The Word Before Work

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: 2 Corinthians on WorkDevotional: 1 of 7We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)While it is absolutely true that God “will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Corinthians 10:13), the cliche that “God won’t give you more than you can handle” is an unbiblical lie. Paul says so directly in today’s passage. He says the “troubles” and “pressure” he experienced while working in Asia were “far beyond [his] ability to endure.” Later in this letter to the Corinthians, Paul explains that one of those many “troubles” was “a thorn in [his] flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Three times, Paul “pleaded with the Lord” to take this thorn away from him. But God said no, telling Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). In other words, “No Paul. I won’t remove this thorn. Because I will get greater glory as I produce extraordinary results through you in spite of your weaknesses.”God’s words lead Paul to say, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).What challenges are you facing at work today? A sudden loss in revenue? A difficult boss? A “thorn in your flesh” that’s prohibiting you from fully engaging with the work God created you to do? These things may indeed be more than you can handle in your own strength. And that’s the point. May our weaknesses lead us to a greater reliance on the Lord. And may others see God’s great glory as he works through us in spite of our inadequacies.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Half-Truths About HeavenDevotional: 4 of 4No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 22:3-5)The science-fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, once remarked that "whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." I don’t know any Christians who would say those words out loud. But I suspect there are many who have quietly shared in this fear, which is rooted in this half-truth about heaven:Half-Truth #4: We will worship for all eternityScripture is clear that we will indeed worship forever (see Revelation 5:13 as one example). But the reason this is a half-truth is because of our limited understanding of the word “worship.”When we think of worship, we think almost exclusively of musical worship. But Scripture defines worship much more broadly. The Apostle Paul says it’s even possible to eat and drink to “the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And when heaven comes to earth, we will be doing a whole variety of things in worship of our Lord, including work.We see this explicitly in today’s passage! God’s “servants” (that’s you and me, believer) “will serve him.” We will “reign” with Jesus “for ever and ever.” In a parallel vision of the New Earth, Isaiah says we “will build houses and dwell in them…plant vineyards and eat their fruit….For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain” (Isaiah 65:21-23).You see, heaven coming to earth isn’t the end of our story. It’s just the beginning! It’s when Jesus will send us out from his throne to rule the earth perfectly on his behalf.This makes even more sense when you study the opposite bookend of Scripture. In Genesis 2:15, when it says that “God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it,” the Hebrew word for “work” is the same word translated to mean “worship” in the Old Testament. Of course, we know that sin made work difficult. But when heaven comes to earth, working, singing, eating, and everything we do, will be perfect worship once again.That brings us to our last whole-truth:Whole-Truth #4: We will worship for all eternity by singing, working, and doing all things for the glory of GodWhether you love or hate your job today, may this promise fuel your hope. Because as Peter Pan once famously said, “To die will be an awfully big adventure!"

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Half-Truths About HeavenDevotional: 3 of 4Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:1-2)Last week, we saw that Earth is our temporary home until it is our permanent one. But in my experience, even Christians who understand this can have an anemic view of what life on the New Earth will be like, leading many to believe the third half-truth I want to explore in this series:Half-Truth #3: We are going back to EdenThere is some truth to this. As we see in today’s passage, the “tree of life” from Eden is present once again. In the words of my Bible’s heading over Revelation 22, the New Earth is “Eden Restored.” But it is also much more than that.Notice where the tree of life is located on the New Earth. It is straddling the river in “the middle of the great street of” the New Jerusalem—a city that stands more than seven million feet tall (see Revelation 21:16). The picture here is not of Eden as a remote garden with no civilization. It’s more like Central Park in the middle of Manhattan. Because the Garden has become the “Garden City” which itself is an act of culture as God has refined gold, pearls, and gems in its construction (see Revelation 21:9-27).And it’s not just God’s works of culture that are there, but also some of human hands—what John calls “the glory and honor of the nations” (see Revelation 21:26). We know there will be wine on the New Earth (see Mark 14:25), houses (see Isaiah 65:21), and commerce (see Isaiah 60). In the words of the late theologian Dr. Richard Mouw, “There is an important sense in which the Holy City is the Garden-plus-the-’filling’” that God commanded when he asked humankind to “fill the earth and subdue it” (see Genesis 1:28).Beyond what we see in Scripture, the fact that the New Earth will contain more than people and nature appeals to logic. Jesus described heaven as a “kingdom,” and kingdoms have more than just Sovereigns and subjects. They have art and order, customs and cultures. And we should expect to find all of these things and more on the New Earth. That brings us to our next whole-truth:Whole-Truth #3: We are going back to Eden with the “filling” of the earthGod never said we’re going back to Eden. Christians are destined to go back to the future. What does that mean for our work today? It means that some of our work has the chance of surviving the fire of judgment Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3. Work in light of that today!