Christians and the Workplace, Part 1

Dear Heavenly Father, it is a blessing to be able to come before you tonight to read from your Word, to be able to understand the truth and goodness of your Word, to be able to dwell in fellowship with believers and saints here tonight. We thank you for those that are here. We pray for those that are unable to make it tonight.

Lord, please keep them safe. Lord, thank you for this church we're able to worship in, and we pray that we'd always continue to stir one another to love and good deeds. And we ask this all in your name. Amen.

I'm going back and head back to your seats. If you have your Bible, please open up to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Deuteronomy chapter 6. I like your shirt. It's nice.

Deuteronomy chapter 6. That's where we will be tonight. Deuteronomy is in the Torah, first five books of the Bible.

It is the culminating book of the Torah written by Moses. It's a wonderful book displaying the life of Moses, a great leader that we will talk about briefly on the third week of this series. But Deuteronomy chapter 6, we'll start in verse 4. This is known as the Great Shema.

Hear the living and active word of God speak. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your hearts. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit at your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear what God has said. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this evening.

We thank you for the truth and the validity of scripture that we might be able to come to know you more clearly and more fully through the illumination of the Holy Spirit in our souls. God, we pray that as we come before you tonight that we get a better understanding of this topic and what we're looking at. Lord, we ask all this in your name. Amen.

I'm stoked. I'm so excited.

I've been waiting for this for a really long time. My wife and I took a long sabbatical because, I don't know. Some people are like, why'd you take a sabbatical? You're not even a pastor. I just wanted a break.

So we went to Indiana. We went to Utah. We went to Catalina Island and just spent some time together with friends as well in Utah, with family in Indiana, and then just by ourselves in Catalina Island.

Went parasailing. That was fun. We got posted on their Instagram.

They got 16 likes. That's pretty cool. So almost famous.

It was a lot of fun to be able to spend time together, but most importantly, I love to be able to spend time not just away from the church, obviously, because I've missed you guys so much, but during those times, I'm able to visit other churches in different states and also here locally out by where we live and just to see other brothers and sisters in Christ and how they worship in their churches and what they do and what they're going over, learning how to pray for different churches and different people. It's really a blessing. And so I've been able to learn by the grace of God quite a bit about the subject that we're gonna be talking about tonight.

And it's not gonna be exactly what you think. So the main title of the sermon is Christianity in the Workplace. And we're not gonna be looking at that exactly.

And it's kind of hard to explain. So I made this graph to show you all, because I think it's really important to understand where the sermon and where the series is going. And I'll explain it all as time goes on.

And you'll also see this every single sermon as well, or every single lecture. I'm not a pastor, so I do like to call them lectures rather than sermons or preaching. I do love teaching.

I think that's a lot of fun. And so I have this. This is basically what we're going over.

So tonight, Pinocchio and Habitual Living. We're not gonna watch a movie, I promise, but we are gonna talk about that. And so then you kind of see there's different things.

There's really four things, work, theology, and means of grace, habits, and productivity. And those will be the different parts of the sermons that we're gonna be going over. And again, I'll show these to you guys every single week.

It'll be the second slide pretty much every single week to kind of refresh your mind and what we're going over. But hopefully it gives you a better understanding of where it is. So we see tonight, we're gonna talk a little bit about work, not a whole lot, because we need to lay some groundwork first.

We're gonna look at theology of work and the means of grace that God has given to us through that. Then we're gonna talk a lot about habits this week and next week, a lot about habits, and I'll explain why. And then a little bit about productivity at the end.

Next week, the ordinary means of grace is a more balanced week. We're gonna look at habits, productivity, I'm sorry, habits, means of grace, and then work as well. And then the third week, which I just finished writing last night, that was gonna be great.

I'm really excited about that. I mean, I'm excited about all of them, but that one's the culminating one. Like if you're thinking about Christianity in the workplace, that's the main one.

That one's all gonna be about work. And God is so kind. And through the people I've been able to learn and listen to, I've learned so much from this topic, and I can't wait to share over these next four weeks.

And then the last week, we focused a lot on productivity and what that looks like in Christian living and how we can be productive, not efficient, but productive. And there is a difference between the two. That's why we call it gospel-driven productivity.

So it's kind of like an overview of what the entirety of this series will look like. And I'm really excited about that. And then you guys can see the notes that I gave you.

They're not an outline. I'm sorry. By some odd means, I was given the opportunity to teach all four weeks in August on Wednesday nights and then two Sundays.

Oh, thanks. Appreciate it. All right.

And so Sunday, I will have an outline. I promise. Wednesday night, no outline.

Every single week, this is what you got because this is a time for you to come and to learn and to be invested into the Word of God and what the illumination of the scriptures is showing to us, hopefully by the Holy Spirit. So when I was a teacher, I'm no longer a teacher at the school I used to teach at, Arrowhead Christian Academy. I taught speech and debate, Bible.

I taught American literature one year, and then the next year they took it away from me. And then I taught health. And I remember sitting down, we were about to leave for Argentina, I think it was, with the church.

And my wife and I were having our last dinner. And we were about to leave, and I get a call from the principal. He says, Hey, AJ.

And this was the middle of the summer. So I was like, Oh man, I'm either getting fired or I'm getting a huge raise. And it wasn't either.

And he said, how do you feel about teaching health? And the first question was, are you asking me or are you telling me? He said, I'm telling you. I said, Okay. And so I decided to do it.

And my wife was like, AJ, you're going to teach some weird things to kids. I was like, It's okay. We're good.

And I was able to transform the whole class into habits. And we'll talk about that a bit more tonight and what that looks like. But the first lecture, no matter what class I taught, American literature, Bible, speech, debate, or health, the first lecture was always on how to take notes.

When I was in high school and college, no teacher ever taught me how to take notes. They said, Here's a notebook. Enjoy.

Have fun. I don't really know what to do. And so taking notes and learning how to take notes effectively is really important.

When you're given an outline, you just copy everything, right? You just look at what's on the screen and you write it down. And there will be a little bit of that. So the way that it's structured, there's a couple lines on it.

Do you have one? Can I see yours? Yeah, I forgot what it looked like. Yeah. So there's a couple different lines on it.

Obviously, it's one for questions, one's for thoughts, and one's for notes. And I think these three different parts of your faculties, your mind, if you can engage those three different parts as you're listening to a lecture or a sermon or a message, whatever it is, I think that's really important to learn what should I write down the content and then thoughts that I have. I've looked at this, but I'm thinking about this as well.

That does require that you probably stop listening to me at one point. But one of the best tips I've found in retention of reading is reading and then stopping, looking away, and then putting in my own words as if I were to teach someone that same thing. So that's what that thought section is mainly for.

