Encore - 1033 - God At Work John 5:17

This is an Encore episode of the Follower of One podcast from our archives. We are on a short break.

Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. Today, I want to talk about God being at work. If you hear this on the day that it airs, it's actually the Monday after the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and we're back at work. And so, I wanted to check out and just think a little bit about how God is always at work.

In John 5:17 it says, "But Jesus answered them, 'My father is working until now and I am working.'" And that's from the English Standard Version.

Where are you today? What's your situation? Are you at work or going to work? Are you working from home? Maybe you're retired or maybe your day is trying to get healthy from an illness or caring for someone else who's not healthy. You may be on vacation. Wherever you are, we are workers. God created us to work. The original mandate in the original story in Genesis, you will find that we were challenged to subdue the earth and be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth. We have a working God who calls us to work.

So even if we're on vacation, even if we're outside of the normal work world or we're in some situation as a volunteer, our job is to work, to make the earth better for everyone on it. Now, if God created us to work, who do we work for? Do we work for God? Or do we see ourselves as the boss? Or do we see someone else as our boss?

What's our goal in our job? Do we work for a purpose? Do we work simply so we can spend time not working? Do we work only to get through Friday? If God has created us to work and God is always at work, what's he challenging us to do? The entire Trinity is working. Can we see our work as something that God has assigned to us?

And since our original mandate is to work, do you think of yourself as an employee of God's? That was a big transition that I had to make many years ago. I had to realize that the people that I reported to at work, the people who signed my paycheck, they really weren't my boss. They were in charge of me. I was assigned there, but I was working for God.

If God's working and Jesus is working, I want to work for them. Today at work, I want to focus my perspective. I want to point my brain to working for God. Colossians 3 23 and 24. We're challenged to do our work heartily as if we work for the Lord. As we get back into it and we get on our tasks at work, let's remember that we do them for God.

That our job is to do excellent work and to do our work with quality and with energy and with passion so that we can glorify God. We can show other people that we worked for him. Today, if we focus our perspective on work, as if we work for God, how will that make us behave? Would we work differently?

Will we take our assignments from him and do our work like we report to him? And if so, how will that change how we work today? That's my challenge to us. Today let's work as if we work for God. If that's something you normally do, go ahead and ask him for one additional assignment today. Ask him to give you something else that you can do today, just because you work for him. He will answer and he will call us out and he will challenge us if we let him. Today, let's remember we're marketplace ministers. We have an opportunity to make a difference in the world, right where we are, because we follow Jesus. Let's pray for the people around us and look for opportunities to follow Jesus with our whole life.

If you want to practice this more, you can join the next Marketplace Mission Trip. There's not one coming up for another month or so, but you can find out more about that mission trip by joining our online community at https://community.followerofone.org. Thank you for being a marketplace minister and thank you for making a difference with your faith. What we do matters and your actions on behalf of Jesus, your actions as a Christ follower matter forever.

Thank you very much.