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Half-Truths About HeavenDevotional: 2 of 4Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. (Revelation 21:1)Countless sermons and songs have convinced us of this half-truth about heaven:Half-Truth #2: Earth is our temporary homeIt is true that when we die, our “spirit returns to God” (Ecclesiastes 12:7), departing earth to be with Jesus in what theologians call the “present heaven.” The lie is that we stay there.One of Jesus’s most famous references to heaven is in John 14:2 where he says, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” Get this: The Greek word for “dwelling places” is monē, which denotes temporary lodging.Why temporary? Because God’s plan all along was to bring heaven to earth and live with us here! Not ultimately to “fit us for heaven to live with thee there.” This is what we see in Revelation 21:1-5 as John “saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven” to earth where God “will dwell among [us].”But wait, Jordan, I thought the earth was going to be destroyed in the end? This idea is rooted in a misinterpretation of 2 Peter 3 which I discussed at length a few weeks ago. In case you missed that, here’s the gist: The earth will not be obliterated like the Death Star in Star Wars. It will be renewed like Te Kā turning back into Te Fiti in Moana. Haven’t seen these great films? No worries. John Mark Comer explains this concept well without cinematic metaphor: “Heaven is not our home. Earth is. Not Earth as it is now, but Earth as it will be in the future. Our hope isn’t for another place, but another time. Yes, as followers of Jesus, we go to heaven when we die, but we don’t stay there. If Jesus is a “ticket to heaven,” as the preacher says, then he’s a round-trip ticket, not a one-way. Because at the resurrection, we come back.” All of this brings us to the next whole-truth:Whole-Truth #2: Earth is our temporary home until it is our permanent oneWhat does this mean for our work? Randy Alcorn, in his terrific book, Heaven, explains that “When we think of Heaven as unearthly, our present lives seem unspiritual, like they don’t matter. When we grasp the reality of the New Earth, our present, earthly lives suddenly matter. Conversations with loved ones matter. The taste of food matters. Work [matters]....Why? Because [these things] are eternal.”Believer, lean into the work you do today, knowing that just like this earth, it has eternal consequence.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Half-Truths About HeavenDevotional: 1 of 4“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)“The kingdom of God” was the dominant theme of Jesus’s teachings. But he also preached about “the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 4:17). Are these two separate ideas? The world’s leading New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright says no: “‘God’s kingdom’ and ‘kingdom of heaven’ mean the same thing.” Understanding that detail will be critical as we enter this series unpacking four half-truths about heaven. Here’s the first:Half-Truth #1: Heaven is a place we go to in the futureJesus did say that heaven is a place (see John 14:2). And Scripture also makes it clear that heaven is in the future (see Revelation 11:15). But heaven is so much more than a place in the future.In Matthew 10:7-8, Jesus instructed his disciples: “proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”Here, Jesus isn’t referring to heaven as a physical place, leading theologian R. Paul Stevens to define the kingdom of heaven as "not a realm [or] territory, but the rule of God as King…essentially the spread of the goodness and shalom of God in the world and in human life." Dallas Willard put it even more succinctly saying heaven is “where what God wants done is done.”OK, so heaven is a place and a state of affairs. And not just in the future, but also in the present. Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15) and “has come near” (Matthew 4:17). All of this helps us to replace our half-truth with this whole-truth:Whole-Truth #1: Heaven is a place and a state of affairs where God rules as king both now and laterN.T. Wright summarized this idea well by saying that “‘Entering the kingdom of heaven’ does not mean ‘going to heaven after death’, but belonging in the present to the people who steer their earthly course by the standards and purposes of heaven…and who are assured of membership in the age to come.”This means that you can make your place of work more like heaven today. Jesus told us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). This morning, I’d encourage you to replace “on earth” with your place of work and begin the work of applying Jesus’s descriptions of the kingdom to your workplace today.