And then questions are for you to engage with myself or other believers around you after the message. And again, those questions, they don't have to be critical questions. They can be like, why did you say this and not this? They can also be like, well, what did you mean when you said this? Or what does it look like to do work in this realm or something like that? So whatever questions you can think of, I encourage you guys to write.

And so listen, if you all hate it, and like half of you guys come up and complain afterwards, I'll give you guys outlines for the next couple of weeks. But again, the goal is to have you guys interact and engage with this specifically because it's good to get into a habit of note-taking, which I'll talk about a bit more. So these next couple of weeks are going to be great.

I'm really excited to talk mainly about work and habits. And I know what you're thinking. You're only 25.

You probably don't know that much. You haven't lived that long. So two things.

One, you're right. Thank you. It's good to be critical and to test all spirits, test all things. Don't just blindly believe what I say.

But secondly, and more importantly, I think you should listen because I'm not perfect. And I'm trying different ways.

I'm documenting all those different ways. And I'm showing you all these different ways that I've tried to view work, that I've tried to be productive, that I've tried to create habits in my own life. If you have someone up here that was preaching and they were perfect, that would be unrealistic.

And in the back of your mind, subconsciously, you'd always be saying, well, you're perfect. That's why you can do it. You're perfect.

That's why you can do it. I'm not. Every preacher is a sinner.

And so when they come up here to teach, you should see it as such. That's why Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians to imitate me as I imitate Christ. Because you can look at Paul and say that there's someone I can follow and learn from and be disciple of and then do what they're doing.

And so I'm just trying to document to you what I've done, what I've seen, what I've learned, what I've heard, and hopefully share that with you in some way. There's two key images I want you to look at. And this is kind of what the title of the message is about on Pinocchio and Habits.

There's something called archetypes that are in every single major story. Every single story that you've ever listened to or watched, there's archetypes. An archetype is a representational pattern of an adaptive behavior.

A representational pattern of an adaptive behavior. So representational, it represents something bigger than itself. And then it's a pattern.

So it's seen throughout different movies. Some people call it themes or motifs. And then representational pattern of an adaptive.

So then you can look at it and say, I can learn something from this and then do that. And then of course, that's where the behavior comes in. You make it a habit after doing it after some time.

So you've probably watched a movie. You've walked down and you're like, that main character is really cool. I like what they did.

And maybe you're inspired to maybe live a certain way in which they lived. And I think that's why for some people, the Old Testament is really hard. On Sundays, I'm going to be going over the Old Testament.

I'm going to do two stories in the Old Testament specifically. And when you read the Old Testament, you're not getting a list of things to do. You're getting a story, you're getting flawed people, and you're seeing a faithful God all throughout the Old Testament.

But it takes work. It takes a lot of work to be able to look at the Old Testament and then to read the Old Testament and say, these are the themes that I can pull. Here's how I can see God's faithfulness all throughout scripture.

It takes a lot more work to do that than it does to come to an epistle in the New Testament. Like, ah, yes, thank you so much, Paul, for telling me exactly what I should do. It's hard because we have to wrestle with those things.

And so in archetypes, it's the same sort of idea. So I put Pinocchio up here because I think these are the two key central images in this movie that demonstrate what an archetype is. We look at it, it's a representational pattern to adapt to behavior.

So you get this scene in the beginning of Geppetto, where he prays, basically. He looks up to the heavens, looks up to the stars. And you see this theme in scripture.

You see it in old literature, where people often will look up. They would make sacrifices with food because the aroma went up into the gods, as the Greeks used to think it would go up to the Greeks. And so they make these sacrifices.

They would look upwards because they were looking at something higher than themselves. Pinocchio is not a Christian movie. We're not going to have a different Christian movie every week.

The point of this is for you to see orientation. Geppetto was hoping for a son. And I think there's something really important to see within that.

If God has designed marriage for an individual and their path is marriage, I do believe it is the biblical thing to have children. And the refusal to have children is a different conversation. And I don't think that you can be fully matured until you've had children.

That does a lot to an individual. And I'll talk about this more towards the end, but it's really important to see children as a blessing. So tonight we'll focus a little bit on family and what that looks like.

But Geppetto knew that, I need to take on more responsibility. He was a good worker. He worked a lot. He carved different puppets or things in the shop that he had, but he realized and recognized, I need something else because the work wasn't fulfilling for him.

Then you have this picture of Pinocchio. This is probably the most famous picture of Pinocchio where his nose grows really big because what? What did he do? He lied.

What is Pinocchio's goal the whole movie? Does anybody know? To become a real boy. So then the broader theme of that is that you can never become a real man or a real woman or be who you were made to be if your life is structured around lies and not truth and reality. So a refusal to speak the truth leads to a life of lies, which leads to immaturity, which leads to you not being who you should be.

And lies form habits. Lies are like the Hydra that when you cut off one head, three more appear and you keep doing it and then more keep appearing. I remember the old Veggie Tales, Larry Boy and The Fib and it had that little thing. Junior made a little line. It got bigger and it got bigger and it was a huge monster. Right? And we look at them like, oh, you know, that's cute.

But again, that's how lies are. And when you start to lie, when you slander, when you gossip, when you're deceptive, those things grow more and more and more. And so that's, again, until it's as clear as the nose on your face.

Right? And so unless you tell the truth, your life is constructed by or fabricated rather by falsehood. And so the goal is for Pinocchio to learn to tell the truth, to become a real man. He goes on an adventure, all that kind of stuff.

We see he gets mixed up in Pleasure Island, which we'll talk about, not the island itself. We're actually going to talk about that in three weeks with what pleasure is. Because I think as we think about this conversation about work and what it is, the goal is to apply this to every single one of you guys.

I'm going to explain that a bit more. In its purest sense, I'm trying to structure habits in a way for you all tonight. It's so important to see habits as not legalistic, but as a pattern that happens more often than not, that orients you towards the good, the beautiful and the truth.

Every single time I give a lecture, I have a question and tonight the question is very simple. A legalist and a saint can keep the same exact habits in their life, whether it's with work, with family or whatever else it might be. So the question is, what is then the difference between the legalist and the saint when it comes to keeping habits? There's a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid for work and understanding our vocation and who we are as made in the image of God.

And a lot of that comes from understanding the habits that we formed and the better habits that we can have, the more we can glorify God. And again, that'll come in a little bit. So I'm going to suggest a lot of notions in the next four weeks with you guys and some that you might not understand or might not agree with, or maybe you think this doesn't apply to me and that's okay.

Because ideally, you might hear something and be like, you know, that doesn't apply to me. I'm not married. That doesn't apply to me.

