good morning. good to see you guys after being away for a …… · thats exactly what i see when i...

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Good morning. Good to see you guys after being away for a couple weeks. It’s really good to be back

with you. Did you appreciate Jake’s teaching over the last couple Sundays? Didn’t he do a great job? I

was talking to him on Monday, asking him how things went, and I told him, “Man, I feel really bad that I

gave you Memorial Day weekend,” because 1,300 of you were gone. I said, “I promise, it’s not you, it’s

the race; it’s Memorial Day.” Honestly, I was in Missouri when I got the numbers and I thought: Man, did

the rapture really happen? Then I immediately thought: Only one-third of our church went to heaven?

Kinda scary. If you missed the last couple weeks—I know it’s summertime and everyone’s schedule is in

and out—you don’t want to miss Jake’s teaching, he did an awesome job. You can jump online and get

those sermons.

If you are visiting today or you are new, you might need to know that Joplin, Missouri is mine and my

wife’s hometown, so after the tornado, we changed our plans and headed down there to try to help

where we could. Thank you so much for all the prayer and support and emails that you sent to us while

we were there. It was really pretty breathtaking, as you might imagine, pulling into your hometown and

not recognizing anything. Seeing all the devastation, everything resorted to the rubble of a third-world

country. There were a couple times—the first Monday we were there, we went out on a work crew to

walk the streets and help anybody that we could—I forgot where I was a couple times. There were a

couple times where I literally thought I was on a mission trip overseas. There was so much devastation.

My grandparents just narrowly missed the tornado—both sets of them—we are really grateful they’re

okay. I have a cousin whose apartment complex is completely destroyed—he was in it, but he’s okay.

We have numerous friends and family impacted by the tornado. My home church—College Heights

Christian Church, a church of about 1,600 people—we were worshiping there the week following the

tornado; Randy Gariss, my home preacher, said, “If you’ve been impacted, if you had a house destroyed

in the tornado, stand.” Ninety families out of that church of 1,600 stood to their feet—including the

couple sitting next to me, who had a small baby. It was really impactful to not only see it on the news,

but to actually go and rub shoulders with those people.

Another thing that God really impressed into my heart that week, was the damage of the tornado. We

see this escalating in the news: tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, we see all of this devastation that

happens—what God impressed upon me, He said: “You’re seeing what I already see every day.”

Proverbs 19:3 says that sin reduces our lives to ruin. God says, “You see all that devastation there?

That’s exactly what I see when I look at your life. That is exactly what I see when I look at the world.” It’s

just now the veil gets pulled back and we see it in front of us. Then God does this really cool thing where

He starts to redeem that. I saw the Church come together; you guys were a part of that. I worked with

people from Ohio, Illinois, Texas—we were all in the same group together. We didn’t know each other at

all, but we were serving. I was walking through one of the neighborhoods in Joplin—looked like an

atomic bomb went off—and I was offered a hot meal out of the back of somebody’s pickup truck four

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times in two hours. You saw all these people coming through, just wanting to help in any way that they

could. It was encouraging to see that. And so, as a church, we want to continue to be a long-term

partner in the cleanup and rebuilding efforts there. Many of you have asked how you can help: stay

tuned to the website. We want to help and not hurt; Joplin’s been overwhelmed with a lot of help right

now and as things begin to dissipate and they are no longer in the news, we are going to need some

reinforcements to go in.

Switching gears just a little bit: I just got back less than twenty-four hours ago from New York City. Many

of you know (if you’ve been around for awhile) we are helping to start a new church in Upper

Manhattan. Chris Travis was here just a few months ago. If you remember, he preached for me that

morning. I’m on their management team, so I took Don Williams—he’s a member of our church and in

our life group, he’s my travel buddy—he went with me and we got to be there for the management

meeting on Friday, just to get an update and see how things are going. They are doing awesome. Right

now, as we speak, they are meeting for their second preview service in one of the public schools that is

in that neighborhood. I was texting Chris this morning, letting him know I was praying for him, and I said,

“What can we pray for today?” (We want to pray together as a church because they are meeting right

now.) And he said, “Pray for more dudes.” What he means by that is that they don’t have enough men in

their church. They are just getting started, have like 40 or 50 people in their church, and it is kind of—

this is true for churches all across the United States, we’re just a larger church so we don’t see it as

much—they have a shortage of godly men who want to step up and serve there. So I told him we’ll pray

for dudes. So we are going to do that today; I want to pause for a few seconds to pray as we get going.

Father, we come to you now and we want to lift up Chris and Everyday Christian Church and their team.

We pray that Your Spirit will be felt as they worship today. God, we pray that men would show up and

they would feel impacted and connected there. We know that You are gonna do great, great things

through that church that will impact lives exponentially and we are humbled to be a part of it. We ask

this in Jesus’ name. And the church says … amen. If you want to check out that church, it is

everydaycc.com; you can get online and get some information.