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com -- Series: The Creator in You Devotional: 5 of 5 The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. (Psalm 37:23) In this short series, we’ve seen that God works and called us to work on his behalf. But why? To what end? How exactly does our work matter to God? There are many answers to that question. Our work is part of how God sanctifies us, how he meets the needs of others, and one of the primary ways we win the respect of non-believers. But perhaps most foundationally, our work matters because it is part of how we show the world what God is like. As we saw last week, God created us in his “image” (see Genesis 1:26). And what’s the point of an image? “The point of an image is to image,” John Piper says bluntly. “Images are erected to display the original. Point to the original. Glorify the original. God made humans in his image so that the world would be filled with reflectors of God. Images of God. Seven billion statues of God.” Got it. So we were created to image or reflect God. But reflect what specifically about God? Well, up until Genesis 1:26, we know only one thing about the image of God—that he is a God who creates! So it naturally follows that one of the primary purposes of our lives will be to reflect his creative, working character to the world. And when we do that—when we live and work in line with God’s character—we bring our Father joy. Psalm 37:23 says that “The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” Did you catch that? God doesn’t just delight in watching you go to church or study your Bible. “He delights in every detail” of your life! He smiles watching you serve clients, prepare meals, and coach your team in ways that reflect his character. Rick Warren says, "The smile of God is the goal of your life." How can you make God smile today? By reflecting his image as you work. Here’s how I put it for my kids and yours in The Creator in You: “Because when you work or you make something new, you are doing what God has made you to do. You are showing the world what your Father is like—a God who creates to bring people delight. And when you show others the Creator in you, you bring joy to the world—and to your Father too.” Go and work the way God would work today, knowing that as you do, you are bringing delight to your Father! P.S. Want the kids in your life to understand the truths we’ve explored in this series? Pick up a copy of The Creator in You (https://www.amazon.com/Creator-You-Jordan-Raynor/dp/059319313X/)

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com -- Series: The Creator in You Devotional: 4 of 5 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:26, 28) After the first six days of creation, the earth was still largely empty. As I say in my new children’s book, The Creator in You, “while in six days God created a lot, there are so many things that He simply did not— like bridges and baseballs, sandcastles and s’mores. God asked us to create and fill the planet with more.” That’s what we see in today’s passage. God never intended for Eden to remain a garden. He commissioned human beings to “rule” over it. To “fill the earth and subdue it.” To work the garden and turn it into something far more. There’s a beautiful detail in the second chapter of Scripture that helps make this clear. Genesis 2:10-12 says, “Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there).” We all know what gold and pearls are, but for those of us who are not geologists, what in the world are “lapis lazuli?” Google it and you’ll see that it’s a beautiful precious stone. Hang on a minute: gold, pearls, and precious stones. Where have we seen that before? In the opposite bookend of Scripture—the second to last chapter of Revelation where John describes the New Jerusalem as having streets of gold, gates made of pearls, and walls “decorated with every kind of precious stone” (see Revelation 21:18-21). You see it, right? This is God’s poetic way of telling us that the command to “fill the earth” was the command to turn the Garden into a “Garden City.” In the words of John Mark Comer, "creation was a project, not a product." And of course, we see this reaffirmed powerfully when Jesus spent the majority of his adulthood not preaching, but working as a carpenter to “fill the earth” with tables and chairs. What does all of this mean for you and me today? It means that if our work is good work—if it helps cultivate a world where creation and creatures flourish as God intended—then we are free from needing to justify our jobs. We work and create and rule and fill and subdue simply because it’s what God made us to do. It’s who we are as his image-bearers. And that is enough. So go and do the God-ordained “filling” of this earth with freedom and joy today! P.S. Want the kids in your life to understand the truths we’ve explored in this series? Pick up a copy of The Creator in You (https://www.amazon.com/Creator-You-Jordan-Raynor/dp/059319313X/)

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com -- Series: The Creator in You Devotional: 3 of 5 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)As we’ve seen over the past two weeks, we worship a God who works! And next week, we’ll see that God has created us to work in partnership with him. But before we look too closely at God’s call for us to create, we need to remember this: Before God calls us to do a single thing, he calls us to be his child. 