I don't have kids. It doesn't apply to me. I'm a widow. It doesn't apply to me. I am married, but I have no kids, whatever it is.

The goal is not for you to look at this series and then be like, okay, now I have action steps for what I should do when I go back home.

That's not the goal. The goal is to get a more complete picture of Christ. And so if you go and you hear a sermon and you think, that doesn't apply to me, but I have a friend and they probably shouldn't have been here for that.

That would have been really good for them. You missed everything. Everything.

Because it might not directly apply to you to where then when we think of application, we think of I can go home and I have a to do list of things I can practice and try out tomorrow. That's not the goal. The goal is to receive another piece of the puzzle that gives us a clearer picture of who Christ is in the conversation of work and theology and vocation.

I do believe that three of the oldest themes are truth, love, and work. And we see that in Genesis, which we'll look at in a couple of weeks. But again, it's important to see that these are just pieces of the puzzle that I'm trying to give to you.

At the end of each lecture, they'll then be sort of like a fast-paced breakdown of habits or application points that you can then implement into your life. But those are not the goal. The reason is simple.

I want you to know more about Christ and not just know what to do. That's why we get Mary and Martha, being with Christ or doing for Christ. You can do something for Christ and it's still not be blessed.

It's still not be a good thing. Knowing what to do does not save you. Doing it does.

Repentance, belief, acceptance of Christ and doing it is derived from a heart that seeks and yearns for Christ and wanting to know him more fully. So really knowing about something doesn't save, but knowing truth that leads to obedience through the habits that you have does. And a good way to think about this is the fruits of the spirit.

And I'm sorry, it's the fruit of the spirit, not the fruits. It's not plural. It's singular.

And that should give you something in the name. They're not called the accomplishments of the Christian or the good works of the Christian. Listen to what Jonathan Landry says.

Jonathan Landry Cruz, he wrote a book called the character of Christ. Again, another author that I think is great. Jonathan Landry Cruz, he wrote a book called the character of Christ.

He discussed how Paul also in Galatians 5 with the fruit of the spirit lists vices, not just virtues. He then says that since evil things won't get us into the kingdom, our natural tendency would be to ask, what do I need to do then? But that is to miss the point. This verse says that the kingdom is something people inherit.

It is a gift. Only God can bring us into his kingdom. So you see, God has always been searching for someone who will bear much fruits and you bear much fruit, not just the work that you do, but the habits that you formed in your own life.

Go to Isaiah chapter 5, Isaiah chapter 5. God is always looking for someone who's going to bear much fruits. So Isaiah chapter 5 gives us a good understanding of this.

Isaiah is towards the middle of your Bible. It's after all the poetic books, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Job. It gets into the major prophets, major prophets, not necessarily just because they're more famous, but because the books are also really big compared to the minor prophets.

So Isaiah chapter 5, we get a parable of the vineyard. We'll start in verse 1. Isaiah chapter 5, it says, let me sing now for my beloved, a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.

My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around, removed its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it.

Then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. So again, Christ is looking for those that were going to bear much fruit. Verse three.

And now oh, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless ones? So now let me tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed.

I will break down its wall and it will become trampled. I will lay it waste. I will not be pruned or hoed.

It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah, his delightful plants.

Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed. For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress. So God is looking for those that will bear much fruit.

In the beginning with Adam and Eve, they were supposed to be the be fruitful and multiply, but they fell into sin. And then we can look at that and say, well, that's not fair. Why does God punish us for Adam and Eve? Because we are not victims of the fall.

We are partakers in the fall. And so then go to Isaiah chapter 11, a couple of chapters over. Again, God is looking for people that are going to bear much fruit, and we bear more fruit through solid habits that you put in your life to glorify Christ, proclaim the gospel and preach his word.

Isaiah chapter 11, we'll start in verse 1. You know this, this verse very popular than a shoot will spring forth from the stem of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. And he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. So Christ is going to be the fulfillment of the one that God has been looking for to bear much fruit for his name.

So listen, Christ has given us the helper, the Holy Spirit, John 14, John 16, talk about that. And the fruit of the spirit are not demands on the Christian. They are a declaration of what a Christian should be now that they have the Holy Spirit living in them.

The same spirit that rose Christ from the grave. I was literally giddy with excitement. I was on a plane writing this and literally had to stop and just smile and thank the Lord.

Listen to this. The fruit of the spirit and the habits that we form do not show us what we need to be as much as they show us who Christ is. I'm going to say that again.

The fruit of the spirit and the habits that we form do not show us what we need to be as much as they show us who Christ is. You cannot earn the favor of God at all by no habits that you do. That is why John 15, Christ says that we must abide in him because apart from him, we bear no fruit.

We have no good habits. Jonathan Owens said that quote, when by faith we have attained the glory of Christ, it will be effectual unto the transformation of our souls. That's the goal.

Attain the glory of Christ by faith, not doing good works, not having good habits, not accomplishing the fruits of the spirit because Christ is the fulfillment of the fruits of the spirit. He lived the perfect life that we could not live. This whole series is not a how-to series.

It is a simple “He already did it” series. Christ has already done all the work. He's died on the cross.

He's died for our sins. We repent and believe in the gospel. Now the good works that we do, the habits that we form are for the glory of God.

Now to answer the question early that I asked earlier, you know, the difference between a legalist and a saint is very simple. A legalist sees a habit as something that makes God love them more, but a saint sees a habit as something that they do because of God's love for them. So it's the opposite.

A legalist says, if I do this, God will love me more. A saint says, I do this because of my love for God and because God loves me. It's not compulsion.

It's done out of a love for Christ, a love for others. And we're going to see within this whole series on work, that work is really summed up in worship, doing for the glory of God and the betterment of your fellow man. So what do we do with this long introduction? Here are a couple of points to consider.

Number one, habits are who we are consistently. Aristotle said that you are what you repeatedly do. I believe in that wholeheartedly.

So the habits that we form, habits are who we are consistently and what we repeatedly do. It shows where our priorities are. Secondly, Christians must form godly habits, not because we want God to love us more, but because he first loved us.

So you have to have good habits in place. How we do anything, point number three, is how we will do everything. We must have gospel-centered excellence in everything that we do.

I'm supposed to say everything that we do on there. That's my bad. So let's do this.

This won't sound good on the audio. So I apologize to whoever's doing it. Turn to the person next to you.

Tell them what kind of habits you have in your life right now. Any habit. Go ahead.

What habits do you have in your own life right now? Things you do on a daily basis. Go.

Okay. So habits. Habits, habits, habits.

My wife and I started reading a book by Justin Early. It's a really good book. It's called Habits of the Household.

