The Word Before Work

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corinthians 3:8-15)Today’s passage is one of the richest on the topic of work in all of Scripture. We could spend weeks unpacking these eight verses, but this morning, I just want to focus our attention on three things.First, ”the quality of each person’s work” will one day be tested by God. Work matters greatly to God as it is a means of glorifying him and serving others. Thus, we ought to strive to do our work exceptionally well and in accordance with his commands.Second, this passage makes clear that there are varying rewards tied to how we work in this life. Verse 8 says this plainly: “each be rewarded according to their own labor.” Which work will be rewarded? The work that “survives” the “fire” of God’s judgment. Paul lists six building materials in this passage: three that would survive a “fire” (gold, silver, and costly stones) and three that would not (wood, hay, and straw). The question then becomes, what sort of work is considered “gold, silver, [and] costly stones?” The quality work we do in accordance with the commands of our “foundation…which is Jesus Christ.” In the words of New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, “What we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted.”But, while Paul makes clear that we will all receive varying rewards based on how we work today, he is also careful to ensure we don’t turn this into a false gospel, which brings me to the final thing I want us to see this morning: Regardless of whether or not our work will “burn up” or be rewarded, “the builder…will be saved.” One day, God will test our work and reward us accordingly. But as those trusting in Jesus Christ for the atonement of our sins, our souls have already been judged and our entrance into God’s eternal kingdom is irrevocably secure. While rewards will vary, our statuses as co-heirs with Christ are equal.May that ultimate security lead us to be ambitious for doing excellent, God-glorifying work today!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)Have you ever felt less than “influential” at work? Or felt like you were “lowly” or lacked the right “noble” family or pedigree for your career? Have you ever lacked the wisdom you need to do the work God has called you to do? All of us have. So what are we supposed to do with the feelings of inadequacy Paul describes in today’s passage?The burgeoning “self-help” industry’s answer to that question is to replace negative “self-talk” with “positive affirmations.” Is someone making you feel “lowly”? Forget about what they say. What matters is how you view yourself. Feeling like you don’t have what it takes to tackle the problem in front of you? Look in the mirror and tell yourself you can do it and that you are “enough.” In short, the world’s response to feeling inadequate is to inflate your self-esteem with pride. Paul’s response couldn’t be more different. In today’s passage, Paul is calling us to embrace our inadequacies so that God might be glorified in our weakness. In verse 27, Paul says that God works through the “weak things” of the world—that’s us!—”so that no one may boast before” God or man.God used ninety-year-old Sarah to give birth to a nation (see Genesis 17:17). God used ineloquent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (see Exodus 4:10). And he used lowly fishermen and tax collectors to help proclaim the gospel of the kingdom (see Matthew 4:18-22).Believer, you don’t need to convince yourself that you are capable of doing the work God has called you to do today. The point is that you’re not! And that means that God alone deserves the glory for whatever you accomplish.Paul David Tripp said it best: “God calls unable people to do important things because ultimately what he’s working on is not your immediate success, but that you would come to know him, to love him, to rest in his grace, and to live for his glory.”Amen. Boast in your weakness this morning so that God alone may be glorified through your work!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you….Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip….Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. All Kedar’s flocks will be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple. Who are these that fly along like clouds, like doves to their nests? Surely the islands look to me; in the lead are the ships of Tarshish, bringing your children from afar, with their silver and gold, to the honor of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor. Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you. Though in anger I struck you, in favor I will show you compassion. Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations—their kings led in triumphal procession. (Isaiah 60:1, 4, 6-11)Today concludes our four-week series exploring what Easter means for our work today. Over the past three weeks, we’ve seen how Easter gives us an identity, a King, and a mission. Today we’ll see how Easter points to an incredible incentive to do our work “as unto the Lord” (see Colossians 3:23).But before we look at what that incentive is, we need to pause and appreciate something that is easy to overlook in the Easter narrative—namely that there is a continuation from the present world to the future one. Scripture makes clear that Jesus’s physical body was raised from the dead. This wasn’t an entirely new body. It was a redeemed, perfect version of Jesus’s physical body pre-death. Thus, the hope we have as Christ-followers isn’t for some disembodied existence in the clouds after we die. Our ultimate hope is, like Jesus, the resurrection and restoration of our physical selves.What does this have to do with our work? The promise that our physical bodies will continue on from this life to the next makes it easier for us to grasp how our physical work might do the same. This is what Isaiah is alluding to in today’s passage in his prophetic vision of the Kingdom of God. All the nations are coming into the New Jerusalem, but they are not coming empty-handed. They are bringing their very best work from the previous life. The people of Tarshish bring their ships (v. 9), Midian and Ephah bring their livestock (v. 6), and Sheba brings gold and frankincense (v. 6). Isaiah calls these cultural goods the “wealth of the nations.” John, in a strikingly similar vision in Revelation 21, calls these artifacts “the glory and honor of the nations.”Isaiah and John are showing us how some of our work might physically cross over into the New Jerusalem, used by King Jesus to build and adorn His eternal Kingdom.What sort of work will carry on? Scripture doesn’t say definitively, but I think it’s safe to assume it will be work that is created in line with the principles of King Jesus to whom we owe our allegiance.You and I shouldn’t need an incentive to work with excellence. As we saw a few weeks ago, we should work with excellence as a loving response of worship to the King who redeemed us. But God in His great graciousness does give us incentive—an incentive that our work will be deemed by God to be among “the glory of the nations.” Work to that end today!