1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” Before we were given a task, we were given an identity—children created “in the image of God” (see Genesis 1:27). And there was clearly a relationship between God and human beings before he put them to work in the Garden of Eden. There was love and acceptance before they did a single thing. This unconditional relationship that God has with us is illustrated beautifully at Jesus’s baptism. Matthew records the scene saying, “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water….And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:16-17). Now here’s what’s remarkable about this scene: God spoke those words over Jesus before his “public ministry.” Before Jesus preached a word, the Father said he was “well pleased” with him simply because he was God’s son. Believer, through faith in Christ, the same can be said of you. The God of the universe is “well pleased” with you, simply because you are a part of the family! God may have called you to work for him as an entrepreneur, artist, or parent. But before that, he called you to be his child. That is your primary identity. In the words of Os Guinness, “First and foremost we are called to Someone…not to something…or to somewhere.” And in my experience, it’s the security of that primary identity—your status as an adopted child of God regardless of your performance—that leads people to be the best entrepreneurs, artists, and parents. Why? Because working to earn someone’s favor is exhausting. But working in response to unconditional favor is intoxicating. Your Father is well pleased with you before you do a single thing. Rest in that truth today. And then come back next week to see God putting you to work for his glory! P.S. Want the kids in your life to understand the truths we’ve explored in this series? Pick up a copy of The Creator in You (https://www.amazon.com/Creator-You-Jordan-Raynor/dp/059319313X/)

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com -- Series: The Creator In You Devotional: 2 of 5 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8-9) Last week, we worshiped God for the fact that he works. But now we must make one thing clear: God works in ways that are totally unlike the way you and I work today. We worship the God who simply “calls into being things that were not” (Romans 4:17). As I say in my children’s book, The Creator in You, “With just a few words, He made creatures appear, like polar bears, penguins, alpacas, and deer.” My kids love pretending to create animals and magical snow with their words, but so far, their play hasn’t turned into reality. You know why? Because only God can create out of nothing (see Genesis 1:24-25)! As Jen Wilkin says, “We are all hacks, arrangers of Someone else’s palette of colors, wavelengths, and building blocks. The most creative human you know is a rip-off artist, shamelessly (gleefully?) rearranging and recombining existing materials into new forms. No one has ever truly created anything. No one, that is, except God.” OK, so God works totally unlike us, using his words to create out of thin air. But he also works like us, using his hands to unfold creation. That's what we see in today's passage where God “planted a garden in the east.” Gone is the “God said…and it was so” language of Genesis 1. In Genesis 2, we see a picture of God with his hands in the dirt. In the words of pastor Timothy Keller, “God’s own work in Genesis 1 and 2 is ‘manual’ labor.” Interestingly, when Scripture describes “the work of creating” God did in the beginning (see Genesis 2:3), it uses the Hebrew word mlkh—the exact same word used to describe human work throughout the Old Testament. What’s the point? I think the writers of Scripture wanted us to see our work in God’s work because our work is an opportunity to show others a glimpse of God. God works like and unlike us. May that truth lead us to reflect him well and worship him for his inimitable glory today! P.S. Want the kids in your life to understand the truths we’ve explored in this series? Pick up a copy of The Creator in You (https://www.amazon.com/Creator-You-Jordan-Raynor/dp/059319313X/)

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com-- Series: The Creator in You Devotional: 1 of 5 Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” (John 5:17) I begin my new children’s book by saying, “In the very beginning, a long time ago, God created the world so that we would all know that He Himself is a working God, though you might think that sounds just a little bit odd.” Why is it odd to think of God “working”? After all, Jesus worked and made it clear that the “Father is always at his work to this very day” (see John 5:17). I think it sounds odd because we rarely if ever preach or sing about God’s working character. We talk so much about God’s love, holiness, and mercy, that we forget that the first thing he wanted us to know about him is that he is a God who creates—a God who makes things (see Genesis 1:1)! This is unique in the history of world religions. Every other origin story says the gods created human beings to work and serve the gods. Only the Bible says that God himself worked to serve us. What does that radical truth mean for us today? At least three things. First, it means that work is inherently good. Because God works, our work is not a “necessary evil.” It’s not a means to an end to do the “real work of ministry.” By choosing to work himself, God blessed the idea of labor with incomprehensible goodness and dignity. Second, God’s work shows us that creativity is of infinite worth. In our industrial society, creativity and beauty are almost always treated as “second class” to order and function, including within the Church. But as world-renowned painter Makoto Fujimura points out, "God the artist communicates to us first, before God the lecturer." Because God is creative, we must fight against relegating creativity to the fringes. Finally, because God works, Christianity is far more relevant to our daily lives. We don’t worship an elitist god who sits idly by observing others working. We worship a God who created “in the beginning,” and who took on a common trade when he came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. And so, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). The God of the Bible knows what it means to work. Praise him for that truth and for his creative character today! P.S. Want the kids in your life to understand the truths we’ve explored in this series? Pick up a copy of The Creator in You (https://www.amazon.com/Creator-You-Jordan-Raynor/dp/059319313X/)