And again, another good author, Habits of the Household by Justin Early. If you're looking for how to form good habits, my wife and I want to have a family one day. And so we need to have habits now.

You should not live reactively to anything. You should try to be proactive in everything. So preventative.

When I was a lifeguard, and we'll kind of talk about this with work as well. I think I might have time. I was a lifeguard and they taught us why they, the first question they asked us, why do you yell at a kid to stop running on the pool deck? Because they could get hurt.

All right. And so then that whole thing there is that the reason why that's the most common thing is to yell at a kid to stop running. We do that because we don't want to deal with what happens if he trips and falls.

So it's all preventative. And so if your whole life is reactive rather than preventative, you're not going to be ready when things come your way. And so I'm going to define habits next week, not this week, because I would love for you to wrestle with how you would define habits.

Write down what you think the definition of a habit is and come tell me at the end of the service. Habits are really important. And the reason why is because they're solid and they're orienting like we talked about in the beginning with Pinocchio.

They orient us towards the good. They should. You should have good habits that orient you, point you towards, direct you towards that which is good.

And so a habit makes sure that no matter what happens, something is going to start and end the same way. So for example, if you have a good morning routine and a good night routine, no matter what happens in between, you know what's going to happen at night and you know what's going to happen in the morning. And we'll talk about that because in the book, and I'll talk quite a bit, I'll quote him quite a bit in this.

He has this thing called the habit wheel and he lists out 10 different areas in your life in which you need to have solid habits. Now he structures it mainly in the confines of a family. I'll talk a bit about that, which is why we read Deuteronomy 6, about reading these things to your children and to your family.

But I'm also going to apply it to anyone that maybe doesn't have a family. Maybe it's just friends, maybe it's just them. And again, if you're like none of this applied to me because I have a specific job, a very niche job, that's fine because the goal is not for me to give you a sermon about your area of expertise.

I can't talk to mechanics. I can't talk to house cleaners. I can't talk to accountants.

That's not me. And that would require an individual lecture for every single one of those places. The goal is to give you a framework and understanding for what work is and how we do that.

And so for habits, I think it's important to lay the groundwork because before you get into the work, you need to talk about the habits that you have that make you a better worker. And so tonight we're going to look at three different types of habits along this wheel, and it's the waking, mealtimes and discipline. For each one, I'll kind of give you an understanding like the divine purpose, why we wake up, why we have meals and why we need to discipline or what discipline is.

I'll give you some verses for it and we'll talk about it a bit more. But again, the goal is for you to see hopefully the importance of habits, which hopefully you've seen by now, and the goal is to dive into some of these areas. And this is where we get into orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Orthodoxy is right belief. Orthopraxy is right practice. So instead of starting off and saying, hey, do all these things first, let's say, what is the purpose of this from God and how do we do this properly? So the first one is waking.

Very simple. The divine purpose, orienting yourself to the reality of God's love and mercy. That's a beautiful thing.

If you have your Bibles, go to Lamentations chapter 3. Lamentations chapter 3. Great verse in the Old Testament.

Lamentations chapter 3 gives us an understanding of what the mercies of God look like in our day-to-day life. And it's hard to understand these mercies if you wake up because waking up is weird. I mean, you wake up and your hair is all over the place.

Your breath stinks. No one wants to talk to you. You don't want to talk to anyone else.

And so you wake up and your job is to orient yourself and align yourself with what you should be doing as an individual. And that's incredibly hard to do. So Lamentations chapter three is actually, I think I just said my wife's favorite verse.

Verse 22 to 24 says this. The Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in him. Waking up is your opportunity to see the mercies and goodness of God.

And in the walk-in, another great verse is Ephesians 2, verse 10. We love Ephesians 2:8 and 9. By grace you've been saved, right? Oh, good. Saved by grace.

Don't err on anything. Don't got to do anything. No, then the very next verse Paul says that God has prepared good works before you.

And so if you wake up every day thinking there's good works God has set before me today, I got to do that. You're going to find those opportunities. We'll talk about this a bit more towards the end.

That's why it's so important to seek, to ask, to knock, and what that biblical notion in Matthew talks about. And when we seek for these things, you will find those things. Think of the last time that someone was like, hey, I have a song I want to show you.

Okay, great. What kind of song? It's country. I can't stand country.

And so then if you go in to listen to that song, you're thinking, I don't like country. I don't like country. I don't like country.

You're going to find everything wrong with the song. This is not a name and claim. This is not a perception-is-reality type thing, but it is a show that if you wake up thinking God has prepared good things for me today, I need to find what those things are.

You're going to find them. They're going to make themselves evident to you. If you just go home and think for a minute, why is my life so miserable? Why is everything going wrong? We're so busy with work and family and life and social things that we don't often take time to pause and rest and think.

The resting in Sabbath is towards the end. And the reason why it's towards the end, and I'll say this, I think next week or two weeks later, but it's important to reiterate it now. I've never had someone come up to me and say, AJ, I've read this book on work and how we are made in the image of God to do work for Him and mirror our Creator.

It's always, hey, I've read this great book on rest and how we just need to rest more. And it's hard to find a balance, but we rarely take time to think through what is the issue. And when we wake up in the morning, you have an opportunity to think of the goodness and the mercies of God.

But again, think of it. It's weird. You just spent hours sedentary, voluntarily, unconscious and vulnerable.

We then open our eyes to allow noise, likely an alarm, whatever that might be. And we get right back in the reality. We're answering questions from the moment we wake up.

Why do I have to get up now? I'm so tired. Where am I? Who am I? What do I have to do today? How do I feel about myself? What is my worth? We grapple with those things immediately. You ever have nightmares when you were younger? I had nightmares all the time.

Couldn't stand them. I also had a really big problem with confessing every single sin I did to my mom and dad. It was bad.

As I'd wake up in the morning, I was like, oh my gosh, I had a thought. And then I had to go confess to them. I was like six years old.

And so mornings and nights were always very scary for me. And then nightmares would happen. And again, if you ever have kids or you ever see a kid, they wake from a nightmare, they're freaking out.

We don't have nightmares. However, a child waking up, screaming from a nightmare is a cognitive equivalence of you waking up with your busy schedule. You go right to work right when you wake up.

We don't spend time in meditation right when we wake up. We think I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this. You got to spend time in silence and meditation.

So here are some things that I think are important or listed out. Hopefully you can see them. I apologize if it's a bit light, but I'll say them of course.

Number one, go to your knees the first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. You wake up out of bed, your phone's next to your bed.

You should not sleep with your phone next to your bed. But your phone's next to your bed. You hit snooze, or you grab it, you look at it.