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:6-11)We’re in a four-week series exploring what Easter means for our work. Two weeks ago, we saw how Easter gives us an identity work can never provide. Last week, we saw how Easter gives us a King worthy of our allegiance. This morning, we see that King Jesus gives us a mission to carry out.As I mentioned last week, Easter can be thought of as a sort of Inauguration Day, ushering in the Kingdom of God in which Jesus is King. As we know from our modern experience, Inauguration Day is the moment in which power is transferred from one regime to another. But here’s the thing: An inauguration is powerless unless the leader’s followers share the news of the transfer of power.Easter declared that Jesus—not Caesar or any other earthly authority—is the ultimate, rightful King. But somebody had to share that good news—what Jesus called the “gospel of the Kingdom” (see Matthew 24:14).That’s the mission Jesus gave to Mary at the tomb (see John 20:17). And as today’s passage shows, it’s also the mission Jesus gave to us: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). King Jesus has given us a mission to be His ambassadors throughout the world, declaring His lordship over every square inch of creation, including our places of work. We are called to reveal Jesus’s kingship and to use our work to bring us one step closer to His Kingdom being “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).What does that look like practically? It looks like medical professionals developing vaccines for deadly viruses, because in the Kingdom “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (see Revelation 21:4). It looks like artists creating beautiful things, because the Kingdom is filled with beauty (see Revelation 21:2). It looks like leaders being “persecuted because of righteousness” and doing the right thing, because “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (see Matthew 5:10). It looks like all of us heralding the good news of the gospel so that our co-workers might come to know Jesus the King (see Matthew 28:16-20).Easter made clear that Jesus is King and He has given us a mission to be ambassadors announcing His reign. Let us all work to reveal His Kingdom today!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’s body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). (John 20:11-16)Last week, we saw how Easter gives us an identity for our work. This week, we look at how Easter gives us a King to direct our work.Reading through the gospels, it appears that Jesus’s favorite topic wasn’t money, sin, or even individual salvation. What He spoke of more than anything was the “Kingdom of God.” And on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus proved emphatically that He is the prophesied King of that Kingdom.Viewed through that lens, Easter can be seen as a sort of Inauguration Day for Jesus. As we know from our modern experience, the inauguration of new leaders is a big deal. Every detail of an inauguration ceremony is chosen with great care, from the speakers to the songs and even the parade route. And of course, the detail that matters most is how the new leader appears physically as they address their new subjects. It’s why the fictional president-elect in my all-time favorite show The West Wing refused to wear a coat to take the oath of office in negative ten-degree weather. He wanted to portray an image of “youth and vigor” as he came to power.So given that Jesus inaugurated His Kingdom on Easter, it’s interesting to note how He appeared physically to Mary. John 20:15 tells us that Mary mistook Jesus for “the gardener.” Of course, Jesus could have chosen to appear any way He wished. But He chose to be mistaken for a gardener. Why?We can’t know for sure, but here’s my guess: In the inauguration of His new creation, I think Jesus is pointing us back to the first creation and the first gardener, Adam. I think Jesus is showing us that He is the “Last Adam” who is wholly unlike the first one. While Adam sinned, Jesus was sinless. While Adam died, Jesus conquered death ushering in the end of nevermore. While Adam’s reign broke creation, Jesus’s reign is meant to restore it.But Jesus isn’t going to restore creation in one fell swoop. He’s going to use our work—our gardening and cultivation of creation—to bring about His Kingdom. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says, “God’s kingdom, inaugurated through Jesus, is all about restoring creation the way it was meant to be. God always wanted to work in his world through loyal human beings.”You see this in Genesis and you see it again on the first Easter Sunday. In Genesis, God created a blank canvas and called Adam and Eve to fill it. On Easter, King Jesus showed up for Inauguration Day dressed as a gardener as a means of saying, “It’s time to garden again.” It’s time to “fill the earth” again (see Genesis 1:28). Fill it with what? With reflections of the King and His Kingdom—a topic we’ll explore more deeply next week.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:14-17)Now more than ever, our culture tells us to look to our careers for our sense of self-worth and identity. This, of course, leads us to work out of a sense of fear rather than freedom. I don’t think anyone summarized this idea more honestly than Madonna when she said, “My drive in life comes from a fear of being mediocre. