Ephesians 6 - Your Motivation for Career Performance

In the fourth session of his series on exceptional living, Tom Shrader explores why Christians should work, moving beyond common motivations like fear, money, or personal fulfillment. Drawing from Ephesians 6 and other passages, he teaches that believers should work to earn a living, win favor with employers, and ultimately serve Christ through their daily labor. He emphasizes that the eternal value is not in where you work, but how you work.

“The eternal value is not in where you work, but it's in how you work.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How to be Exceptional in an Average World

Recorded: April 14, 2011

Duration: 39 min

Themes: work, motivation, purpose, service, excellence, calling, stewardship, faithfulness, career guidance, workplace struggles, seeking purpose, employee, employer, middle aged, approaching retirement, questioning career

Scripture: Ephesians 6:5-7, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10, Romans 12:1-2, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 2:12-13, 1 Peter 3

Theological Themes: vocation, calling, stewardship, faithful service, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical work ethic, serving christ

Full Transcript

This is session four of a six-session series titled "How to be Exceptional in an Average World." It's based on the fact that we have a national addiction to mediocrity. Here's what we've talked about so far: mastering the mundane—one of my favorite topics—slugging it out in everyday life. Number two was stability amidst changing circumstances. Last week, we talked about making decisions. Here's what we're going to talk about today.

Now we're going to have to take a little time to clarify. We're going to talk about the motivation for work, for your career. I need to step back, because you look around the room and some of you have voluntarily suspended work. Others of you have involuntarily suspended work. There could be a tension at this moment, especially some of you who are older, to go, "I don't need this, I'm done working."

Here's what I've discovered: the principles we're going to cover today are really about why you should live life the way you do. It's bigger than that, because it has to deal with the work part of it, but this is going to translate to every area of your life. So even when we say motivation, we need to clarify it a little bit.

Understanding Motivation

One of my all-time favorite television shows is The Rockford Files. It's on every day now at two, so I've been able to rearrange my schedule to watch it. I love when Jim is in a situation where he needs to adapt. He's very adaptable. Right up to the point where he'll be in his car and he'll pull out this little box with a portable printer and he'll just print up his own cards. "This is who I am, this is what I do." It's a great little scene.

Well, I'm kind of like that in the sense that I have one card that says "teaching senior pastor" or something like that. I have one that says "priority living," one that says something else. So I can adapt to any situation and I will do that. When somebody says, "What do you do?" I rarely give the same answer because it depends on how I feel, how I perceive the other person, because I'm not looking for a long conversation.

So this lady said to me, "What do you do?" I was explaining this, but I didn't want to say Bible study. I don't know why. So I explained it to her. She said, "Here you go. So you're a motivational speaker." And I said, "Well, not judged by the looks on their faces. I don't think they're very motivated, but this is what I do."

Motivation—what's the drive? So in essence, we ask a couple of questions. The first one is: why do you do what you do?

Four Types of Workers

Why do people go to work? We put together four fictitious, but I think pretty familiar examples. In every one of these, I know somebody like this. So I'm going to give you four of them.

**Bill Lowell:** He's 62, a senior member in his department. He's been there for 37 years. He's three years away from retirement. He gets absolute full benefits then. He detests what he's doing, but he can't imagine leaving and starting over. He needs the dough. Bill stays on in spite of his passionless work. So why is Bill working? Money is part of it, but that's not really the driving force. Security, fear. He's afraid—"I've got to do this. I can't replace this."

**Joan Bell:** She used to be a middle-level administrative assistant with a 40-hour work week and a basically well-rounded life. Three years ago, she got her broker's license and landed her first deal. Since then, she's closing deals, setting records. Her personal life is in disarray. She complains about the unbalanced schedule and wants to take advantage of this window of opportunity she has to accumulate cash. Why is she working? Money, dough.

Now that's a common trap that I see, because the mindset goes like this: when it's good, "I've got to work, work, work and make hay while the sun shines." When the market turns bad, "I've got to work, work, work because the market's bad." I've operated on this for a long time, but here's what I've learned: there are just cycles. I've been through my third or fourth real estate cycle, and here's the deal: if the market's bad, you working twice as long won't change it. Now, it doesn't mean don't work. You put in your time, but all you're going to do is screw yourself up, your family up, your health up, and everything else. If the problem is the market, you can't fix it by working twice as hard.