My wife and I just bought, and this was so frustrating, we bought a switch that turns off and on our Wi-Fi. And for the first two days, it didn't label which one's on and off. Our Wi-Fi was all over the place for two days.

So then finally figured it out. And now the goal is to turn our Wi-Fi off at night, and then to put the switch in like a different room. Don't need my phone, don't need nothing like that.

We wake up, we go right to a screen, who's emailed us, who's texted us, didn't miss any calls. We're begging for attention or something to fill the void of silence. Some people can't even take a shower without listening to music, because sitting by yourself for some people is just horrible.

I told you guys before, one of the assignments used to get my students was going home and sitting in silence for 30 minutes. And they hated it. But then so many of them come up to me afterward and say, that was great.

I love that. Would you do it again? Probably not. Yeah, probably not.

And so you need to have these habits. And when you wake up first thing in the morning, you got to go to your knees. I used to talk to my youth students and kids at school, like, do we have to fold our hands? No.

Do we have to close our eyes? No. Do you have to get on your knees? No. You don't have to do any of that when you pray.

But all of those things orient yourself habitually to put yourself in the mode of, I'm praying. It's not comfortable to be on your knees. Who here, don't raise your hands, has ever started praying and then falls asleep? That's horrible.

Like God is watching. You're just snoozing off right there as you're trying to talk to him. When I was young in high school, I thought I used to wake up at 4am and my goal was to pray for every single person.

So I had this idea. I did it for two days. So I kept falling asleep.

It was like six o'clock. I only prayed for like two people like 30 times. And so when you wake up, you go right to your knees.

That's not a comfortable position to be in, but it's a great way to orient yourself immediately. Number two, be in the word before any other activity. There's no excuse.

There's no excuse. We're not looking for Bible scholars. And this is the thing that I think I wanted to wrap in within the series is that as an individual, you don't need to think, well, I'm not a pastor.

So my work isn't as important to God. Wrong. The work that a mother does at home is just as important as the work that a pastor does.

And not only that, it's just as pleasing to God. We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks. You got to think that when I go to read my Bible, I'm spending time with God.

No distractions, no phone. Kids can be there if you want. Spouses can be there if you want.

Read with them. Take time to read with family. And as you read, it doesn't need to be a lot.

It could be a chapter. It doesn't matter how much you read. It matters how much is transforming your soul and how much you're using to apply to your life. So reading God's Word is important.

Number three, spend time in silence and rush nothing. I had a lot of different jobs—teaching, youth pastor, coaching, a job at a school, a job at a law firm.

I was all over the place, getting my master's degree at the same time. And I told my wife that when I stopped teaching, I got a new job at the law firm now. I want to rest and rest wisely.

I don't want to rush anywhere. I do not like being in a rush. It's not good.

It's not good. When people look at you in a rush, they do not see Christ. And when you don't do your mornings properly, everything else is in a rush for the rest of the day.

So the mornings have to be proper. Number four, gather and send before each day. This one's really important.

Every morning before I leave or my wife leaves, we always pray together. You've got to pray together. And in our old apartment, there used to be a window that everyone could see inside, and so it was really weird.

But there was a window from our living room and kitchen to where my car was. And I would always walk out and wave at my wife every time I left. Now we're in a different place.

There's not a window anymore. So we're not waving weirdly to each other all the time. But we do gather and we pray before either I leave or she leaves, whoever's leaving first in that morning.

You've got to gather and pray, gather and send. We're going. Have a wonderful day.

I will see you soon. Those small habits work wonders for families, wonders for individuals. And if it's just you, have your own form of gathering.

Maybe it's calling someone. The best thing I think I ever did in my last school, I came to some teachers right before school year started. I said, let's pray for the school year.

And so the first day of school, we all gathered at 7:40 and we prayed. And then I thought, I don't get anything done productively between 7:40 and 8:00 when school starts. So I told him, I said, let's gather every morning at 7:40 and pray.

Every single day, all 186 days, we gathered and we prayed together. Best thing I ever did at that job, by far. We gathered and then we sent out.

We weren't family. We were spiritual family, but you have to gather and then send. Waking up is important.

You're waking up to the goodness and mercies of God. And to give your breath and your soul and your life and your time to anything else other than God that gave you that breath to live is wrong. So waking up, that's important.

Number two, mealtimes. Oh man, what's the purpose of mealtimes? To confess dependence and to foster community. This is great.

I have the verse in there in John 21:9 through 14. I won't read it, but it's so good because Peter denies Christ three times. You come to John 21 and there's not this extravagant ending.

It's Jesus having a meal with his disciples and he asked Peter, what question? Three times. Do you love me? Three times. Why? To mimic that same thing.

Interesting, the phrase word for charcoal fire is the same phrase that's used for the fire where Peter denied Christ again with a little girl. That was the third time he denied Christ. So Christ like set up like the same scene as well, had a meal with him.

I bet you he never forgot that meal for the rest of his life. Mealtime is so important to gather with people, to foster community, to share relationships with one another. So here are a couple of things I think are important.

If you're by yourself as an individual, meditate, memorize, spend time in silence. Don't go to your phone. Don't watch TV.

If you do watch something informative, do something informative. Read scripture, listen to podcasts. If you're with family, catch up on important conversations with them.

At the end of the day, when I was in high school, my dad always asked us, what was the greatest thing that happened to you today? Great question. Let me get to talk about like what happened to me today that was great. And he never accepted like nothing for an answer.

There always had to be something. And it's a time to catch up with family, to disciple those around you. And then with friends, same thing, discipling, but also evangelizing, pouring into.

I mean, we got to get to Christ. We spend so much time doing everything else. And the point of this series, again, is like, we'll say, I'll die for Christ.

Will you form a habit for two minutes in the morning that will make you closer to Christ? We're not looking for big extravagant events. We're looking for small consistencies. Because with habits, no one wakes up addicted to sin or addicted to bad habits.

They form over time. And in the same way, good habits are the same thing. They form over time.

And so with these meals, it's time to gather, to set people off on the right foot. And there's also fun games to play. Pepper shakers is one where you give someone a pepper shaker and they get to speak.

High low buffalo. I love that one. High is what's the best thing to happen today? Low, what's the worst thing to happen today? And then buffalo, what's something that's weird that happened to you today? Rose in a thorn, again, kind of best thing, worst thing.

And like I said, my dad always asked what's the best thing to happen to you today? These are just small things you can implement. Ideally, you prioritize a meal together with your family. And again, that's going to look different for everyone.

The job that I have now, I go into work some days, I work from home some days. My wife and I always share a meal together. We have to share a meal together.