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being but then I feel I am still mediocre and uninteresting unless I do something else. Because even though I have become somebody, I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and I guess it never will.”What Madonna is looking for—what we’re all looking for—is a verdict for our lives. We’re looking for someone to say once and for all that we are valuable and worthy—that our very existence is justified. If Madonna can’t find that in her work after becoming one of the most accomplished people in her generation, you and I never will.So, if we can’t find this verdict and identity in our work, where can we find it? We find it at the tomb Jesus walked out of that first Easter morning. On Easter, Jesus secured the most important verdict of your life: Forgiven and, through faith in him, free from the penalty of death because he has conquered it.But our verdict is more than just “forgiven.” Think about a courtroom today. If a defendant is handed the verdict of “not guilty,” they are sent back out into the world to re-enter society on their own. But that’s not how God’s courtroom works. Through Jesus our advocate, we are granted a verdict of innocence. But then the judge, God the Father, does something even more radical: He invites you and me to come home with him to share the inheritance of his Son. We aren’t just forgiven. We are given a new identity as “co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).What does this mean for our work? It means that we can work out of a sense of freedom rather than fear. If we, like Madonna, view our work as a means of chasing an ultimate verdict for our lives, we will never be satisfied. We will constantly be paranoid and afraid because we know the verdict always hangs in the balance. But if we work in response to a secure verdict that is handed down by our Creator, we can work freely as a joyful response of worship.In light of your secure identity as a co-heir with Christ, don’t put yourself back into the courtroom today. Yes, we should be ambitious to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. But Easter assures us that regardless of what we accomplish today, court is adjourned. The jury has left the building. Our identity as adopted children of God is secure.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)When Israel was in exile, God didn’t call them to retreat and seclude themselves in their own Jewish subculture. He called them to “settle down” and “seek the peace and prosperity of the city.”Paul issues a similar command to us in Galatians 6:10, saying, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”Simply seeking to “do good to all people” and “seeking the prosperity” of our communities is good and God-honoring in and of itself. We are called to be good citizens, good neighbors, and good workers who seek the prosperity of the companies we lead and work for. This is a form of ministry and service. It may not be as overt as the ministry of your pastor, but it’s ministry nonetheless, as good work is an act of obedience to God and service to others.Since Arthur Guinness founded his brewery in 1759, most of his descendants have chosen one of three career paths. There have been the “brewing Guinnesses,” the “banking Guinnesses,” and what some have called the “Guinnesses for God” who have worked as pastors and donor-supported missionaries.To believe this third group is the only one whose work matters to God would be a terrible mistake. As we’ve seen throughout this series, the work of the Guinnesses who “settled down” in Dublin to seek the prosperity of that and countless other cities have contributed significantly to God’s work in the world.It’s clear that all three lines of Guinnesses understood this. In the excellent biography from which much of this series was derived, the author says the Guinnesses “understood that brewing could be done as a holy offering, as a craft yielded in the service of God. They did not see themselves as secular, but rather as called. They did not see themselves as apart from Christian ministry, but rather as in the Christian ministry of industry and trade. They did not think of their brewing work as a menial way to pay the bills, hoping that they might compensate for such worldliness by giving occasional service to the church. No, they had absorbed the great Reformation ideal that everything a man did was to be done for God…They understood that this transformed workbenches into altars and the labor of a man’s hands into liturgies pleasing to God.”The same can be said of you today, believer. Your workbench is an altar. Your desk is a cathedral. Use it to worship today—to “do good to all people” you come in contact with at work, and in doing so, glorify our great God. In the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. (Deuteronomy 8:17-18)If God is the one “who gives you the ability to produce wealth,” then He gets to dictate what we do with financial excess, whether it’s abundance from a paycheck or profit from a business. As I’ve studied the life of Arthur Guinness and his descendants, it’s clear that they understood this truth deeply. Generation after generation, the Guinnesses have been marked by their generosity to the communities inside and outside of their breweries. But it’s their generosity towards their own team which stands out most to me.In addition to paying wages 10-20% higher than average, Guinness has been known to provide employees with “everything from subsidies for funeral expenses, educational benefits…and a guaranteed two pints of Guinness beer a day.” These types of benefits might seem standard today, but Guinness has been providing many of these things since the 1700s, at a time when such corporate generosity was unheard of. In the words of one Guinness biographer, “the generosity of Guinness seemed unlimited.” Nowhere is this more evident than in what the firm did in the late 1800s. At the time, “Dublin was the Calcutta of its day, a city…beset with filth and disease.” One young Christ-following doctor named John Lumsden believed Guinness could be a part of the solution. Lumsden had “radical ideas about public health