We pushed pause on this series that we’ve been in called Take This Job and Love It. We want to resume

that today; we’ve got four more weeks in it. I’m really excited about this series and what God did

through my study of this text that we are going to walk through here together in just a few minutes. Go

ahead and take your Bibles and turn to Acts 15. I want to do a little bit of set-up here and then we’re

gonna look at verses 36-41. Acts, chapter 15—you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Romans,

in the New Testament. If you brought a phone or an iPad and you’ve got an app, you can turn there as

well.

We basically made this discovery, or maybe for some of us it was just a timely reminder—that God is a

worker. Since God is a worker, and since we’ve been made in His image, then we have been made to

work. God takes great pleasure in our work; He has an interest in what you do Monday through

Saturday, not just on Sunday. Now, I don’t know about you, but I grew up in church and I never heard

that. Or if I did hear it, I wasn’t listening. God is not just interested in your spiritual life, He is interested

in your life 24/7. We didn’t hear that. We oftentimes hear: God is interested in my money, He’s

interested in my marriage, my morality, and all kinds of other things that start with ‘m’—God is


interested in that. But is He really interested in my career? Is He really interested in my work? The

answer to that is “yes”. Now, we don’t think that because we’ve misunderstood, we’ve misread, we’ve

misinterpreted Genesis chapter three. In Genesis three, Adam and Eve sinned and God says, “You guys

really messed up and now here’s the consequences of that sin.” And what we heard God say in those

words is “You gotta go to work now because you messed up. You know, if you hadn’t sinned—you could

have refrained from the apple—then it would be 24/7 vacation. But because you messed up, you gotta

go to work.” Even if we just have that thought nestled in the back of our mind, we can develop this low-

grade resentment towards work. And it’s evident in our body language and in our attitudes as we go to

work, and we end up looking forward to the weekend and vacations and retirement too much. It’s not

that those things are bad, in fact those things are great—you should accept those things as gifts from

God. But if you live your life constantly looking forward to that, then you’ll miss out on the blessing of

work, not to mention you’ll wish your life away because we spend about one-third of our waking hours

on the job. That’s an awful lot of time to just try to wish away and hope that you can get through it.

The honest thing here, the truth that I want you to get, is that hard work is part of our sanctification.

Hard work is part of our sanctification and God wants to use your job. If you’re brain dead one third of

the time—that’s never good to do on the job (although maybe some of you are)—you don’t just go in

and check out. God is trying to do a work in your life while you are on the job, and the goal of our work

is to look more and more like Jesus. We want to do our work as unto the Lord. Now let me qualify this:

this is true for full-time students, stay-at-home moms and dads, the unemployed, the previously

employed, the self-employed, the retired … did I cover all the categories there? Because there should be

nobody in this room who says “This doesn’t apply to me.” Because it doesn’t matter if you get

compensated for your work and responsibilities financially or not; we all have work and responsibilities

to do on a day-to-day basis. I don’t care if you are young or old, employed or not employed, we have

those responsibilities and God wants to take that. And He wants to shape your character through it.

God, through our work, through your job—your job may be what you think the furthest thing away from

doing work for God could be—God says, “I want to take that and prepare you for eternity. I want to take

that and prepare you to spend eternity with Me.” I believe that when we get to heaven, we are going to

have lots and lots of work to do. Some of you, that just bums you out. Right? You’re thinking, “What?

Are you kidding me? I thought I was coming to church every week so that when I get to heaven I can

take a long, long vacation—just sit on the beach with my little umbrella drink and soak up some rays.”

I’m sorry to break it to you; there will be work and jobs and responsibilities. But here’s the thing: it’s

gonna be work without the curse of sin attached to it. Now I want you to think about that statement for

a minute. What would your job right now be like if there were no effects of sin? What would your work

be like if it didn’t have the curse of sin attached to it? Imagine working without stress. Can you even

imagine that? Can you imagine work without something breaking? Imagine work without having to pay

taxes? That’s a beautiful, beautiful thought right there, right? That is one definition of heaven, maybe. A

very wise guy by the name of Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3 (we’ve looked at this passage several

times; it’s kind of one of the foundational passages of this series), he says, “… finding satisfaction in our

toil [finding meaning in our work]—this is the gift of God.” Now, I want you to think about it this way:

how many of you have ever put in a full day of work—maybe you were investing in a project for a long

time; maybe you just did this yesterday—maybe you went home and you needed to finish off the back


deck, maybe you were doing some landscaping, you worked all day on that and you finally got the job

done (you’ve been working at it for a long, long time) and you go inside and you’re hot and you’re

sweaty and you’re tired … but you feel satisfied because you accomplished something; you got

something done? Now, I hope that you have had that feeling in your life. I hope you haven’t forgotten

that feeling because that’s a gift. That feeling of satisfaction, even though you’re dog-tired, that’s the

gift of God. And God wants to give that to us and we want to do our work as unto the Lord. I think that

most everyone in here, we love the idea. We get inspired by the idea of working as unto the Lord, to let

