Tuesday 6 August
Laura Bell is from Christian Fellowship Church in South Belfast which was planted six years ago. She has completed a Masters degree in Kingdom Theology and is passionate about seeing young leaders empowered and equipped to lead across all sectors of society.
I am from Coleraine, this is my home town. I remember as a teenager being here at On the Edge and Livewire and one year I was a part of the worship team. I married my teenage sweetheart who grew up here. I have been part of the leadership team at CFC for 16 years and I now lead CFC south.
We know that our theme of the week is Extraordinary. I want to follow on from Gilbert’s teaching in learning what it is to respond to the Lord’s extraordinary calling, to be called by Jesus Christ into an adventure of discipleship. It is stunning that Jesus calls us to follow Him. Like someone chooses you to be on their team. He calls us and He gives even the everyday and ordinary activities extraordinary focus. He calls us to follow Him even in the mundane matters in our lives.
We are going to explore how something we do is deeply connected to our extraordinary calling. I want to inspire you tonight that your work can be infused with the extraordinary purposes of God. Each and every one of us in this tent is called into full time ministry for Him. Tonight we are going to journey through the scriptures.
Colossians 3:22-24 (NIV) – He is talking in the context of the workplace and about the employer and employee relationships.
Now before we move on, I want to define work biblically. We hold quite a narrow view of work in our culture. We see it as paid employment. The biblical writers lived in a tightly connected closely integrated society. If we are to read the scriptures with an understanding of their full meaning, we need to develop a much more holistic definition of work.
“The expenditure of energy (manual or mental or both) in the service of others, which brings fulfilment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.”
John Stott (Issues Facing Christians Today)
“Work is any purposeful expenditure of energy, whether manual, mental, or both, whether paid or not.”-
R. Paul Stevens (Work Matters, Lessons From Scripture)
There are obviously a number of ways that we could define work but by seeing work as more than just paid employment we have a better understanding of what the biblical writers meant. Whether you find yourself as a retired person, a musician, a carer, a student or teacher, or a stay-at-home parent.. this message is for you. Every day the vast majority of us is working and most of the work we do is not paid.
Who here loves a bit of admin? My husband considers himself to be the greatest “Dadmin”. Anyone turn their hand to DIY? I’m slightly obsessed by DIY. Whether our work is making a bed, or making presentation. Whether it is fixing a meal, fixing a pipe or fixing a leg… this is important.
On a Friday, I get a Friday feeling. But then at 7pm on a Sunday, that Friday feeling disappears. All joking aside, many of us have a very complex relationship with work. But take heart because it was no different for many of these Christians in Colossae. Paul is writing to people who have made a disconnect between the ordinary day to day things of life and their understanding of “extraordinary” holy things.
Maybe some of you can relate to that disconnect tonight. We can fall into that pitfall. We have a dividing line between the ordinary and extraordinary.
When we surrender our yes to Jesus’ calling to follow Him, He becomes Lord of every aspect of our lives. Colossians 1: 18 – 20 … so that in everything He might have the supremacy…
Because Jesus is the supreme one, through His death and resurrection, He is Lord of all creation. He is reconciling all areas of life to Himself. Every aspect of our lives matters to God. Our private lives, our public lives, our financial lives, our social lives. Our work matters to God. Let us look at the foundational stories that make all our stories make sense.
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created.”
“The week of Creation was a week of work”
Eugene Peterson
For the vast majority of Jesus’ life, He was a carpenter. He worked with His hands. He probably had splinters and blisters and probably had customer service problems. (The bible describes God as a creator, shepherd, carpenter, healer, king, weaver, ruler… and many more working analogies).
Our calling to work happened before sin entered the world. In Genesis 1:27- 28 we were created in the image and likeness of a working God and because it is part of His nature, we also need to be engaged in creative and purposeful activity to be fulfilled.
“The message is clear: we are the nearest representations of Yahweh that exists.”
Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden)
God has made us to be His representatives on earth and we are to do this in the everyday activities and tasks of life. And we are also called to co-work with God in His rule and reign on earth.
“Exercising royal dominion over the earth as God’s representative is the basic purpose for which God created man…. Man is appointed king over creation, responsible to God the ultimate king, and as such expected to manage and develop and care for creation, this task to include actual physical work.”
Ian Hart (Genesis 1:1-2:3 as a Prologue to the Books of Genesis)
So our work in God’s image begins by faithfully representing our creator king and His kingdom in all aspects of our life.
We are supposed to create through our work. In Genesis 2:15 Adam and Eve are given work to do (gardening or cultivating). Wherever you serve, ask God for His prophetic imagination for your work and begin to see how you can use your skills and experience to further His purposes.
God called Adam to “work it and keep it”… literally meaning “to serve and protect”. Ruling in the creating king’s image looks like serving and protecting. It looks like serving for the flourishing of all. Think about the implications of this in our work places. How would God go about doing your job? What way would God go about parenting your children? In what ways as image bearers of God could our work display His glory?
1 Corinthians 6:1 We are working together with Him. Imagine you were filling out the job application and under current position you were to write “co-worker with Christ”. We are called to be His hands and feet. Because of this the value and significance of our work is connected to His work.
You might say, that’s great but why is work so hard then? Before the fall there was no facture between wholeness and humanness.