This is the trap I see all the time, because once it gets good, you're going to go make it happen. So here's what you say to your kids: "I want to go to Disneyland." "You're like five now. You're old enough to go." "I want to go to Disneyland." "We're going to do it as soon as I finish, as soon as it closes, as soon as..." And what happens is the kid makes his first trip to Disneyland on a senior high school trip because you never get there. That's a huge trap, that one.

**Stu Harris:** Fifteen years in a rat race, and finally he resigned. The way we say it is, the rats won. During those years, he and his family would retreat often to a place in the mountains. They'd refresh there, vacation there. So what he did is take his equity that he had in his house, and he buys a little business up in the mountains. He's beat the system, and what he does now for work he used to do for vacation.

I recommended a book to you maybe 10 years ago now, called "Life 2.0." Rich Karlgaard, who works for Forbes, wrote this book. He saw this phenomenon as he was dealing with people who were restructuring life. Technology has helped us a lot, so in some ways I can live anywhere. It's also helped us just in lifestyle.

in the Midwest. I hated it. We'd put newspapers in our shoes, boots to keep warm. I hated it. Well, now you've got amazing technology, advancements in clothing that really, except for extremes, takes off a lot of the edge, push a button, start your car, all this.

So he said, here's what he's finding. He's finding all sorts of people - you gotta understand this book was written a while ago - who had gone to California, bought a house for a hundred and a quarter, was worth a million two. They were selling it for a million two, and then picking out a place where they wanted to live. It'd be Bismarck, Des Moines, and what they'd do is they'd sell the house, they'd pay 350,000 for a house in Des Moines that was a mansion, five acres and a pond, and then go get a job, invest the rest, so they got another 800 grand, and try to get six, seven, 8%, and go, you know, 50 grand a year, plus a little minimum wage job, and I'm happy.

Borders at 24th and Camelback. I went in there one day, and there's a guy, I guess a guy in there all the time, and there's an older guy working there. I said, "Do you like it?" And he said, "It's the best minimum wage job I've ever had." He said, "I love books," and he had done - it was right after I'd read this book - he essentially was living that life.

Service and Purpose: Another Way to Look at Work

So that's one idea. Here's the last one: Bev Willits. She got out of college, she had, from grad school, she had offers all over the place, and she joined an organization working - and then you fill in the blank. We said abused kids, but it could be crisis pregnancy center, Red Cross, Christian Family Care, Teen Challenge, you make it up, it doesn't matter. Her friends are constantly telling her, "You're underpaid, overworked," but she's energized.

Why is she working? Service, purpose, mission, make a difference. So here you go, you got all of those different things. And I think it's probably helpful to kind of figure that out, but we go even deeper than that. It's not just about the fear, because you're going to have all of those.

The Central Question: What's Your Motivation for Working?

The question is this: what's your motivation for working? What's your motivation for working? Let me add to it now: as a Christian, why should a Christian go to work?

So the premise here is obvious. We're talking about somebody, Christian, who understands who Jesus is, understands who they are, understand that sin has separated them from God, and understand the only way to remedy that is through Christ on the cross. So for me, and that's probably why we come back to this over and over again, this is the starting point. A Christian is somebody who understands that they cannot satisfy the wrath of God and the judgment that's on them, but Christ did.

Christ's Death: The Foundation of Christian Living

So a week from tomorrow, we'll celebrate Good Friday. In terms of what we do church-wise, it's my favorite day of the year. And then we go to Easter, that's a hassle, but Good Friday's a terrific day. The church has started that's been a big service for us. We're going to do something really different this year - we're going to do one service outside starting right around sunset. So I'm not sure how it's going to work. I hope well.

But I love that Good Friday because it brings you face to face with the reality that Christ died for you. It was an agonizing death that there was a purpose in it. So First Corinthians 15:1-2-3-4-5 is He died for our sins. He didn't just die as an example or as a role model - He died for a purpose.