God be our audience. The thing that messes that up on most occasions is that we have to go to work

with other people. And our co-workers just kinda mess that up, don’t they? I mean, we have a vision of

what we want to accomplish on our jobs, we have a five-year plan, we’ve got our agenda, we’ve got the

things we’re good at, we’ve got our list that we need to get done—and then you go to work and

someone messes it up. It’s inevitable, isn’t it? They bring their bad attitude into the office or they hit you

with the criticism or they complain about something and it just kind of deteriorates. That kind of goal

within us to say we want to work as unto the Lord.

When I was in college, one of the jobs that I had was I worked at Sam’s Club as a cashier. It was a great

job, but there was one responsibility that I’d be given on a regular basis that I really disliked: I had to be

the gatekeeper at the door every now and then. You know what I am talking about? If any of you are

members at Sam’s Club (or Costco does the same thing)—you walk in and you have someone standing

there and they look at you all condescending and they say, “Membership card, please.” It’s like, “Oh, I

can shop here, I promise.” You know? You’re trying to pull out your card and show them you’re worthy

of being there. And then, as you leave, there’s someone there who wants to look at your receipt and

make sure you’re not stealing anything—you thief. Right? And so, they look at the receipt. Now, let me

just let you in on a little secret … we’re not really checking anything. I would just look at the receipt and

count to ten, and then just mark it and hand it back to them. If they complained, I would just count to

twenty-five really slowly and then hand it back. I didn’t like that job. I remember standing there checking

receipts at the door and one of my managers (who I really liked, actually—we had a good relationship),

he came through the line with a flat cart, and on the flat cart was a Christmas tree, and it was June. So I

was like, I have no idea where he got that and there was no tag on it, but he walked through, smiled at

me, said “Hey, have a good night, Aaron.” I said, “Hey, man, you too.” He walks out, gets out into the

parking lot, and it was a trap. It was a test. He wanted to see if I would ask for a receipt even though it

was a manager and even though it was an obscure item. He wanted to see if I would ask for a receipt.

Hey, I get that, that’s okay. But he circles back around, comes inside, and instead of asking to talk to me

privately and confront me and say “Aaron, I don’t care who it is—I don’t care if it’s Sam Walton come

back from the dead—you need to check his receipt.” But he didn’t do that. Instead he came back in and

he just lit me up in front of people that were shopping, in front of my co-workers, and it was belittling

and it was embarrassing and I bet you, chances are, he had just been reamed out as well. So now he’s

looking to take it out on somebody else. Let me tell you, that day, when I walked out of work, I wasn’t

thinking of working as unto the Lord. I had gone to work with that mentality, but then co-workers can

just erode that commitment away from us. And it’s really difficult.


I think it’s really safe to say this: the most common problem in any work environment is personality

problems. Yeah, there’s a certain percentage where your job is tough and you’ve got deadlines, but I

would venture to say 90-95% of the stress that you’re experiencing at work, you could probably attach a

face to it—and a name. Couldn’t you? Are you thinking of somebody right now? How many of you, you

are working with a problem person—right now? You know you’ve got to go in tomorrow and face them.

The rest of you [not responding] are a bunch of chickens—or you invited your co-worker today, right?

It’s like: I just invited my whole office, things are great, aren’t they guys? Huh, huh, huh … You’re dealing

with a problem—if you’re not dealing with one now, you will. If you aren’t now, you probably have. You

could probably think of somebody in your life, they just drove you up a wall, and it was so difficult to try

to interact with them. Here’s the thing that I want us to understand today: difficult co-workers are really

a blessing from God in disguise. Think about it: sandpaper—that rough edge is what smoothes out the

wood. You just get a piece of sandpaper that has no tension to it, that doesn’t do anything. God takes

difficult relationships—He knows you can handle it—God takes difficult relationships and He says, “Hey,

man, I’m shaping you through that.” So you say, “You know what, God, why do I have to work with this

difficult person?” God says, “I’ve got them there for a reason. That’s exactly who you need.” Now, you

may not have to work with them forever (take a deep sigh of relief there, right?), but God says, “For

right now, I see some things in your character and in your heart that you can’t see and this person—with

their weird personality and their bad breath and their type A personality—I want to take them and I

want to use them to shape you.” You’ve gotta figure out ahead of time how you’re gonna respond to

that because if you’re just reacting every day, you’re going to take years off your life. But if you go ahead

of time and say: I know God’s using this environment to shape me—that doesn’t mean you need to stay

in a miserable job forever, I would never be the first one to say, “Hey, your job stinks, just suck it up, and

do what you need to do.” Maybe for a season, but I would never say that God wants you in a miserable

job forever. I would say that in this particular moment, your first question should be: God what do You

want me to see? What do You want to do through me?

