Certain Hope for Uncertain Times
12/16/2001 - How to Please God: Your Work Life
In his recent book called The Future of Success , author Alfred Knopf has some very disturbing things to say about work in America. He talks about the new economy of this generation and the old economy of generations past. He says, "The new economy with all its wealth, innovation, technology, changes and choices has come at an enormous cost. It has eroded our families, fragmented our communities, and stolen our integrity."
Today the typical American works 350 more hours a year than the typical European, that's almost nine more 40 hour work weeks, and works more hours even than the industrious Japanese. The result is that most of us are earning more money and living better materially than our parents did a quarter of century ago. Yet to do that we're working longer and more frantically than ever before and the time and energy left over for our non-working lives is evaporating. We're making a better living, but we're not making a better life.
The biggest difference between the way we used to work in this country and the way we work now is the accelerated pressure to do everything better, faster and cheaper. Knopf says, "You never reach a point where you can relax. Even if you succeed, your success will always be temporary, because your competitors are always catching up. There's no coasting. Every producer and seller is running scared-placing bets, working his tail off, watching his back. Only the paranoid survive."
In the old economy, company loyalty was a value. Men and women worked for the same company for decades, even for generations. And the company took care of them. Today company loyalty is obsolete. Anyone who does anything for pay that's repetitive and routine can easily be replaced. No longer do companies feel a sense of responsibility to their employees, communities, and the public at large. Their sole responsibility is to the bottom line, to maximize the value of their investor's shares. And executives who don't make their companies profitable and raise the value of their stock lose their jobs.
In the new economy the only way up is to promote yourself. Your financial success depends on how well you sell "You." You need to be the head marketer for the brand called "You." And selling yourself can be a full-time job. It begins with the right connections. The real value of a college education in the new economy is not what you learn in the classroom, but the connections that you make.
Knopf says, "It's the old Protestant work ethic turned on its ear. You're worthy because the market rewards you. You succeed financially because you believe passionately not in God but in yourself. By marketing your personality and selling it successfully you can increase your worth and gain worthiness in the divine eyes of the market."
The new economy has produced mountains of money, but the gap between the "haves and have-nots" in our culture has never been wider. In 1980, the typical CEO of a company made about 40 times that of an average worker. In 1990, that figure rose to 85 times. By 2000, it had spiked to 419 times. The rich get richer. About 85% of all the stock market gains in the 1990's went to the wealthiest 1% of the population. The richest 1% of Americans have as much money as the bottom 100 million families in our country. And Bill Gates, the richest man in America, has a net worth equal to the combined worth of the bottom half of all American families.
To sum it all up Knopf writes, "When earnings are less predictable and jobs less secure, people work harder-longer hours and with more intensity. The boundaries between work and life blur. Work doesn't end. The character of work is becoming far more intrusive on the rest of our lives. It's more emotionally and intellectually taxing. It preoccupies our waking hours and sometimes reaches deep into our sleep. Communication devices like cell phones and pagers break into our lives like burglars causing everything else to be compressed or pushed out altogether."
Work. It's a huge theme in most of our lives. And this morning as we continue our series called Certain Hope for Uncertain Times we're going to look at what it takes to please God in our work lives. Last week, we discovered how to please God in our sex lives.
If you have your Bibles turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12. In this passage the apostle Paul is going to talk about what it means to please God in our work lives. He started this section of his letter by saying in 4:1, Finally, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. Last week we said that the Christian life is all about living to please God, the one person in the universe who is madly in love with each one of us. And the process of pleasing God is life long, it's on going, it's more and more.
Now look at 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10, Now about your mutual love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, dear friends to do so more and more.
Before Paul gets into our work lives he wants to remind us of the importance of loving one another. Jesus said in John 13:35, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Genuine Christ like love is the best thing we have to offer to a world filled with hate.