The first time I heard that was from Larry Wright and it was this: He died so we could live. He died and we have eternal life. Intuitively, we know something's wrong. Intuitively, we know something's wrong with the world. We know something's wrong with us. And our natural instinct may be more in this culture, in this time, in this day and age that ever in history is we think we got to fix it. "What can I do to fix it?" That's called religion.

The Danger of Stopping at Salvation

Then we understand Christ died. So I'm going to be really detailed on the terms. So our works, our effort, do absolutely nothing to secure salvation. The danger is that we don't take step two, which is to understand because God saved us, now our works really matter.

So it's Ephesians 2:8-9 and 10: "By grace I'm saved through faith, that not of myself. It's a gift of God so that no man should boast." Verse 10: "But we're saved for His workmanship, for works that He created."

Philippians chapter 2, verse 12 through 13. I'm going to read to you from one of the paraphrases that said this: "Dearest friends, when I was there with you, you were always so careful to follow. Now that I'm away, you must be even more careful to do the good things that result from being saved."

So He said, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to look like you're saved, act like you're saved, do the things that happen as a result of you being saved." What are they? "Obeying God with deep reverence and shrinking back from all that displeases Him."

Philippians 2:13: "For God is at work within you, helping you to want to obey Him and helping you do what He wants." So God's creating in you this desire. You never had it before - you didn't give a rip about God before. All of a sudden God saves you, your heart changes, and God puts in you the desire to obey Him, the desire and now the strength to please Him.

Faith Must Affect Everything

And that should translate into every area of your life. So I'm talking to a guy the other day, and this sounds really critical - I don't mean it - but a friend of His is just working through this distinction now of trying to say, "Our life needs to be driven by and understood by Christ." And I'm kind of going, "It just feels like we've said that a thousand times."

So let's say it again different way. I cannot segregate my faith. So it affects everything I do. When I come to work, I need to know this. Now again, if you're done working, don't you go - you can check out. You need to be the voice in your community group, small group, in your family dealing with your kids or your grandkids. You need to teach them this.

Why should a Christian

Work to Earn a Living

Let me make one point and then we'll take the next several and melt them together. Here's one big reason to work: to earn a living. To eat.

Second Thessalonians 3:6 says, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us." Verse 10: "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat. We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat."

Here's a driving force. This is legitimate - you work because you need to eat.

Balancing Compassion with Accountability

So we've got to grind on this, and I apologize for it. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate needs. When our church started, we had a benevolence fund. At the time, honestly - and I don't mean this critically - we were a really small church, but we had a bigger benevolence fund than some much larger churches. I'm not making a judgment there. I'm just saying we really were open to people because I understand this: to tell somebody to pull yourself up by your bootstraps doesn't do any good if they don't have any bootstraps.

There are times when what people need is money. They don't need a Bible verse. They don't need a lesson. They need a hand up. We learned that we would deal with people who would come in and just needed help - they needed the edge taken off. They just needed help on an electric bill, a little help on a mortgage, help on a car payment, and you get them over the hump.

But you've got to be really careful. A lot of really lazy, blood-sucking people hang out in churches. They just do - that's where they go. They think they're going to get some sort of treatment there that's different than the world. In a lot of places, the Christian community is doing them a disservice by giving them money and not giving them some sort of training.

A Story of Work and Perseverance

I'll give you a homework assignment - I never give homework assignments, but I'm going to give you one. Go to YouTube and enter "Charles Kuralt Thanksgiving." I'm telling you, do it - Charles Kuralt, K-U-R-A-L-T, Kuralt Thanksgiving.

I love Charles Kuralt. I love the stories he used to do on Sunday morning - he's dead now. I would tape it and then watch it. When he retired, they did a special. I thought it would be interesting, so I taped it, and one of the stories was about an African American family.

The last time I played it, some guy said, "Well, you're just trying to take shots at the African American community." I said, "You know what? You're so messed up you don't know anything. I'm trying to make this point: you've got to work."

The Power of Hard Work

It's a husband and wife. The husband had a cow and a plow - that's what they had. He needed to mortgage the cow and the plow, but lost them all because he couldn't make the payments. Nine kids. These people had nothing.