So, I want us to look at two guys who face some tension in the workplace. Guys by the name of Paul and

Barnabas. And we find this blow-up in Acts, chapter 15. Let me give you a little bit of context. Paul,

before his name was Paul, his name was Saul; he persecuted Christians and then God gets a hold of him

and he has this dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus. Now, understand about Paul,

Paul didn’t have all his questions answered, Paul didn’t go through three classes and say “Hey I think I

finally believe.” No, he had an experience with Jesus. And that’s what changes you—that’s what I am

praying that some of you who are here, just checking this thing out, just kind of sticking your toe in the

water, just kind of on the fence a little bit—I’m praying that you’ll have a personal encounter with Jesus

and that that will be what’ll change you. Paul has this experience and it was like overnight—he goes

from being hated to being this Christ-follower and all the Christians were really nervous. They were like,

“I don’t know if we can trust this guy. I think that maybe he has an ulterior motive.” And there was only

one person who believed in Paul—a guy by the name of Barnabas. In fact, Barnabas was an encourager.

In Acts, chapter 9 he is the first one to say, “Hey, Paul, I believe in you, and I’m gonna mentor you and

I’m gonna encourage you.” And he talks to the other leaders in Jerusalem and says, “You need to believe

in him; you need to come around him.” Because of this, Paul and Barnabas become really tight—they

become good friends.


So, Barnabas is the lead pastor at a church in Antioch and Paul becomes a pastor in the church in his

hometown of Tarsus, and they are both doing an awesome work. And so, Barnabas says, “Hey, Paul, why

don’t you come and work with me in Antioch? Let’s just kind of do this ‘dream team’ kind of a thing and

let’s come together.” And look at what it says in Acts 11:26 (I’ll put this up on the screen): “Both of them

stayed there [in Antioch] with the church for a full year, teaching large crowds of people.” So the two of

them are like, pastor/associate pastor, they are sharing the teaching load, they’re having an awesome

time, and the church is growing and it’s healthy. And the leaders of that church have a missional

perspective. They say, “You know what? It’s not enough for us just to add here, we need to multiply.”

That is a mark of a healthy church—to say “We’re not just interested in filling seats and adding and

adding and adding. We’re not going to detract from that, but we want to take that and multiply those

efforts.” (You’ve got to add before you can multiply.) So the church in Antioch says, “We want to send

you out to reproduce what God is doing here, all around the world.” That’s the same kind of pattern

that we want to have as a church as well. So they send out Paul and Barnabas on what is called a “first

missionary journey”—if you read through Acts, that’s what it’s called. So they go out to reproduce what

God is doing in the church in Antioch. Barnabas is just a natural leadership development kind of a guy.

So he wants to take a young guy by the name of John Mark—that’s his cousin; hold onto that, it’s going

to come into play pretty significantly here in a moment. So they go on this first missionary journey.

Now, couple things that happen to kind of set up this perfect storm of an argument at work. Here’s the

first thing: there was an unexpected promotion. There was an unexpected promotion. What I mean by

that is: prior to the first missionary journey, Barnabas is The Man. He is the lead pastor of the church in

Antioch, everybody respects him, everybody loves him. In fact, on the organizational chart, it is Barnabas

up here and Paul somewhere down here. Just go through the book of Acts: every time you see those

two guys’ names, Barnabas is always mentioned first and Paul is mentioned on down the list. It is always

Barnabas and Paul, Barnabas and Paul. But they go on this first missionary journey and while they are

away from the influence of the church in Antioch, Paul begins to assume more of a leadership role. We

don’t know if that was planned, we don’t know if it just kind of happened, but we do know that Paul had

a strong personality and a dynamic gift mix. In Acts chapter 13, Paul was the one who confronted a

sorcerer by the name of Elymas because what he was doing and teaching was destructive to the gospel.

It wasn’t Barnabas who confronted him, it was Paul. By the time they get done with their first missionary

journey, when they land at the island of Cyprus, listen to how Luke describes their ministry team in Acts