And if that's not happening now, it will not happen in the future. Think of who can you invite into your home? So here's some habits to cultivate for meal times. Number one, take the beginning and end of the meal seriously.

Why wouldn't we pray for every single meal, snack or not? Sometimes, like even if you go out with someone and you pray for the meal, like if you go out to a restaurant, like the appetizer there, you pray for that. And the main dish comes, you say, let's pray again. We already prayed.

Why can't we pray again? The start and end of the meal is really important. Just earlier, the author of that book says that he'll light a candle at the beginning of the meal and then put it out at the end of the meal to signify the meal started, the meal has ended. That's an important thing.

It's just food. No, it's a time that God has given us to foster community and to enjoy food. Again, I'll talk about this in a couple of weeks.

Food is meant to be enjoyed. We think in the Christian life that we should flee from things that are pleasurable. No, God has given us many things to enjoy and be pleased in.

And food is one of those things. McDonald's. It's just great.

Secondly, use meal time as a disciple, used as discipleship through hospitality and conversation. Be hospitable towards people. Invite someone to your house.

Invite someone to a meal with you. Switch it up. Do you like a guy singing and a girl singing to come together and eat? Whatever you want to do, but you've got to be hospitable towards other people.

Someone's eating by themselves, probably. And the third one, encourage others to help in the process. Inviting them in to prep and the mess means that they are not entertained, but they're invited into the household.

And that's one thing my wife and I'm going to get really good at because my wife is excellent in hospitality and I'm just not oriented that way. I'm trying to be. And then when someone comes over to your house, can I do dishes? No, no, no.

I got it. I got it. Feel free.

Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Let's help out.

And then talk with them as you're doing dishes together. I love doing dishes. It's great.

My wife cooks amazing meals. So the agreement is you keep cooking good meals. I'll keep doing dishes all the time.

And then if someone comes over and wants to do dishes, yeah, why not? But when we have people over, I will typically do dishes as we're talking. But there might be some times when it's just like really awkward and quiet and I'm just doing dishes. That's okay too.

But the point is to invite people into the process of a mealtime. Third one is a bit different, but really important, and it's discipline. We're not going to go over all of them as strictly as Justin Early went over them, but discipline is a really important one.

And one thing that I appreciate about what Justin Early notes is that discipline is closely linked to discipleship. Again, the original author, and Justin sees this in a familial sense, but I want to take it in a way of keeping order by a matter of rules. And again, a good verse is Hebrews 12.

You can talk about discipline there, but the divine purpose of discipline is to be shaped by fatherly love and authority into the family. It's really important. The Latin word for rule, and again, that's why I kind of talk about a matter of rules for discipline.

So the Latin word for rule is regula, which has to do with keeping a bar or a standard. So when we recognize the rule, we keep discipline in order and we do this through negotiation. I discussed before being a slave, a tyrant, a negotiator, and what that means.

What does it mean to be a negotiator? Well, to be a negotiator means that you handle conflict and discipline incredibly well with your kids, with your family, with your spouse, with your friends, with your neighbors, with your coworkers. Because again, discipline, you're not going to be disciplining and spanking your coworkers, but there needs to be a time in which order has to be set. And I have to maybe lay down the law, or you have to lay down the law, because I did something wrong and I stepped out of line.

So how do we handle conflict? Well, I'm a communication major, and this is one of the things I used to teach all my students on conflict management. I'm going to go over very simply. Imagine I have an orange in my hand, okay? And I put it on the table and you want the orange and I want the orange.

There's five ways to deal with it. Number one is avoiding. What is avoiding? I don't want it.

Other person, I don't want it. And then we part ways. No one gets the orange.

That's called a lose-lose situation. Competition, what does that look like? You can fight it out, rock, paper, scissors, whatever you want. And that's typically an I win, you lose mentality.

Then there's accommodation. It's in the given. You got it.

You take it. I don't want it. And typically, I lose, you win.

Then there's compromise, my least favorite one. And the reason why is because when you compromise, you're compromising typically on a value or possibly a truth. And if you start to compromise in small ways, you might compromise in bigger ways down the road, right? So think of like, again, family habits.

Let's say you have like a family movie night every night. And one night, you know, a kid suggests, let's watch this movie. You know, there's a bad word in that movie, but it's okay.

This is one small compromise. And then the next week, let's watch this movie. There's two, but you know, we did one last week.

So we'll just meet it when it comes. Small compromise. And you just keep moving the line further and further and further back until then the line's no longer there.

And so you don't want to compromise. So last one is collaboration and collaboration. What does that look like? Well, let's say you want the orange and I want the oranges.

Well, what do you want out of this orange? Idiot. I just want to eat it. Great.

Well, I just want the orange peel. Why do you want the orange peel? Well, forget the orange peel and you put it down like the dishwasher and you run the garbage disposal, makes it smell really good. So that's a silly example.

But simply to say that when you just communicate and talk this through, you can come to an understanding of what this looks like. How's this illustrated? Go to 1 Timothy chapter 5. This is so good.

1 Timothy chapter 5. This gives us a beautiful illustration of collaboration. In collaborating, the two biggest things are humility and sacrifice.

If you're going to live in conflict with people, well, you have to be learned. You have to learn to be humble and learn to sacrifice. If both people are willing to be humble and both people are willing to sacrifice, you cannot lose.

You cannot lose. It's typically when an issue of conflict and discipline come into play. If you don't have the right habits down, your true colors are going to show and how you interact with people.

That's going to show. If you have a habit of maybe lashing out or being angry, then that's going to show when you have a conversation or a conflict with someone. So 1 Timothy chapter 5 gives us a beautiful illustration.

Verse 1 says, do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers, to the older women as mothers, and to the younger women as sisters in all purity. That's how you deal with conflict right there. That's it.

And dealing in that, that's everyone. Older men, younger men, older women, younger women. That's everyone.

So older men as a father, younger men as a brother, older women with dignity, and younger women with purity. When someone does not submit, the biggest issue is submission to Christ. And when you deal with conflict, you have to treat each of the following individuals as listed previously.

When you speak to an older man, speak to him as a father, show them respect, show them honor. Do not disintegrate the fabric of authority because your ego has been damaged by something. When speaking to a younger man, speak as to a brother in all love and sincerity.

And don't be afraid to joke a little bit every now and then. When speaking to an older woman, show reverence as you speak with dignity. You are speaking to possibly the crown jewel of a husband.

So do not dishonor that. When you're speaking to a younger woman, speak with purity. Be innocent in all things and allow the conversation to be seen by all and be for all.

When you deal with conflict and collaborating, this is how you do it. Matthew 18, another great way to deal with conflict and discipline. But all these habits that we're forming are going to creep into the work that you do.