The oldest boy goes to college. They borrowed $2.50 - listen closely now - $2.50 to send him off to college. He then got his PhD and became head of the economics department at a university. All nine kids - five of the nine got graduate degrees. I'm telling you, I cannot watch this story without crying.

They start to interview the family, and they're talking to this one girl who got a master's degree and became a nutritionist. They asked her, "How did you do it?" Here's what she said: "We worked." You can see the shame in one sense, because when people ask what they did, two or three of them said, "We picked cotton. We worked."

A Legacy of Faith and Work

This story ends with them all gathered around in a little house - a house the kids built for their mom and dad to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They're all jammed in there around tables, and the dad starts to pray. When he prays, he cannot stop crying. He sits down at the piano and plays "I'll Fly Away."

Charles Kuralt said at the end, "I'm not sure that there are any lessons in this." I'm going just the opposite - I think there are a thousand lessons in it. Just for the heck of it, I went on YouTube the other day and put in "Charles Kuralt Thanksgiving," and it popped up. There are people replying, and one of the replies is from a granddaughter saying, "Yeah, we worked hard, yeah, all those things are important, but the most important thing was God and His son Jesus."

The Reality of Today's Work Environment

Here's what I'm saying: you've got to work, especially now. I get how hard it is. I live in it, maybe more than some of you. My day is filled with people who are just hurting so much. We just got to work.

Listen, if you're a rocket scientist and they're not hiring rocket scientists, then you've got to go and say "paper or plastic?" You don't sit and wait for the market to come back to your level. We've got to bust our backs. That's what we've lost. That's what we've got going now.

They're sizing up this budget thing now, and you've got one side saying we're just going to make it bigger and bigger and bigger, and you've got the others - I'm not picking sides here, I'm just saying that doesn't work. If I wanted to be Greek, I'd move to Greece.

Understanding Both Sides

But even in the midst of all that, you hard-nosed, conservative, evangelical, redneck, Republican Christians - okay, that's some of you - you've got to understand there's a whole bunch of people who need help.

Every year during African American History Month, I'll read Malcolm X's autobiography and a lot of Martin Luther King Jr. When you read this, it is a shame what the black community experienced. It is so dehumanizing, it is so wrong. Having said that, we've got to fix this thing.

Way out is work. So I lost all of you on that. I lost both sides on that deal. But that's just the way it is, my friend.

Winning Favor with Your Employer

Number two, here's why you work: to win favor with your employer. Ephesians chapter 6. Now whenever we say Ephesians chapter 4, 5, or 6, we ought to know there's a connection here, there's a pivot point in Ephesians 4:1. So Ephesians 1, 2, 3—doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, saved by grace through faith, chosen, predestined, all those things. Then when He gets to Ephesians 4:1, it starts with this word, therefore, there's a pivot. So what He's saying is, because all those things are true, therefore there ought to be a difference in your life.

So when He gets to chapter 6, verse 5, He said slaves—that's His term for employees, you may feel it fits—slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. God's put in place organizational structures in our life, chain of command.

Four Structures of Authority

Four structures for us, that all of us live with some of them, and maybe many of you with all of them. So four structures, four organizations in life, in which God administers justice and order. What are they? Family is one, government is one, work is one, church.

If I'm a husband who's not loving His wife, I'm disobedient to God. And I remember talking one time to my kid, and I was convinced she had done this, but she denied it. I said, I know you did this. Nope. And I said, alright, here's the deal. I'm never going to punish you on a suspicion. You might get two or three of the charges thrown out, but I think I could drill you on, you're Barry Bonds, I think I can get you on one of them. I'm pretty sure. She said no.

And I said, here's the deal, when all else fails, what do you go to? Guilt. So I said, here's the deal, you might be able to fool me, and you might be able to fool your poor, sick mother. Well, you can't fool God. And about ten minutes later, she came in crying, she said, I did it. I did it.

I said, you know what, I feel bad for you, because here's what happens now. You're going to get punished for what you did. Now you're going to get punished for lying, too. There's nothing great about telling the truth. You're going to get drilled twice now, not once. Because I want you to feel the wrath of lying. Don't lie. But you're lying to me. You looked me in the eye and lied? That's pathological. So you're going to get it twice here.