care and the duty of corporations to the poor,” so the Guinness Board hired him as the firm’s Chief Medical Officer. That’s when Lumsden proposed something unthinkably audacious. Understanding that “in the crammed slums of Dublin, housing was the key to public health,” Lumsden proposed that the Guinness Board allow him to visit the home of every Guinness employee and report back with a recommendation for what the company could do to help solve the public health crisis. With the Board’s approval, Lumsden visited 1,752 homes in 60 days, representing nearly 10,000 employees and dependents. In his final report, Lumsden recommended the Board take seven incredibly costly actions, including building quality homes the company’s staff could rent at subsidized rates allowing them to escape Dublin’s slums.Most corporations wouldn’t see public housing as a problem they were responsible to fix. Even if they did, wasn’t Guinness already generous enough with their people and their community? Guinness didn’t think so. Due to the faith of their founders and their understanding that they didn’t create their wealth in the first place, the Guinnesses approved most of Lumsden’s recommendations and were credited for lifting untold Dubliners out of poverty.You may not have financial excess the size of a corporation like Guinness. But most of us will see some financial abundance as a result of the work God does through us. May we be people who, like Guinness, allow the recognition that God alone produces wealth shape how we steward that abundance.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (John 2:1-11)If you’ve ever launched anything new into the world—a business, a book, a new initiative at work—you know how much thought and planning goes into launching well. That perspective makes John’s account of the launch of Jesus’s public ministry all the more remarkable. For the launch event of his Kingdom, Jesus wasn’t preaching. He was turning water into wine. He was beginning to make all things new.New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out that Jesus’s “signs” and miracles “were all about new creation: water into wine, healings, food for the hungry, sight for the blind, life for the dead.”In other words, Jesus didn’t come just to save our souls and mend the spiritual realm. Jesus came to save the world—including the material world—as the launch of his public ministry so clearly demonstrates.Why does this matter for our work? Because God uses our vocations as a means of mending his broken creation! The life of Arthur Guinness provides a vivid case study of this truth.When Guinness moved to Dublin in the mid-1700s, he found a city in desperate need of spiritual and physical redemption. At that time, people routinely drank from the same water in which they dumped their garbage and sewage, often dying as a result. This led many to avoid water altogether. Instead, they drank alcohol, as the process of making alcoholic beverages killed the germs in water that led to disease. But soon, excessive drinking set in, leading to “the Gin Craze.” Drunkenness became a major problem, leading to an increase in crime and poverty.It was against this backdrop that Guinness saw an opportunity to put his Christian faith into action. Given his background as a beer-brewing apprentice, Guinness believed he could brew a new style of beer (which would come to be known as stout) which would be nutritious, filling, and much lower in alcohol than gin. As the author of The Search for God and Guinness points out, upon seeing this opportunity to redeem his corner of the material world, Arthur “would have come to see his chosen profession as a service to his fellow man” and “brewing…a moral mandate.”So confident was Arthur that this was the work God created him to do, he signed a 9,000-year lease on the land his brewery still sits on more than 250 years later.Like Guinness, the work you and I do today is about bringing about the new creation Jesus inaugurated during his time on earth. What happens when that work produces more personal or business income than we need? That’s the question God’s Word and the example of Guinness will help us answer next week.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)Arthur Guinness moved to Dublin, Ireland at the age of 34; but he didn’t come to the city empty-handed. He brought with him a strain of yeast he had used while mastering the art of brewing beer in his hometown of Kildare. It was that strain of yeast cells that Guinness would use to create an innovative style of beer called stout. But perhaps more mind-boggling than the global adoption of Guinness’s brew is this: According to Guinness’s biographer, today more than 250 years after Arthur founded his brewery, “the original strain of Arthur’s yeast is still at work” and used to produce Guinness beer in breweries all around the world. In this tangible way, Arthur’s work quite literally lives on, more than two centuries after his death.Of course, at some point Arthur’s strain of yeast is bound to die out. No business—not even the mighty Guinness—will last forever. But while his yeast is sure to fade away, some of Arthur Guinness’s work—and some of our work—will last forever.That is precisely the point Paul is making in today’s verse. After a long passage about death and future resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul turns his readers’ attention to the present, urging us to “give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”Commenting on this verse, N.T. Wright, whom Newsweek has called “the world’s leading New Testament scholar,” says this about our work: “You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem—accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world.”Wright and Paul are saying that our work will last much longer than Arthur Guinness’s strain of yeast. Our work has the potential to last into God’s everlasting Kingdom. What kind of work will last? “The work of the Lord”—the work we do in our vocations that is aligned with His Word and agenda for the world.How should that perspective shape our work today? How did it shape the perspective of Guinness whose life motto was “My hope is in God”? Those are the questions we will answer over the next few weeks.