobody, not one person. Heaven will be here on earth. That's what Revelation 21 promises and that gives us much more concrete hope for what it will be like to worship with Christ forever and ever. That's another half-truth in the book, this half-truth that we will worship for all eternity. The whole truth is we're going to worship for eternity by singing and by working with our hands See Isaiah 65.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, like I love how you've dispelled, I think, a lot of these half-truths that people that are so predominant even in Christian culture right that you know you explaining all of that was incredibly helpful. Well, the title of your book, jordan, is Four Ways your Job Matters for Eternity, even when you're not sharing the gospel. So what are those four ways?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do it. Number one you work marriage for eternity because it is a vehicle for contributing to God's eternal pleasure Wild thing to think about. God doesn't need anything from us, but he allows us in our work to contribute to his eternal joy. Psalm 37, 23 says that the Lord directs the steps of the godly and delights in every detail of their lives. God does not just delight in watching you give money to your church, although he certainly delights in that. He doesn't just delight in watching you explicitly share the gospel with your coworkers. He delights in every detail of the lives of the godly, which means that everything you do at work today, with excellence and love and in accordance with God's commands, is an ingredient to his eternal pleasure, and that's the essence of worship.
Speaker 2:That's the first way you work matters for eternity. All of it, not just the explicitly spiritual things you work, matters for eternity because it is largely through your work that you can earn eternal rewards, which we never talk about in the church, and these are not we're not talking about earning salvation about in the church, and these are not. We're not talking about earning salvation. We are talking about Jesus's incessant command not just urgent command that we chase after eternal rewards, like treasures, like crowns and like increased job responsibilities on the new earth.
Speaker 2:Number three your work matters for eternity because through it, I believe, we can scratch off the thin veil currently separating heaven and earth and reveal glimpses of the kingdom of God in the present. That's very mysterious and we can unpack that more if you want to, later. And then finally, number four your work matters for eternity because, yes, you can leverage it to the instrumental end of sharing the gospel with those you work with. In the first few centuries of Christianity, it was mere Christians who contributed, according to scholars, more than 80% of conversions to Christianity. It was not religious, it was not religious professionals, it was not pastors preaching in synagogues, it was mere Christians working as tent makers and as mothers and as marketers. Whatever I would argue, the same is going to be true today if we accept that our work has intrinsic and instrumental value to God.
Speaker 1:I just want everybody to kind of like soak that in, because it just breathes new life into you. It really, it really does.
Speaker 2:That's been my favorite. I've been reading all these early reviews of the book. I have heard a few people say this book has made me come up fully alive for the first time, like man. Yeah, yes, that's the net of when you understand that God cares about everything you're doing.
Speaker 1:It's not the book, it's the biblical truth in the book that free us to embrace this work that we've always loved but felt guilty for loving right.
Speaker 2:It's a gift from God and he delights in that, and I'm just giving you the biblical framework to be like no, no, no, no. You've known in your bones that this matters beyond the Great Commission.
Speaker 1:I'm giving you the biblical evidence to support it, and the net of that is, yeah, being a fully alive human being who, ironically, is more effective at the Great Commission because you're fully alive launchers, helps us have these conversations, and I think that that would be a great way to kind of wrap things up here with our listeners to, like you know, give like some practical tools when you're at that point.
Speaker 2:I made a promise to readers in this book that the book would not just be interesting, but that it would be profoundly helpful. Said another way, I'm not just going to show you how your work matters for eternity. I'm going to show you practically how to respond to that truth and maximize the eternal impact of your work. So there's 24 practices throughout the book. My favorite is this practice of building a list of launchers to take conversations with the lost from the surface to the serious, to the spiritual. Because I don't know about you, ellen, but if not for some intentionality, my conversations with my lost neighbors and coworkers tend to stay pretty superficial, right. But I found that with God's grace and just a tiny little bit of intentionality, it's pretty easy to move conversations towards spiritual things. So this is how this works. I have a Google Doc on my phone it's literally just called launchers and I got a list of names in that Google Doc of people that I am intentionally trying to share the gospel with, and next to each name I've listed out a number of topics to bring up the next time I see that person to intentionally steer the conversation from the surface to the serious, to the spiritual. So let me give you an example. We're recording this in December, a few weeks before Christmas, and I'll change names here to protect the innocent. But my buddy, we'll call him Brian, my buddy Brian, he's a laps Catholic. Next time I see Brian, I'm going to ask Brian, hey Brian, what's your family's favorite Christmas traditions? It's a fairly superficial, surface level question. But then I'm going to ask, hey man, um, when did you stop going to Christmas Eve mass, cause I know you don't go anymore. Right, it's getting a little bit more serious. And then I'm going to go to the spiritual big hey man, where are you at with your faith? I know you grew up in the church. I know you haven't been in a long time. Where are you at with the question of Jesus? And maybe ask, hey, would you and your family want to come to church with my family on Christmas Eve this year? So you see how just a tiny little bit of intentionality of asking about Christmas traditions with your kids that nobody's going to not talk about can be intentionally structured in a way to move, to launch that conversation from the surface to the serious, to the spiritual.
Speaker 2:So, listeners, if you want to do this, this is the easiest thing you'll do. It'll take you 10 minutes. Three steps to building your own list of launchers. Step one choose where you're going to keep your list of launchers. This could be a Google doc, like me, it could be a physical journal, it could be a simple note on your iPhone, whatever. Step two list out the people. Shoot for five people you're intentionally trying to share the gospel with in this season. And then, step three just next to each person's name, list a few questions, a few topics, a few conversation starters that you think might, by God's grace, lead that conversation from the surface to the serious, to the spiritual. So the 24 practices in this book, that one has been a total game changer for me, specifically to help me be better about making disciples, which, again, is only one of the ways I work. Matters for eternity, but it's certainly an important one.
Speaker 1:Yes yes, absolutely, and, like you said, there's so many other things in this book. Listeners, you're going to have to get Jordan's book, the Sacredness of Cellular Work, because, like you said, there are so many other principles that you can put into place. Well, jordan, thank you so much for joining us here again today and I just wish you all the best on this book, and I know listeners for you that are listening. I hope that you feel challenged and encouraged and have a desire to investigate this further and check out Jordan's book.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Ellen. I can't wait. I can't wait to see you write a book someday. That's what we're all waiting for.
Speaker 1:We're working on it All right, jordan, such a joy to have you with us. We are so grateful for you listeners. Thank you for joining us on our podcast. Have a blessed day.
Speaker 2:All right.