After the fall in Genesis 3, there was a disconnect. Christ has died to bring redemption and reconciliation. He has invited us to be co-workers in His kingdom. There scope of redemption in Christ is the scope of creation. All things will be made new in Christ.
He will bring peace to everything by His blood shed on the cross. If all of life is to be lived for God and in participation with Him, then all of life can become our worship.
Our mundane can become part of the majestic mission of God.
But let’s be honest. When we are rolling out of bed on a frosty February morning, this is not our perspective. In Colossae, there was a split between their work and their worship. This led them to work in one way when the boss was there and another way when he was gone. V22 Don’t just work when their eye is on you. This indicates the problem. We can fall in to a disconnect when we divide work from worship.
Two pitfalls:
We can demonise our work or we can divinise our work.
When we demonise our work, we see it as warfare. As an instrument of the evil one. Instead of it having a real sense of purpose, it only feels like a means to an end, so that you can have what you want. You work to live.
The other trap is to divinise our work – expecting our work to do for us what only God can do. It becomes your identity and your source of value. Idolatry is taking something that is good and making it supreme when only Christ is the supreme. Work is all-consuming. You live to work.
Paul is saying, we are not to demonise our work nor divinise it. Jesus Christ has come to redeem our work. As followers of Jesus, we believe that His death and resurrection reconciles us to God and all things to Him.
It is with this underlying theology that Paul says whatever you do… it is the Lord Christ you are serving.
“The task may appear unimportant or trivial, but the person doing it is never that, and he or she has the opportunity to turn the job into an act of worship.”
N.T. Wright
We work as an expression of our worship of Christ. Each of us is called to full time ministry unto God. We normally relegate this to those working in the church or as a missionary. But that is not what the Bible calls calling.
Calling is about our identity.
We are called TO someone. All of us are called by God. Called to be followers of king Jesus. Any roles we play are outworkings of our call to follow Him. Any work has the opportunity to be an offering of the substance of our hands in worship to Him for His purposes u the world.
You are not relegated to the sidelines. You are not a spare or a substitute. Every one of us is called to His mission. He sees you, He calls you and He chooses you.
The whole church is called to live the whole gospel, in the whole of life, in a way that will impact on the whole world.
Alistair Mackenzie and Wayne Kirkland – Where’s God on Monday?
You are called to live the whole Gospel in the whole of your life in a way that will impact the whole of your world. The parent, the neighbour, the care-giver, the marketing executive… the whole church is called to live the whole Gospel. We must help people to follow Jesus. But it is more than that too. It is a vision for the whole of creation to be reconciled to God. To bring the shalom of God.
Shalom is the way things ought to be. No factures. No brokenness. No disconnection. But complete harmony between God and us. The whole scope of transformation and the reconciliation of all things as we talked about.
Shalom is the fulfilment but also our vocation. It is about looking toward the new creation when God’s dwelling place will be with mankind… when there will be no mourning or crying or pain. He is making all things new.
Even now our work is to act in eager anticipation for this coming kingdom. We live and work according to the values of a kingdom that hasn’t yet come into its fullness.
We need to seek first His kingdom. Our preoccupation is more important than our occupation.
If our pre-occupation is the kingdom of Jesus. Our lives become a “yes” to the invitation to become part of the answer to our prayer (Your kingdom come, Your will be done) Transforming our homes, our neighbourhoods, our environment, our relationships and our politics. The extraordinary purposes of God working in the ordinary aspects of our lives whether in Belfast, Ballymena or even Bushmills. T
The whole church living the whole gospel in the whole of life. This is mission. This is our calling.
I’m called to work for Jesus who is my supreme master – someone else may pay my salary but He is the employer of all employers. Before we are called to something, we are called to someone.
- If you are a counsellor you listen to that person as if they were Jesus.
- If you are a carer, care for the person as if they were Jesus.
- If you are a gardener, work as if it were Jesus’ garden
- If you are a builder, build the house for Jesus.
It is the Lord you are serving.
I’m called to embody the character of Christ in my work. Who we are on the inside is consistent with who we are on the outside. We are to be different. The quality of our character and our work should bring Christ glory by showing Him and sharing Him in how we conduct our lives.
But we also boundary our work – a framework of work and rest with Christ as the source.
I’m called to co-work with Christ for the common good. Wherever you work, if you are there, Jesus has sent you there to bless, to offer something of His life and love flowing through you. Our co-workers lives carry pain. Might it be that Christ has sent you there because your presence could be the presence of healing, reconciliation and hope?
Or maybe you have authority and you are now called to shape a culture that is marked by shalom and flourishing and for the common good. Each one of us is called and we are called by Him to co-work with Him in His purposes on earth.
Your ordinary life has the potential for extraordinary impact in His mission.
This calling is too big for us but it is first and foremost His mission. God is already working. He is already on the job.
“..as Christians do the jobs and tasks assigned to them in what the world calls work, we learn to pay attention to and practice what God is doing in love and justice, in helping and healing, in liberating and cheering…The Bible insists on a perspective in which our effort is at the edge and God’s work is at the centre.”
Eugene Peterson – A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
My prayer is that we would be a people who make His work the preoccupation of our occupation.
It is important to acknowledge that we have a complicated relationship with work. Jesus invites us to come to Him. He sees you and knows you. Some of you are in difficult work environments, come asking. Others need to re-capture the vision that work is an extension of worship, come surrendering. For others work has become an idol, come repenting. Allow the spirit of God to prompt your response.