13:13: “Paul and his companions … ” Well, that’s a demotion, right? Kind of subtle. Prior to the

missionary journey, it was Barnabas and Paul; after, it’s Paul and what’s-his-name, right? Paul and “who

ever” … his minions. Here’s what the Bible says about how Barnabas felt about this. The Bible says

absolutely nothing. I think that’s telling. I think what happened—Barnabas is a mature guy, I think he

probably got over it. I think he dealt with it in a good way, but he’s still human. And if that would have

happened to you, if that would have happened to me, we would have felt a little bit insecure. We would

have felt a little bit fearful for our job, wondering what was going to happen to us. And this is the

connection we can make—that labor pains with our co-workers is often rooted in insecurity. Think about

that for just a minute. Labor pains at work—I’m talking about difficulties, stress, interpersonal conflict—

it’s almost always rooted back to one of two things. The first one is insecurity, either on your part or the

part of your co-workers. And you just get insecure. And when you get insecure, then your mind starts


playing games on you, doesn’t it? In James 4:1, James hits this on the head. He said, “What causes fights

and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” So James says,

“Hey, what’s the starting point of an argument? It’s what you think.” You been brewing on that for

awhile, you’ve been chewing on that—and your mind has gone to all these different places and

perception can be a tricky thing. Because oftentimes, perception is not accurate. And insecurity is

rooted in that.

Here’s the second thing that happens: there was a loss of trust. Now, Luke doesn’t say anything about

this in the book of Acts, but Paul writes about it later on in his letter to the Galatians. The church in

Antioch, their mission was to try to reach Gentiles for Jesus. But there was a group of people there that

kept forgetting that, they were Jewish Christians called Judaizers—they kept adding to the gospel and

they were mistreating the Gentiles. And Paul’s had about enough of this and he addresses it and he says

that Peter kind of falls into this category as well. What was happening here is mission drift. The Jewish

Christians were no longer reaching the Gentiles. The equivalent of that today, in our setting here, is

unchurched and churched. I grew up in church, maybe many of you did, and it’s easy—I think sometimes

there is a disadvantage for people who grew up in church because you forget what it was like to walk

from darkness to light. You forget what it was like to be without Jesus and then to come into Jesus. I was

talking to Chris Travis (who’s planning the church in New York) on Friday—Chris, as many of you know,

was an atheist before he gave his life to Christ—and Chris was telling me how frustrating it is for him to

read all of the infighting that happens in the Evangelical world. So, people criticizing churches and

criticizing large churches and all this. And Chris said this to me—it about knocked me out of my seat—he

said, “You know what? Grace is pretty remarkable, even if it’s broken grace. Grace is remarkable when

you move from darkness to light.” And people forget that. And we go through this mission drift, where

we forget what our mission is—that our mission; it’s a bunch of sideways energy. That afflicted the

church in Antioch. They’d forgotten their mission. It irritates Paul, so listen to what he says in Galatians

2:12-13: “Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people

who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.” So he was shunning people who needed to know the

gospel. Verse 13: “As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy … ” Now listen to this,

“ … even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” You just notice the pain in those words: even

Barnabas? In other words, he might as well have said, “Even Obi-wan Kenobi”—my mentor, my coach,

the guy who taught me everything I need to know, the guy who I looked up to, who’s just an awesome

pastor … and he’s fallen into this. And it was a loss of trust—it cut Paul’s trust at the knees. He said, “I

don’t know if I can trust him anymore.” And some of you have had that happen in a workplace. Maybe

you hired somebody as a personal favor to a family member or friend and that employee embezzled

from the company. Maybe you had a boss throw you under the bus to save his own skin. Maybe you had

a co-worker steal one of your ideas and then they got promoted. Maybe you started a business with a

friend and the deal went awry and now you’re not even talking to each other anymore.

This is what happens and this insecurity and this loss of trust sets the stage for an argument between

Paul and Barnabas that I want to read in Acts 15. Hopefully you are already there, Acts 15:36—listen to

what it says: “After some time Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let’s go back and visit each city where we

previously preached the Word of the Lord, to see how the new believers are doing.’” So, they’ve finished


the first missionary journey, and they’ve come back for a little while and now Paul says, “Hey. Let’s go

back and let’s visit everybody again.” Verse 37: “Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark.”

So remember this from the first trip—Barnabas likes to develop leaders, young guy John Mark, it’s his

cousin. But John Mark bailed on them on the first missionary journey. We don’t know why. We don’t

know if he got homesick; we don’t know if he disagreed with what they were doing; we don’t know if he

had a girlfriend back at home, and he just missed her. We don’t know what happened, but we do know

that it really irritated Paul. Barnabas is an encourager, he wants to believe in the kid again and says,

“Hey let’s take him again.” And Paul says, “Absolutely not. We’re not gonna do that, we’re not gonna

waste any more time.” Verse 39: “Their disagreement was so sharp that they separated.” Now, this is

not just a “let’s agree to disagree”—the Greek word here in this verse is “this is a sudden, violent,

emotional outburst.” This is elevated voices, this is slamming doors, this is pointing fingers, this is calling

names—as I’m reading this and taking notes this week, I thought: It’s not that big of a deal. You could

have just said, “Hey, let’s talk about this. Let’s think this through; let’s come to a nice compromise. It’s

not that big a deal.” Why did this get turned into a big deal? Insecurity and loss of trust. I would say 90%

of the issues you’re facing in your workplace are probably not that big of a deal—what makes them a big

deal is insecurity and loss of trust. If you’re insecure and if you don’t trust, man, little bitty tiny things

just blow up into huge things. And so, it says that they separated: “Barnabas took John Mark with him

and sailed for Cyprus. Paul chose Silas, and as he left, the believers entrusted him to the Lord’s gracious

care. Then he traveled throughout Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches there.” So we see that

God’s hand of blessing was still on them both. But, they did not honor Him in the way that they parted

ways. They didn’t say they’re sorry, they didn’t reconcile—at least in this moment. Now I believe that

they did eventually because in some of Paul’s writing he gives a “shout-out” to John Mark and Barnabas.

