Answering the Call - How to Stop Wasting Your Life, Part 2

Deep down, do you really want to do something great with your life? Do you know that God made you to make a difference?

That He uniquely gifted you to accomplish something that no one else can accomplish? And He wants you to invest your life in that mission. The question is, do you know what that mission is? Do you know what you're called by God to do? If you're ready to discover your calling, then stay with me. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, we'll continue our series, Answering the Call, How to Discover and Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life. But before we begin, let me encourage you to use Chip's message notes while you listen. They'll help you get the most out of what you're about to hear. Download them under the Broadcasts tab at LivingOnTheEdge.org.

App listeners tap to fill in notes. Well, with that, here's Chip for part two of his talk, How to Stop Wasting Your Life. He begins in Ephesians chapter six with the next principle for how Christians can work for God wherever they are. Quality control of God from the heart with good will doing service, just in case you missed it, as to the Lord and not unto men. Quality control for the follower of Christ is not in the eye of the boss.

It's in the eye of the Lord. When the boss leaves at 3.30, followers of Christ don't leave at a quarter of five. They leave at five.

And it's Friday, and everyone's making these excuses, and the parking lot gets kind of empty. Followers of Christ are there until their job gets done. And they stay, and they fulfill what they're going to do. Because whether the boss is there or not there, followers of Christ do their job unto him. Notice as slaves to Christ, doing your very best, not as though, but because Jesus really is your boss. He's your supervisor.

He examines your work. And then it's doing God's will. Full-time Christian.

Remember, we talked about this earlier. You're doing God's will. Have you thought about your work? You are doing God's will. So everyone says, I'd like to get into the Lord's work.

Well, guess what? You are in it. Every day you go to work, or whatever the work of your hands is. If you're a stay-at-home mom, it's the Lord's will. And when you change a diaper, when you do things around the house, when you prepare meals, when you create an environment of love that shapes people, for life and then eternity, it's an act of worship.

But it's not only an act of worship. You're in full-time Christian ministry. That's your calling. Or if you have come to a point in time where, okay, you know what? I've done the career thing, and right now, because I saved some money, and I had a pension, and there's this and that, I don't need income.

In fact, my income's taken care of for the next, who knows, however long I live. Your work may not be tied to your income and your job, the work of your hands, what God calls you to do. It's not like, well, hey, you know, there's not a real boss. I don't have a real job.

I can do whatever I want, one-on-one, whatever. You know what? A lot of people get sloppy after they, quote, retire. They get sloppy with their time. They get sloppy with their body. They get sloppy with their priorities. They get sloppy with their spirituality.

Part of it is because the structure's gone. You know, there is something good about, you need to be at work at 8 or 7 or 6.30. There's something good about having an alarm that says, bang, I need to get up. Here's my goals for the day. Now, you get thinking, well, it doesn't really matter. Well, what does if you have a real boss, and you have a calling, and he has something, now, his calling may be, you ought to relax and sleep in three days a week.

You ought to enjoy this season. But it ought to be also, Lord Jesus, what do you want me to do? Because you're my boss. Christians are to make pleasing God their goal, not impressing people. It is excellence.

Excellence. If your boss is Jesus, you don't turn in junk. If your boss is Jesus, you do the best research.

If your boss is Jesus, you do the very best job with the money that you have to say, this is our gift to you. And when people see it, it ought to reflect your excellence. I mean, when I look at creation, I don't see where God goes, beautiful, wonderful, excellent, beautiful.

It's about kind of half droopy, and you know, about every 34 days, you know, we have a sunset, we're just part of it's over here, and part of it's over here, and you know, kind of holes in the ocean. You know, even in a fallen world, when you see what God makes, read the Psalms. His wonderful acts, His matchless deeds. The creation pours forth speech night after night. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord. The testimony of His excellence and beauty. And when they talked about Jesus in Mark 7, what did they say? He did all things well. That's what they ought to say about believers and followers of Christ. You do all things well. Perfect? No.