And I need us to get away from the notion that work is an occupation. It's not. And we'll talk about that in a couple of weeks.

So this is kind of the last thing that I have that I think is important when it comes to conflict. I like the one on understanding, but these are just different layers of trying to deal with conflict. Ideally, you have to have loving authority.

If the authority in the conflict is not loving, it's not going to go well. And then there's different things. You look at consequences, understanding, body language, prayer, pausing.

All these things help us for understanding. I love that one. Basically, it's asking why.

What did you think would happen? What did you think the other person thought? Not just trying to understand their thought process, but having them understand their thought process. Learning to think about how your actions affect others is crucial for discipline. Crucial for keeping yourself disciplined and then confession and then reconciliation.

These three areas of your life, waking, meals, and discipline, which is keeping order through discipleship, are crucial. It is so important to elaborate on these ideas. So do it with your family, do it with your friends over a meal.

I would love to discuss ideas that you have, things that maybe you're trying to work through with how you can implement this in your own home, with your specific situation. Stenzel Washington once said, small minds discuss other people, good minds discuss events, but great minds discuss ideas. We have to leave the door open for discussing good ideas about habits that we form.

You're probably thinking, this has nothing to do with work. What are you doing? Again, if you don't have the right habits in place, it doesn't matter what your work is. It's not going to go well.

And the way that you form habits in your life for the glory of God is of utmost importance. As I wrote this message, I was sitting on a plane and we just landed. And there is on the other side, we do Southwest and they just started assigning your seats and that's just horrible.

So my wife and I are sitting down and on the other aisle over a couple seats and forward, there is a toddler, four, five years old, arguing with her mom. So the mom is sitting down in the seat. So this is what I see, like you're me behind me.

She's sitting down holding her toddler like this and she's throwing haymakers at her mother, punching her in the face. I almost got up and I was like, but a lot of things went through my mind. First there was anger and annoyance.

And then maybe there was empathy. Like where's this girl's father? She kept yelling, dad, dad, dad, maybe the father died. No idea.

It's interesting though, because when you see kids in public or see people in public, like if they act like that in public, how do you think they are at home? I was a horrible child, horrible child. My dad used to give me the claw like this. You probably heard the story before, or if I was ever acting up, he would get his finger and he would dig into my collarbone.

I wasn't like 12, I was like two, three, because I was horrible. And so then what he would do, again, you're me. I'm my dad driving the car.

I'm crying, AJ, that's all he would do. And I would shut up. I'd be done because I knew he was going to get me.

I think my parents would attest to by the grace of God, we never had like episodes in public. I mean, I was young, so I don't really remember, but I heard that I didn't have like episodes in public. I said some weird things, but I didn't have like tantrums in public because my parents made sure that before we left, everything at home was taken care of.

And if your habits aren't in place, it doesn't matter what job you do. My parents didn't care what job I did. I did a lot of different jobs.

They didn't care what job I did. They wanted me to do it for the glory of God. I worked at Chick-fil-A for a day, just a day.

And we have time. I woke up in the morning, I put on my outfit, looked in the mirror and I thought, I don't like it. They gave me a belt that when I put it around me, it was about this big.

And so I go into work and I say, Hey, it says you guys gave me a XXXL. I think I need like a medium. And they said, no, so all the belts that we give are XXX.

You need to cut them. Do you have scissors with you? Legitimately, I'm standing in Chick-fil-A store. I said, I did not bring scissors to my first day. I'm sorry. So they take it, they cut it, they give it back to me. I put it on. I'm like, yikes, it's a little tight now.

Going to the job and it's COVID. So everything shut down.

I said, here's the back, here's the front. And I'm looking in the back. I saw a cockroach and I was like, whoa.

And then they have like all their napkins, all their condiments. And I was like, yikes. I said, what are you guys going to do when it opens back up? Because like, this is all in the dining area.

Like, we don't really know. I was like, this is not a place I want to work for. I thought this was a biblical place.

And so I go to the back and they show me how to make all these different things. They show me how to make the, they show me where the freezer is, how to crush the boxes. They show me how to make the frosted lemonade.

So you have to put the extract in and put the lemonade stuff in there. I don't even know what I'm talking about. And then you put the little spinny thing in there and it spins.

And if you don't hold it tight, it'll spill out. So my first order, someone ordered it, it spilled on the side. I had to lick it off and then get it.

No, I'm just kidding. I didn't do that. And so we're going and the day's a mess.

It's only a five-hour shift. I get a 15-minute break. I was like, that's it? I'm like, yeah, it's six hours and it's 30 minutes.

And I was like, and you gave me five hours on purpose. And so I go on my break. I call my mom.

I'm like, I just don't like it, son. Just finish strong, finish well. Okay.

So I go back, machine breaks in the back. Orders are all over the place. Hey, AJ, we, we need your help.

Okay. What is it? Remember how we told you to make sweet tea in the beginning? And in the beginning they were like, Hey, like, you know, when we make sweet tea, all of our sweet tea is unsweetened. So you have to sweeten it.

What do you sweeten it with? Good. So this is six scoops, six scoops. Yes.

I'm sorry. Six cups of six cups of sugar, six cups. They had this massive container of sugar, huge.

It's like, okay. And so they said, do you remember what to do? I said, yeah, six cups of sugar. Yeah.

Six cups. Great. So I go back.

I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to save the day. So one, two, three, four, that's a lot of sugar. I'll do a little bit less on the fifth one.

A little bit less on the sixth. No one's going to know. I get a whisk.

I got to whisk it, whisk it really good. I'm like, okay, we're good. So I said, Hey, who needs sweet tea? And the, you know, the register is like, I need it.

The front's like, I need it. The, the, you know, the car's coming by. I need it.

So I call them. I'm done. This is not for me.

I'm so sorry. They said, can you turn your uniform? Absolutely. So I go in, give my uniform.

They say, thank you. I say, my pleasure. Next day I come to church and there was a friend that worked at Chick-fil-A and they said, how was it? I said, it was good, but you guys put a lot of sugar in your sweet tea.

And she said, it's just six cups. I was like, yeah, but I felt like after each scoop and she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean after each scoop? What do you know? They said one, two, and she said, no, no, AJ, the, the scooper was six cups, 36 cups of sugar in the sweet tea. So we did the math, a large sweet tea at Chick-fil-A from your boy specifically, one cup of sugar.

They said they had three people call in that day wanting more sweet tea specifically, and they're not going to get it because I quit. So I knew from then, this is not for me. I will never work at this fast-food place again or any fast-food place.

And so I went home to my parents and said, son, it's okay. You know, that there's other jobs out there, other things you can do, because it's not what you do. It's who you belong to and how you demonstrate that by the work that you do and the habits that you formed.