So I think that eventually they probably saw each other at a conference or something and had coffee (I

don’t know)—but they reconciled in some way. But here’s the deal: Paul, in I Corinthians 13, which is the

“love” chapter—you’ll hear this chapter read at all the weddings you attend this summer—I Corinthians

13, he says this, “Love is not easily angered.” I bet you, as he penned those words, he felt convicted; I

bet you as he penned those words, he thought, “Man, I am speaking from firsthand experience. Yeah,

love is not easily angered.”

So here’s what I want to do, I want to give you ten questions that I want you to write down and give

some thought to today as it relates to any work environment you’re in. All ten of these questions are

connected to trust and insecurity. Then I want to give you four principles and then we’ll be done today.

Ten questions—hopefully you brought something to write with—first hour … some of these questions

are kind of long, so if you can’t get all of them written down, they will be online this week. They’ll be in

the notes and the transcript will be online. I’m going to give these to you now, and I’d encourage you to

write these questions down, talk about them as a family, talk about them in your life group—if you’re in

a work environment, or maybe you’re a manager, or you’re the boss and it’s appropriate for you, I’d

encourage you to do this in your next staff meeting. Just kind of take these ten questions and discuss

them as a staff; you can change them and twist them a little bit to fit your context.

1. Do I trust my boss and my co-workers? That seems like a pretty simple question to ask, but if you

don’t trust them, then problems are brewing. And if you don’t trust them, you need to say, “Maybe I


shouldn’t work here; maybe I need to do something; maybe something else needs to happen—because

if trust isn’t there, you can’t just keep putting your head in the sand and hope it goes away. You’ve got

to build trust intentionally.

2. Do I find myself attacking other people whom I perceive may be more skilled than me? And if you

are doing that, those are insecurity issues on your part. You’ve got to evaluate that.

3. Do I have anything going on in my private life that, if it became public, would be grounds for

serious reprimand or termination? That’s connected to trust. So even if nobody else in your office

knows about this thing that you’ve been able to conceal, you do. Over time, your conscience is going to

chip away at you. You are going to be jumpy, you are going to wonder if people notice, and you are

going to wonder if you’re gonna get caught. If that’s happening, you do something about it now. That’s a

trust issue.

4. Do I have a “calling” in this job and do I value it over my perceived gifting? Now calling is not just

for people in full-time ministry. Calling is for everyone. So, do you have a calling to your job, or are you

just doing it for a paycheck? Now you may have to do certain jobs for the paycheck for a period of time,

but God wants you to find your calling—because you are going to thrive, and your organization is going

thrive when you are fulfilling your calling. And so, if the answer to this question is “Yes, I’m fulfilling my

calling,” then you’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that your company/organization/office/whatever

is gonna succeed. But if the answer is “No”—you’re there because you feel gifted and you feel entitled—

then you’ll do anything to undercut that. So it is important you answer that.

5. Would I do business, shop, or purchase items from this company if I didn’t work here? That’s a

convicting question. That’s a question sometimes we ask as a staff around here. We say, “Would you go

to church here if we didn’t pay you?” You’ll get some not very honest answers to that—“Of course, we

would go here!” You know? But it is a great question to ask—I ask it of myself at times. If I wasn’t the

pastor at Traders Point, would I go here? Do I feel fed here? Am I connected here? Are we healthy here?

And I can tell you—I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not—but the answer to that is “Yes! I would.”

And you’re like: “Of course you would say that, you’re the Pastor.” But it’s true. It’s the healthiest

church I’ve ever been a part of—I’m just praying I don’t mess it up.

6. Do I always have to be right or am I willing to have others step into my particular area and point

out blind spots and shortcomings? Do I always have to be right? Or am I defensive? When people from

other departments speak into my department, do I respond that it is not their area of expertise? Are you

humble enough to say, “Let me at least think through that”? People with fresh eyes can often see things

you can’t.