I'm glad you told the truth, you did the right thing, but don't think that now you go, oh, I told the truth. That's like at the end of the year when they give a guy a bonus for making His quota. They hired you to make quota. I don't get that. We're not giving you a bonus for telling the truth. We're going to give you the wrath of God through me for lying. Now, that's just the way it is. And that's why I think I got great kids. God's mercy, but we just dealt with that. You don't go, oh, we're so happy you told the truth. That's kind of the bar, isn't it? I don't know why you let your kid off for telling the truth.

Obeying God Through Your Employer

Here's the whole deal in work. God puts you there with this person. Now, when you obey the employer, this is really important to see. He's God's surrogate. You're obeying Him. You're obeying her. And unless she tells you to be a hooker or sell drugs or do something illegal, and He tells you to do so, unless He tells you that, then because you're employed there, you ought to do it.

Romans 12, verse 1 and 2, I give you from the message. I read it all the time. So here's what you ought to do. Romans 12, again, it's like Ephesians 4. There's a pivot there. There's a therefore. Because chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 is true when He gets to 12. So here's what I want you to do. Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around and place it before God as an offering. Verse 2, don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

Avoiding the Culture of Complaining

So if you're at work and now you go to lunch, you can always tell it. Go to lunch and listen to four or five people from the same office and it's one chronic complaining time. They're complaining about everything. Nothing's right. The home office is stupid. The boss is stupid. The board of directors is stupid. Everybody's stupid. All the smart people are at entry level positions. Isn't that interesting? That's really amazing. All the smart people in every company are at the bottom of the org chart.

Well, if you're going and you're contributing to that, that is an offense to God. You want to be the person who doesn't participate in that stuff. You're there to win favor with this dude or do that. Whatever God's put over you.

Rendering Service to Christ

Here's the third thing. And these all tie together. You render service to Christ. Ephesians 6:7, serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord. It's the same point said a little bit differently. Slaves obey your earthly masters and everything you do. Colossians 3, Colossians, Ephesians, similar books. Marry them together very easily. Not only when their eyes on you to win favor, but in sincerity of heart.

The Danger of Losing Interest in Work

So this is what's going to happen. I will tell you, if you're new to this, let's say God saved you, let's say in the last two or three years. Let me tell you what's going to happen to you. I can predict it with certainty. I've watched this movie a thousand times.

If you fall in love with Jesus and you start to follow Him, all of a sudden, here's what's going to happen. As you get more and more serious about your faith, you get less and less interested in your job. And you try to then spiritualize it and say, oh, I'm getting so close to Jesus that this money and this filthy lucre and this profit and all that goes with it, that doesn't interest me anymore.

So then the next step is, I need to go to seminary. I need to stop. I meet all these guys that will say, I want to go to seminary. And I'll always say to them, why?

I'm not against it. I didn't go. I mean, I just figured that wasn't my deal. I don't work, and I just wasn't going to do it. So I got nothing against it. Support it. We send our staff to it. My son-in-law's working on his PhD. I'm all in for the guy. It's just not my deal. It's not a love connection for me.

So I'll say, why do you want to go? Well, because I really want to serve Christ. Their mind goes right to the local church and they'll go, I don't have any ministry. Really? Tell me about your life. Well, I coach a little league. That's ministry. I'm on the homeowners association. That's hell, but that's ministry too. Apparently you're stupid, but skip the seminary. You're not smart enough. That's what I would tell you.

And then they list all their things they're doing. Those are all ministries. I puke when I hear about this distinction between the paid guy or the lay person. I hate that term, the lay guy. It artificially sets up this distinction that I don't think exists.

Your Work Is Just as Spiritual

What I do right here, right now is not more important to the kingdom of God than what you're going to do in the next 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. Both are spiritual. Now, again, I did in my life exactly what I'm telling you not to do because I was in the midst of that career and I made that shift, but I didn't make it because it was better. I started to teach, and when I did, there were results and I thought this is something I ought to follow. I never did it with the idea that this is better than commercial real estate. It just isn't.

In fact, I would suggest probably ministry opportunities—if you're in commercial real estate or residential real estate, anything that ends with real estate—that you have more ministry opportunities than I do. So there it is. I'm not making a hard judgment there. I'm just saying you've underestimated yourself.