You do them well. You can work for God full time wherever you work. First, if you obey and honor your supervisor in the act of worship, and second, if you make pleasing God your goal, not impressing people. The first principle is Christians can endure and excel even in difficult work situations because of the certainty of their reward. Did you pick that up in verse 8?

This is hard. I would have not wanted to be a slave going to church the morning that this passage got read for the first time. I'd been whining in the chariot all the way home.

Or probably if I was a slave I'd be pulling the chariot, you know. I mean, is he serious? I mean, Paul must be, he must have been hallucinating.

This can't be God's word. Maybe he's had a stroke. Maybe he's on drugs.

He doesn't know my boss. And then, oh actually, when Paul wrote this he was in prison and getting beaten. I guess he does understand. How is this possible? It's possible because you get grace. The Christian life is not hard. It's impossible.

Only Christ can live the Christian life. He has taken up residence in your body and my body if at some point in time you have recognized that you are a sinner and that you fall short and you don't have it together and you need him and you're willing to humble yourself and bow your knee and your will and say, God, I need you. I've messed up. I have lied. I've stolen. I'm not the man, the husband, the woman that you want me to be.

I need your help. Will you please forgive me? I turn from my self-dependency and my self-will and I ask for your forgiveness and I believe that you dying on the cross in my place paid for my sin and that when you rose from the dead in space-time history and actually for 40 days had 500 eyewitnesses. So this isn't some dream. It's not some religion.

It's historical. I'm trusting what you've done. When you do that and believe and receive him, the Spirit of God comes inside of you and you are taken from that kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and the only person that can live the Christian life is Jesus. He now lives in you by means of the Holy Spirit and so your job is not to try hard to be a good person and be religious and go to church and earn some merit with God.

You have his favor. Your job is to abide and surrender and allow Christ to have his way and take the word of God in the context of biblical community and allow him progressively to change you so he can do the impossible through you. And that's what happened in the first century. And by the way, it's happening all around the world.

But the great joys of being in places in China and India and in the Middle East where people's lives are on the line, I meet people on a regular basis that look into my eyes and they tell me. I was with a pastor who just came out of China to meet us and we met in Hong Kong and they're doing some work with us in terms of getting God's word out to people. And just in casual conversation, we asked him how it was going and he said, you know, it was very difficult and while he was gone, his wife, the police came and they had a home church and they moved it all over the place but the last couple of times it had been his house. She convinced him that she was the pastor, that her husband was away working and she had recruited all the people. They took her to the police station and beat her to a pulp. So an evangelistic trip and his wife is all beaten up. In my mind I'm thinking, now how would I respond if that was Theresa?

And I just got to tell you, my immediate reaction was I want to find out where those police live. And then I asked him, how are you doing with that? And I'm expecting him thinking, well, I'm dealing with my anger pretty well and I mean, in all sincerity, he's sitting here and I'm sitting here, he just looks me in the eye and says, I have no idea what a privilege it would be to suffer for the sake of Jesus and to in some way participate in his suffering for the sake of his bride.

And I just thought, no human being can do that. That's the Spirit of God and the life of Christ in a normal, regular, ordinary man who has gotten perspective and when he reads his Bible, he doesn't skip 1 Peter like American Christians. He doesn't skip 2 Timothy 3 where it promises persecution.

He doesn't think it's surprising that these things would happen. When he heard Jesus say, in the world you have tribulation, he goes, yep, I understand that one, but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world. Now what I want you to know is this response is what was at the heart of transform the world.

And that's what God wants to do today through normal people like you and me. We can endure and even excel in our difficult work situations because of, here's the certainty of God's reward. Verse 8, knowing that whatever good anyone does, that Chinese man's response was a good response. His wife's response to protect him was a good response.

It was painful, but it was good. These slaves' positive response, even after being beaten, is a good response. How do you hang in there? You hang in there because knowing with certainty, God will reward his children for whatever good we do. And you trust God's promise of reciprocity.

So if you endure this and do it good here, God promises I'm going to bless and reward you over here. Most of our problem is we tend to think that life is a little string of now called time. But a biblical worldview is no, life is eternity. And actually the Bible, what you really have is you have eternity and then you have Genesis 1 and 2 and then you have a parenthesis.