7. Am I constantly telling others how tired I am? Naw, you’re not doing that, are ya? We get tired. If

you’re doing this every week, or maybe even every day, your life is out of balance. Stop telling people

how tired you are and do something to get your life back into rhythm. And so, retreat daily, weekly, and

annually and get your life back into rhythm. It is so demotivating, isn’t it, whenever you go into work and

talk to your co-workers: “Hey, how ya doing?” “Oh man, I’m so tired.” … “Alright! You have a good day

now!” It just sucks the energy out of people when you’re constantly telling others how bummed out you

are. So, if you are doing that consistently, do something about it.

8. Do I get angry when I do not receive the recognition and praise I think I deserve? If that’s the case,

I want you to memorize this phrase, okay? It’s not about me. Let’s just say that together on the count of

three, can we? One, two, three—it’s not about me. That’s a great statement just to remember from


time to time because one of the things that I think is detrimental to the workplace environment, it’s

detrimental to our country, it’s detrimental to many churches is that we’ve got this sense of

entitlement—we don’t ever say this, but we think it—that I’m the main actor and everybody else is my

supporting cast. Right? We do that, don’t we? We walk around and we’ve got this sense of entitlement.

It is so healthy to every now and then just say, “You know what? It’s not about me.” It’s amazing how

much healthier your life gets when you recognize that.

9. Am I honestly giving my best effort? You are the only person who can truly answer that question.

Are you honestly giving your best effort? If you are not, then I would commit to memory II Timothy,

chapter 2:15. It says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does

not need to be ashamed.” Man, that’s great. That’s a successful day—if you can go home and say, “Man,

I did the absolute best—I didn’t do everything right, I don’t feel like I’m as productive, but you know

what? I did my absolute best and I can go home and I’m a workman approved to the Lord—I did my

work to Him.

10. Would my co-workers say that I am an example of humility and patience? That’s a hard question

to answer, because if you say yes, then you just missed it, right? You can just kind of think through that a

little bit. The correct way to answer that is, “I hope so, but I’ve got some work to do.” That’s the best

way to answer that question. You can maybe use that one for yourself.

Now what I want you to see through these questions is that what God wants to do is He wants to shape

you through the people that He’s placed in your life. And that’s not just friends and family—that’s

people that you work with. God wants to shape you and—listen to this, stay with me here—if you are a

Christ Follower, that means you should be a Christ Imitator. Those two things should not be divorced. As

Christians, we’ve divorced them. We’ve said, “I believe over here, but this is the way I react, over here. I

believe in my head that Jesus is the Son of God, but this is the way I live my life over here.” If you’re a

Christ Follower, that means you are a Christ Imitator. Now let me tell you what that doesn’t mean: that

doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect, doesn’t mean you won’t mess up, doesn’t mean you should be a

doormat for your co-workers—what it does mean is that they notice that there is something very, very

different in the way you carry yourself. It illuminates the very nature of Jesus—that the Spirit of God is

living in you. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna avoid all the problems at work, it just means that when

somebody bites your head off and they see that you don’t hit them back—even if they don’t say

anything for months and months and months and months and months—that’s gonna stay with them;

they’re gonna say, “Where in the world did that come from?”

Let me give you four quick principles here, following these ten questions, which I think are really helpful.

Here’s the first one: Hurting people hurt people. Healthy people help people. Sounds like a Dr. Seuss

book, doesn’t it? I’m kinda proud of that, I spent all week on that statement. Hurting people hurt

people, but healthy people help people. So the question I want you to ask of yourself is, “Which am I?

Am I healthy, or am I hurtful?” Now most of us here would say we want to be healthy, but the proof is

really in how we help other people. So, if we’re constantly reacting to other people’s junk; if we’re

constantly tearing other people down; if we’re constantly gossiping about them—you’re unhealthy. So

healthy people help boost people up. You may say, “Man I work with a bunch of dysfunctional people.”

But that doesn’t mean you need to be dysfunctional. You raise them up to your level.


Here’s number two: Look for ways to encourage others daily. I think that so many of us suffer from the

“Seagull Syndrome”. You know what that is? Seagull Syndrome is when we fly in, we make a lot of noise,

we dump on everybody, and then we fly out. That’s what that is. We do that an awful lot, especially

bosses do that. Even just recently here, I’ve been kind of convicted even in my own life that I don’t want

to be a Seagull. I don’t want to just email people or call people into my office when I think that there’s

something that needs to change, or something that needs to be corrected. I want to breathe words of

encouragement into them. I have to do that very intentionally. See, understand this, that every person

in this room craves encouragement. Like sunshine, water, and protein, you crave encouragement. Now

you may be like too cool for school and say, “No, I don’t need that—I’m independent, I’m okay.” No. You

do need it. You may not think you need it, until you get encouraged and think, “What’s that wonderful

little feeling that I have? Oh, I just got encouraged?” I have to think through this because—some of you

are like me—I’m kind of a quiet guy, I’m more introverted in nature. If I’m not careful, I can be so quiet

that people misinterpret that and think that I’m mad at them or think that I’m not approving, that

they’re not doing a good enough job. So, I have to be very careful about being very intentional about

encouragement. My assistant, Sandy, helps me with this: every Monday she gives me the names of

three people that serve here as volunteers on a Sunday, and I take five minutes and write those three

people a handwritten thank-you note. It doesn’t take me very much time and it’s amazing to me, since