Paul says you have been taught by God to love each other. How has God taught us to love? He's taught us to love by what he did for us in giving us his Son. By sacrificing for us. By putting our needs ahead of his own comfort. Perhaps the most quoted verse in the whole Bible is John 3:16 that says, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
In 1 John 3:16 we read, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
Laying down of our lives for each other is the true mark of a Christ follower. I love the way Christian psychologist John White puts it in his book, The Fight. He writes that "the church that convinces people that there is a God is a church that manifests what only God can do, that is, to unite human beings in love ... There is nothing that convinces people that God exists or that awakens their craving for him like the discovery of Christian brothers and sisters who love one another ... The sight of loving unity among Christians arrests the non-Christian. It crashes through his intellect, stirs up his conscience and creates a tumult of longing in his heart because he was created to enjoy the very same thing that you are demonstrating."
Paul says, "You're doing it. Your reputation for loving one another is known throughout Macedonia. Keep it up! More and more."
When I think about Valley View, I can say the same thing. You're doing it. I see people laying their lives down for one another all over the place. There are those who open their homes every week for small group gatherings, some even offer a meal for 20 or 30 people. Right now there's a small group helping a single woman get her house ready for a roommate. There are men who are spending hours of their own time putting on a new roof. There are people teaming up to make meals for a family who just had a new baby. There are those who have donated cars to the church. There are many who spend countless hours on the phone or face to face listening to people, praying with people, encouraging people. I see people doing the tough things that love demands, like having hard conversations, speaking the truth in love, giving and receiving forgiveness.
Right now there's a team of people ready to give up a week of two of vacation to pour out their lives to tell migrant workers in Mexico about Jesus. There are those who lay their lives down every Sunday to teach our children about the love of Christ in our Valley Kids ministry. There's a small army of those here who lay down their lives every week to work with teenagers in our area high schools. Many months our Community Care Fund gives away hundreds of dollars to those facing financial challenges in our church. Whenever we present a need for Bibles for the persecuted church, or shoebox gifts for needy kids, you always respond. And on and on it goes.
The best reputation that we can have at Valley View is not that we have great worship and solid teaching, as important as that is, the best reputation is that we love each other. This week I had breakfast with a couple that have been coming to our church just since September. And at one point I asked them what they thought of Valley View . And the man said, "I don't know, but it was just what I was looking for." And after saying some nice things about the worship and the teaching he said, "I can feel the love in this place. I can see that people really care for each other and want to help each other." That's what excited me the most. Because if we're not becoming more and more loving, than our worship and our teaching means absolutely nothing. It really does. Church, listen to me, you're loving each other, let's keep loving one another more and more.
Now what about our work lives? Look at verses 11-12,Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Paul says I want you to be ambitious about your work life. But the kind of ambition he has in mind is a bit different than the kind of ambition we might think of. The Greek word for ambition that he uses here literally means, "to strive eagerly." He uses it only two other times in the New Testament.
In Romans 15:20 Paul says, It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. Paul was all about reaching unreached people. That's what turned his crank. That's what he eagerly strived to do.
And then he uses the word again in 2 Corinthians 5:9 when he writes, So we make it our ambition to please the Lord, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.
There's nothing wrong with ambition. Ambition is a good thing as long as it's for the right thing. And when it comes to work our ambition should not be to become a millionaire at any cost, to climb over people, and tank our integrity, and neglect our families. There's nothing wrong with wealth at all. But that's bad ambition. It's the kind of ambition that the world encourages. Win at any cost. Lay down your life for the company.
It's the kind of ambition that prompted one businessman to say, "Twenty years ago I thought I was on the right track for God. I was a leader in my church, a Sunday School teacher, held a powerful position with a prestigious law firm. My bank accounts were full, my home was fashionable, and my cars were sleek. And I was ... miserable. While busily achieving my goals, I was steadily destroying my marriage. For years my wife had considered divorcing me, which would have destroyed my self-confidence and ruined my all important image."
That kind of ambition doesn't please God. That kind of ambition doesn't satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. That kind of ambition can ruin us. So when it comes to work, Paul says I want you to be ambitious about something else. And he gives us three things.
First, be ambitious to lead a quiet life. The word "quiet" doesn't mean we're not to talk to anybody. Paul's not advocating a vow of silence here. The word "quiet" means "a peaceful, restful, contented life." If you want to strive for something in your work life, then strive to be content with who you are and what you have. Don't spend your career chasing illusive, self-centered goals. And that's a tough thing to do. And that can only be done with the help of the Holy Spirit.