And it was a perfect environment, God created us. And this parenthesis, then you have sin into the world. And the parenthesis goes all the way to Revelation chapter right about 20.

And then you have another parenthesis. And here's this little thing called time that you live in and I live in. And then Jesus comes back, new heaven, new earth, and it goes on forever and ever and ever and ever.

And what happens in that little parenthesis determines and has impact on what happens forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. So when Jesus talks about money, his economy is about the forever economy. So instead of sacrifice, he says, let's see, would it be smarter to lay up treasure just for now in the little parenthesis and then when you get here, you can't spend it. It's like Confederate money and the war is over.

It doesn't work anymore. Or would it be better, notice this phrase, store up treasure for others? Is that what it says? Store up treasure for yourself where cloth can't eat and robbers can't steal. His point was, my economy is eternal and when I look at it, I want what's best for you. So you know like when this parenthesis ends and I come back and there's a new heaven, a new earth, and it's forever and ever and ever? I'd like you to have some resources. I'd like you to have some blessing.

I'd like you to have some reward. And you can endure anything if you have hope. If you know it's only going to last for a season, you can endure anything.

It is when we've been most attacked and we endure. And it's not just enduring with gritting our teeth and going, we're going to do whatever God, have you ever read the church history back then and now? As hand in hand, they went into the Colosseum singing. Nero would actually put them on poles and wrap them with tar and he would have cocktail parties and then he would light them. And they would provide light for his cocktail parties as they burned alive. And church historians say, as they were burning, they would be singing hymns of praise to God, being counted worthy to suffer for his sake. That's a little bit different brand of Christianity than we're selling around here, isn't it?

But it's transformational. And you know what? They weren't superstars. You know what kind of people they were? Just like the people next to you.

Just regular, ordinary Christians. But in that moment, in that time, they chose to obey and God gave them the grace to do. And that's all what it's saying here. You know with certainty, you're trusting. The motivation. Motivation. The motivation to treat people the way they don't deserve to be treated when they're your boss. The motivation to do your work unto the Lord and not just to men, where you get the immediate strokes.

The motivation is an eternal perspective. Notice what he says to Peter, writes to these slaves. He says, of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.

I mean, he's just saying the same thing. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing what's wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable or finds favor in God's sight. Because you were, are you ready for this word? For you were called to this purpose since Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his name. In his steps.

1 Peter 2, 18 through about 21. Sometimes the work of your hands isn't related to money. I have a friend, in fact he's the chairman of the board, previous chairman of the board, stepped down a couple years ago because of the situation. His wife had a stroke and in some strokes causes the same symptoms of Alzheimer's. And she has gone from being able to talk and knowing who he is, to she can't dress herself, to he can hardly travel, he can have no meaningful conversations.

And the only thing she can remember and has any joy in is watching old black and white movies. And he will tell her, you know, I'm going to go out of town for a day and I'll be back. Don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me. He can walk in one room and tell her that he's going to go get something and come back and she can't remember where have you been?

Have you been out of town? She gets upset. It's been unimaginable. And I said, Paul, how do you handle it?

Because I mean the guy has an amazing, I'm sure he has bad days, he's got an amazing attitude. And he says, well, you know, that's how we talk. Well, you know, I got thinking about it and Marilyn and I have had over 50 years together and she's treated me so well, she's been a gift from God. It takes a long time.

It's a really long time. I'll get to spend it with her. But I think maybe how good it is might have something to do with how good I treat her now when she doesn't have anything to give me. So I'm just treating her the way I think Christ would want me to.

So I want to love her but I'm doing it for him. How long eternity is. See, an eternal perspective transforms your motivation. Final principle here is Christian bosses and employees, employers must treat employees with concern, respect and fairness as they will be held accountable by God. And you get this sweeping statement in verse 9 and it says, you masters, do the same things to them. In other words, all the attitudes, all the respect, all the kind of way you want to treat them as though, why? You need to remember that God is your boss and then he addresses the most grievous issue, giving up threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. And you say, well, stop threatening, intimidating. Roman masters had the authority to kill.