I’ve started doing that, how many people have come up to me and said, “Thank you so much for that

letter. I was this close to giving up.” It’s amazing to me. What if all of us did that? What if you just took

three people every week—in your workplace, in the church, in your family, in your neighborhood,

wherever—just thank them in some strategic way? Now some of you will push back on me and say, “I

don’t have the gift of encouragement.” And I would simply say to you three words: Get over it. I’m

serious about that. Encouragement is not just a gift, it’s something you do. It’s a decision you make.

Now, some of you are gifted at encouraging and that’s great—you leverage that until the cows come

home. But some of you just need to make the decision. I challenge you to try it today. When you go to

lunch, after church if you go out, just say, “You know what? Let’s just genuinely encourage the waitress

or the waiter.” Don’t do that sarcastically—you do it genuinely. Here’s the thing: especially if they stink.

Especially if they bring your food out late and it’s cold and they spill stuff on you—you genuinely

encourage them and just see what happens to their demeanor. Just see if it elevates them.

Here’s number three: Speak the truth in love. This is largely deficient in our culture today. We live in a

culture that either is all about being right—and we get pretty harsh about that—or we are all just about

tolerance and loving people and everybody can do whatever they want. Speaking the truth in love is a

defining mark of a life that’s been changed by Jesus. So, if you’re not speaking the truth in love, Jesus

may not be living in your heart. Because that’s a defining mark of a life that’s been transformed. Why?

Because it takes a Supernatural intervention to be able to do it. I can’t do that on my own. Listen to

what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4 about this—I want you to see the progression here. He says,

“Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the

head of His body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own

special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of

love.” Do you see the progression there? He says, “Do you want to be growing? You want to be unified?


You want to be healthy? The first step is speaking the truth in love.” I just want to affirm that here in our

congregation. It’s already happening—I think it can continue to happen.

Here’s the last thing I’ll give you: Find a way to forgive others consistently. I know that’s really difficult

and I know that’s complicated, but that’s the reason why it’s so powerful. If forgiveness was easy, it

wouldn’t be transformational, would it? But forgiveness, man, that’s a transformational force within our

world. I love how Paul puts this in Colossians 3:13. He says, “Make allowance for each other’s faults, and

forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you *what’s the word here?+ must

… ” He didn’t say you probably should; he didn’t say it’s a good idea to consider, he says, “ … you must

…” This is not even an option; this isn’t even open for debate. If you’ve received the forgiveness of God,

then “you must forgive others.” Why would he say it that way? It’s not because God refuses to forgive

you, it’s because the Spirit of God is obviously not evident in your life if you can’t forgive others. Because

one of the defining characteristics of the Spirit of God is forgiveness, it’s grace. So, if you’re rigid and you

can’t, then the Spirit of God is not living within you.

Well, I think that for many of you here today, just about everything that I said is pretty much irrelevant

and impossible—if you don’t have the Spirit of God living within you. My prayer over this last week is

that some of you who’ve been dipping your toe into the water, some of you who’ve been teetering on

the fence wondering what you’re going to do, that you would ask today to have a personal encounter

with Jesus Christ—that your life would completely change, that the Spirit of God would come into you.

Some of you, what’s kept you at arm’s length—stay with me here just for a minute—what’s kept you at

arm’s length with God is all the questions that you have and all the hypocrisies seen in the church, and I

get that. That’s there, man. That stuff won’t change you. What will change you is when you come face to

face with Jesus. What will change your work environment is when you let the Spirit of God live out of

you and not just in you. So I want you to come back next Sunday—I’m really looking forward to the

topic—we’re gonna talk about how to integrate your faith in the workplace without getting fired. Okay?

So we’re gonna talk about that next Sunday, so you bring a friend, you bring your boss, right? Come and

it’s gonna be a good day.

Let me pray for you: God, we come to You right now and we thank You for Your love and Your grace.

God, help us because so many of us here are facing junk in the workplace and it’s hard and it’s

complicated and it’s so easy to kind of solve it in a sermon. But God, we know that there are all kinds of

implications here. Help us to take these questions and these four principles seriously. Do some kind of

spiritual surgery in our hearts, and if there is somebody here who needs to give their life to You and

they’re feeling that tug of Your Holy Spirit—I pray they wouldn’t delay that any longer. I pray they’d

respond. We ask this in the name of Jesus. And the unified church says … Amen. Love you guys. We’ll see

you next Sunday.

good morning. good to see you guys after being away for a …… · thats exactly what i see when i...

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