And if you don't have good habits, the work that you do is going to fall out the window. And that's why this night has been so focused on this because we need to lay the groundwork. I'm a firm believer that if a behavior is bad in public, it has been cultivated and allowed in the house in private.

And these three areas that we've discussed tonight are not just a godly way to start your day, but a way to keep your entire day godly. The way you wake, eat, and discipline and be disciplined by those around you is incredibly important. And then there's a thread that I think binds all these very beautifully.

The morning shows that grace is new. The table shows that grace is sustained and discipline shows that grace shapes. There's reception, there's dependence, and there's formation in these things.

The same love doing three different things across an ordinary day. And the reason why I started with habits is because of the mundane. The greatest moments of spiritual discipline happen in the moments of the domestic and the mundane life.

It is good because it is not a big event that needs accomplishing, but it is difficult. It's difficult in that it is an event that needs accomplishing every single day. And it's possible to form habits that lead our hearts in a new direction.

However, it's important to be clear that the lectures I'll be giving you over the next few weeks do not claim that there is some easy life hack to kickstart your day by implementing these habits. That's not the goal. Nothing important will ever be easy.

So I will not claim that forming new habits is easy. However, I will claim that these habits matter profoundly to the structure of your life, to the vocation you've been called to do, and for the glory of God, for your family, the spiritual formation of those around you, and changing your habits to glorify God. These things are possible.

A lot of people find their work as their identity, find what they do as their identity. As a high school teacher, you ask a lot of kids, what do you do next year? I'm going to go to college. Great.

I see so many kids sheepish and scared to say, I'm going to junior college. Why? Because it's not very good. And so I ask kids, where are you going to college? It's not a good college.

What's it called? Crafton Hills. Oh, that's where I graduated from. Oh, really? Yeah.

It's a really good college. Oh, okay. But they get really scared and they think, I don't know what I'm going to do next.

They think that's bad. And it's hard to explain this. I don't think I'll be able to tonight.

But what you're doing with your life, if you want to be really good at one thing, that's all you're going to do. If you look at men that work 70, 80 hours a week, they can be really like 150% of one thing. And they're really good at that.

And I don't think that's the biblical way to live. You see other people that then are like 80% at a lot of different things. And they're good at doing those things.

They're good at forming those habits. They're not the best in the field, but God hasn't called us to be the best in your field necessarily. But he's called us to use our gifts that he's given to us in whatever field we find ourselves in and to make disciples of Christ.

We can't find our identity in our work. And that's why the notion of you shall ask and receive is so important. And the nonbeliever is not seeking God.

So they will receive what their heart wants. We try to find our identity with people, with others, with ourselves. And work is not a place to find your identity, but it's a way to show other people your identity in Christ.

And again, some people may not know what to do. They may not know what their work is. I don't know what I have to do today when I go home.

I just learned about some habits, having a better picture of Christ, understanding that the fruit that I do and the reason between the difference between legalist and the saint is doing it for the love of God rather than being loved more by God. I get those things can be hard. And again, I can't give you a sermon or a message on every single job.

That's not my job. The thing with this work series is to give you the right mind and understanding so that you know what you should do in your place of work. For the believer, make life fun, pursue Christ, truth, beauty, goodness, eat, drink, be merry, work well, hang out with coworkers, invite them over to your house, celebrate birthdays in the office, make life fun because it is.

And God promises us that if we seek these things, we will find those things and the goal to do the next right thing. And it's hard because for some people, they don't know how to orient themselves. Some people are so lost.

You dedicate nearly a third of your life to the job that you do, a third of your life. And some people are just lost. They have no idea what they should be doing.

You got to aim right, orient yourself right, and speak the truth. And it's not easy, but it's every single day. Simple things.

I mean, again, some people have no idea what to do. How about this? You should be the strongest person at your father or your mother's funeral. How about that? That's a good aim.

You have to aim up in some way. And again, being the strongest person at your father's funeral, that's something to aim for. Your spouse's funeral, that's something to aim for.

It's a generational transition and it means that all the people around you are suffering because of their loss, but then they have someone to turn to who can demonstrate by their behavior that the force of their character is sufficient to move you out from that catastrophe. And you need that. That in and of itself is a great thing to aim for.

We have to aim well in life and you can't aim well if you're starting off with bad habits every single day. In closing, last thing. I evangelized to a friend for four years.

He was a teacher at my school. His name was Bruce Tuttle. And his wife and he tried to have a kid for a long time and they were unsuccessful.

And you can't really see it, but today they had their second baby born. Eben and Eden are their names. Beautiful babies.

And this is what he wrote to me. He said, thank you for everything you've done to help me get here. Without you, which is not true, it's all the Lord.

I would not have had the relationship I now have with God. Jamie and these wonderful children, I love them dearly. There's meaning and responsibility outside of work and what you do.

And so as you do work, the habits that you form, the goal is not just to please God, to get more favor from God, it's to cultivate these habits. So people look at you, they see Christ. And we'll talk about this again in two weeks, but the way to be a Christian in your job is to do it well.

That's it. You don't need to Christianize everything. Do your job better than anybody else.

And that's the best evangelism you can have sometimes. But more on that next week. Let's pray.

God, thank you for this evening. Thank you for an opportunity, brief as it is to discuss habits, life, work, vocation, grace, means of grace, and your word. We thank you that we can go to your word and form habits of waking up and form habits of eating and form habits of discipline by discipleship with others, with ourselves.

And when we pray, as we begin to orient our thought process towards work and the fruit of the Spirit, that we would see the fruit of the Spirit, not as something that we are striving for to get as an accomplishment, but something that reflects the character of Christ and who he is, and how we can then look at Christ, model that, look at other believers and model that as we seek to model Christ. Lord, thank you for this life you've given us. Thank you for the work that you've called every individual in this congregation to.

They are evangelists in their own way with the work that they do. It's not ministry work, it's not preaching, but it's work that you've put them in a sphere of influence to do their job well, to do it excellently, to do with passion, to do with vigor, to do with the fierceness that when someone looks at them and asks, why are you so happy to do the mundane, so happy to have these small habits, they can then look back at them and say, it's because of Christ that I do what I do. It's because of Christ that I form these habits.

It's because of Christ that I'm compelled to look at who he is, to see the fruit of the Spirit, to live in that realm, to live in that way, to orient myself properly, to speak the truth in beauty and goodness for the glory and honor of Jesus Christ. Lord, allow everyone here in whatever sphere of influence they're in to understand the work you've called them to, to do well, to do it excellently, until you come again. We ask this all in your precious name.

Amen.