I could tell story after story of people at Valley View who have made that their ambition. And it hasn't been easy. But they have been relentless in swimming upstream in a downstream culture that values work over everything else. And God has honored them for it.
I think Gordon Dahl put it best when he said, "Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship. As a result, their meanings and values are distorted. Their relationships disintegrate faster than they can keep them in repair, and their life-styles resemble a cast of characters in search of a plot."
We have those in our church community who have refused to worship their work and have chosen employment not on the basis of salary, perks, or opportunities for advancement. The things most people chase after in a career. But have chosen employment based on proximity to their home and to the church community and based on reasonable hours and flexibility that will allow them to spend more of their time building into the lives of others. They have turned down promotions and walked away for more money to do that. But they've made it their ambition to live a contented life.
Second, make it your ambition to mind your own business. There was an interesting phenomenon going on in Thessalonika when Paul wrote this letter. People were so convinced that Jesus was coming back any day that they were quitting their jobs. I mean after all if you thought that Jesus was coming back this week would you get up for work tomorrow? What's the point?
That's how close they thought the return of the Lord was. And as a result they weren't going to work, they weren't staying busy, instead they were becoming busy bodies because they had too much time on their hands.
He'll address this again in 2 Thessalonians 3:11-12 when he says, We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy. They are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
Paul says, "Time out! Hold on! Jesus could come back at any moment, that's true, but don't stop living life. Don't stop settin' the alarm clock. Don't stop gettin' out of bed. Don't stop goin' to work."
Jesus could come back at anytime. But we gotta' keep livin' life, because we don't know when that is. When Jesus comes back somebody's going to be walking down the aisle and getting married, somebody's going to be lying on the operating table opened up for surgery. That'll be an out of body experience. Somebody's going to be on the delivery table having a baby. That'll be fun. Until Jesus comes, keep on living life. Keep on working.
Work is a good thing. Work was created by God. Much of our self-worth comes from our work. As parents we need to teach our children the value of a good day's work. It's not good to be idle. We get in trouble when we have too much time on our hands. On the one hand, there's the danger of work addiction and that's not good. But on the other hand, there's the danger of laziness and irresponsibility. That's not good either. So make it your ambition to keep your work life in balance. Mind your own business.
And third, make it your ambition to work with your hands. By that Paul doesn't mean that we all need to be doing manual labor. But he does mean we all need to develop some kind of skill and work hard at it.
It that culture the Greeks despised manual labor and thought it was the job of slaves to work with their hands. But in the Jewish culture, every Jewish boy was taught a trade no matter how wealthy his family was. Many believe that the apostle Paul was a blue blood, from a very rich family because he was highly educated by the best rabbis in the world at that time. Yet he still had a trade. His trade was making tents. And he used that skill to support himself. So he wasn't a burden to anybody.
The Bible gives dignity to every form of work. There are no meaningless jobs in God's sight. We may rank them white collar and blue collar. But God doesn't. All legitimate work has dignity in God's eyes.
One-way Christians win respect in the marketplace is by working well. A lazy Christian is a bad advertisement for God. Working well wins the respect of those outside of Christ and keeps us from being financially dependent on others Paul says in verse 12. Work is good. Just keep it in perspective.
Remember that businessman I quoted who almost tanked his marriage? Well, he didn't. Thanks to two Christian friends who saw their work as ministry. And they invited him to a meeting where he heard an incredibly successful businessman share about the peace and joy he found in Jesus Christ. And at that meeting he trusted Christ as his Savior. His name is Phil Downer and his life dramatically changed. His marriage and family were saved and he went on to become the president of the Christian Business Men's Committee, a national organization that is committed to helping believers in the marketplace shine bright for Jesus Christ. Our jobs are also our field of ministry. They're the place where we can let our light shine for Jesus Christ.
Let's be ambitious about our work. Let's do our work well. But at the end of the day, let's be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and know that we're living to please God more and more.