I used to think it was the guys oppressing you, the man: we're spiritual, you're not. Part of it's that. The other part of it is I've learned you don't want to walk around with the burden of understanding that your job is ministry. It's a very hard life.

Ministry Happens in Ordinary Moments

I'm walking across campus the other day, meet this little girl. It's women's Wednesday. So we got women all over the campus. They're there. And she said, I want you to meet my friend, so-and-so. And she said, this is her first time here. I said, well, that's really cool. Glad I could meet you, Melissa. Glad you're here for the first time. Tell me a little bit about yourself. I really don't know much about church. Well, we've never been around church much. How did you meet? Mom's day out at McDonald's and we started talking and as I was talking she was just interested and so I said why don't you go to church with me?

Do you see the ministry in there? I've watched that movie a thousand times where that woman or a guy in that situation, God changes their lives, their family lives and a whole dynamic and generations to come because one person at a McDonald's, one person at a Starbucks, one person at a Little League game, one person at a swimming meet.

I'm telling you, if your kids come to you and say I want to play sports, you tell them swimming isn't a sport. Oh my gosh, I'd rather have my kids play soccer, which is not a big deal, that ain't even a sport unless you live in some other country, that's not a sport, but if your kids say I want to swim on a swim team, oh my gosh, that's the worst. We did that, but you're sitting at the swim meet, here's what I learned: you're at the swim team, you're talking to a guy, he didn't want to be there, you don't want to be there, and it's a great opportunity to minister.

Living Out Your Faith at Work

See, that's what you got to get man. I'm telling you, your life will change when you see everything you do is ministry opportunity. That doesn't mean you go to work today, stand by the water cooler and say, do you know Jesus? Do you know Jesus? They didn't hire you for that.

If you do what they hired you to do, it will be evangelistic, because something's going to happen. The boss is going to say, I want a hundred of them, I want a hundred people like her in the office. They're going to watch you, and even if they mock you...

I used to work at CB with a guy, he used to get on me. He said, Schrade, your whole life changed. You were the Baskin Robbins of sin. I said, really, what does that mean? He said, every time I'd come to you with a sin, you just had another flavor to add to it. You took it to a new dimension. I said, I worked at it. I mean I know how to do that. He said, I like that better, now you're vanilla.

I said, isn't it interesting that a year ago when your kid was strung out on cocaine, you didn't call the guys you went to the strip club with, you called me. You dialed 1-800-vanilla. Isn't that interesting? Why do you think that is? And it started a whole conversation. Never came to Christ, denied faith, thinks I'm an idiot, but the whole opportunity's there. That's the point.

Ministry in the Most Unexpected Places

Last Monday night, we ended up at ER with Susan again. Back in there. They were great to us. They were absolutely—I was telling somebody, they were unbelievable to us. Monday night, Friday night, two busiest nights in the ER. They put us right in. They just took care of us so well. They were so great, and just to watch, it just gave us opportunities to talk to the nurses, to talk to the doctors.

We're sitting in admissions, and this guy just launches on this nurse. And when it was all done, it was a guy nurse, and when it was all done, I said, hey man, I'm really sorry. You shouldn't have to put up with that. This is tough enough than to go through that. He said, nah. I said, no, it's not nah. You shouldn't have to put up with that. I get why it's there. It's really stressful. You're hurting. You don't know why you're there. I get it, but...

Transforming Reputation Through Excellence

You don't think that changed my whole reputation, my whole repertoire with him? I love this radiologist who treats Susan—she's a woman from Egypt, and I like her a lot. I'm on the phone with her the other day, and she's checking up on Susan. I said, "Let me tell you why you're going to end up working for the government. I go to Walgreens, I got two prescriptions. The guy said one of them's a co-pay, one of them isn't. I said, 'Uh-oh.' One of them's covered, one of them's not. Uh-oh. The one that's covered is a $50 co-pay. The one that's not is $12.99."

I'm telling you, I had her on the phone—she was doing a "how are you doing" call, we talked 20 minutes, I had her laughing. She used some word I never heard of, and then she put it in language I could understand. I said, "Don't talk down to me, woman." And she started laughing. I said, "Listen, you use words like that just to get the $20 co-pay on a phone conversation, don't you?" I don't know her very well. This is the first, second time I've been with her.

I'm telling you, she will eventually get my tape on "Don't Waste Your Cancer." Is God going to save her? I don't know. But I got a hearing now that I would have never had otherwise. You know what I did? Here's what I did: I was nice. They didn't do anything special here. God puts you in all those things.

Working for Eternal Reward

Ultimately, number five is to earn a heavenly reward. It's Ephesians 6—you will know that everyone will get a reward deserved based on what they deserve. I don't know how all of that works out. Let me give you the punchline and close this: the eternal value is not in where you work, but it's in how you work. Your eternal value in this is not in where you are or what you do, but how you do it. It's the same thing at home. It's the same thing in all of these things that we do.

Five Practical Points

Five points and out the door. Number one, avoid the temptation to be a Christian leech. Those are the people that hang out at church and suck people dry. Church is just like another one of these gatherings where you trade calling cards. Don't do that.

Number two, remember who's watching every move you make. It's God. I don't say that in some bad way. I say it in a good way, not to scare you, but to provide you comfort.

Number three, see your work as strategic to His kingdom. If you take history as His story and you understand He's in control, then all of a sudden you understand He's working out a plan and you're part of it. You may just be a foot soldier, but here's the guy who created this—He's working out His plan. He has put you on His team in His army and He will use you.

Winning Respect and Hearts

Number four, win the respect of your immediate supervisor, and I would just add that—all the people around you. The principle you see in 1 Peter 3, where Peter is speaking to a wife who's married to an unbeliever and in essence says to her, "Win him through a wordless sermon."

Now we have to be careful. Let me grind on this. Listen up now. No one's ever been won to Christ through a wordless sermon alone. You know how we get these statements and then we repeat them enough and everybody thinks they're profound? Like you hear this all the time: it's Francis of Assisi—"Preach the gospel, and if you must, use words." That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. He might have had a cool name, but he was dumb if this was the highlight. "Preach the gospel, and if you must, use words"—the gospel requires words.

I get what they're saying there. In other words, live this out. But when you live this out, if you don't follow up with the words, they're just going to write it off that you have a melancholic personality or somehow you can adjust. That's what they're going to do. That's exactly what they're going to do. "Oh, she's so nice. Oh, he's so..." No, it's Jesus.

Making the Invisible God Visible

Here's our task: to make the invisible God visible and then to speak the truth boldly. You can't separate them. If you make the invisible God visible but don't speak the truth boldly, then you're a coward. If you speak the truth boldly but don't make the invisible God visible, you're a hypocrite.

So it's to make the invisible God visible. When all of a sudden somebody at the office says to you, "Gosh, it just seems like your marriage is working. Mine's not. Gosh, it's cool the way you two get along," well, let me tell you something—it didn't start this way. It's Jesus. When somebody says to you, "You do whatever it is and it's different than me"—okay, here's what it is. They're saying to you, "Tell me about Jesus. Tell me about Jesus. Tell me about Jesus."

Believing God Will Reward

Here's the last thing: believe that God's going to reward your effort. I'll say it this way—you just got to understand this is all worth it. I was talking to somebody the other day and I just said, "Life just feels so hard. It feels so hard individually, corporately as a nation. I mean, it just seems so hard." I don't know if every guy and gal in history who's when they get to our age or my age—I don't know if they go, "Gosh, life gets hard then." It's like everything is hard.

Yet at the same time I'm going, "What am I complaining about? I'm obviously well fed. I've got a roof over my head. I've got cool clothes. What's the deal? I mean, what am I complaining about?" Other than I just paid $3.98 a gallon for gas. What am I complaining about?

Isn't that amazing? Remember when Paul says, "Don't grow weary of doing well"? I remember when I first read it, I thought, "How could that be?" Now that I've done it, I see how it grows weary. You got to think long term, eternal, God's perspective.

Okay, here's the flip side of this. Next week we're going to talk about professional ethics. And then the following week we're going to talk about conflict resolution.

Father, thank you for these amazing truths. God, I pray that everywhere we go, people would see that your fingerprints are all over us.