They rarely did it but they beat on a regular basis. And you say, but this is written to Christians. This is in the church. You know, the culture, when you are in a world that's just this is normal, sometimes our faith gets over here and our culture is over here and we can't make the connection. And so I'm sure there were Christian masters that were beating their slaves. Just like I bet there's Christian supervisors who lie about their employees, who don't give all benefits to their employees, who don't pay time and a half when the law requires it, who gets multiple people on part time so they don't have to pay benefits, who figure out ways to get loopholes that benefit them but hurt their employees and never make the connection because everybody in the industry does it, right? And they're a deacon or an elder in their church.

It's a blind spot. And so he addresses this directly. He says you better stop threatening. He says you better treat them right.

And you better realize that Christ is your Lord. And the key word here is relationship. See, if you're a boss, if you're an employee, if you're an owner, is there a bottom line? Do you have to stay in business?

Yeah. But you better run your business out of a context of relationship and caring about these people. Really caring about them. And so I just ask if you're a boss or an owner or an employer to really think about not what other companies do, not what the corporate standard is. And maybe the corporate standard is okay but to say relationship. If the board meeting was just me and Jesus and we were looking through the employees and what they need and where things are at, how would we treat them?

What would we do? And then you do that. And I will tell you, there are some amazing companies that have been run like this, like Chick-fil-A and many others, who do things for their employees that you think, how could anyone afford to do this? A group up in Michigan, I toured a plant where a company, they actually started a very, very large company. They built all the insides, put all the interiors of cars and grew and grew and grew and they found themselves with more and more single moms with small kids. And they began, then they provided healthcare and then when you got pregnant you would come in because they couldn't afford it and they would check all the women to make sure they all got care. They later put in a medical clinic for all their employees and then they put in a cafeteria, then they put in a recreation area and I said, how do you afford all this? He goes, here's what's really funny. He said, it's 20 years and people ask that. He said, I found out what it cost to hire, fire, retrain people, sick leave, all the rest and there's a company over here that has 5 or 6,000 employees like us. There's another one over here, another one over there.

You add up all the people they lose, all the people they have to retrain, all the people that are out sick, I figure we're probably saving all $800,000 a year. And he said, we recruit the top and the best, they come, you do this for our family, you do this, you do this. He said, you know what, and we do, we have three shifts.

It used to be you could never get anybody to do that middle shift, no one wanted to do it. He said, you come in here at 2 o'clock in the morning and after the shift, after they've eaten pizza, they're playing volleyball. And he said, you never go wrong treating people great. We'll be right back with his application for this message, How to Stop Wasting Your Life, from our series, Answering the Call. Are you looking for a job, starting a new career, or just desperate for a fresh perspective on your current employment? Through this 8-part series, Chip unpacks what the Bible has to say about this idea of work and reveals why God intended it to be more than just what we do for a living. Stay with us as we discover how to find genuine enjoyment and fulfillment in our work and bring praise to God through it. To get more plugged in with this series or our many resources, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org.

That's LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, is with me now. And Chip, you know, we receive tons of emails and calls from listeners sharing how messages like this have deeply impacted them. So I was wondering, could you take a minute and share how our broadcasts are a foundational part of this ministry?

Sure, Dave. At Living on the Edge, we do three things for three groups for one purpose. One, we teach God's Word to as many people as possible through radio, small group resources, online tools like our app, and in partnerships internationally all around the world. Second, we train Christians to go deeper with teaching resources and small group studies. And three, we develop tools for leaders, for pastors and business leaders to help them impact their worlds and beyond.

We do all these things for one purpose, to help Christians live like Christians. Now here's my question. If you were impacted today by the ministry of Living on the Edge, would you be willing to partner with us? We can't do this without the support of partners like you. And as you do, we will change lives, we will spread God's truth around the world, and we will help Christians live like Christians. Here's my question. Would you join us?

Thanks, Chip. If Living on the Edge is ministering to you, and you've not yet partnered with us financially, would you prayerfully consider doing that today? It takes a team to do what God's called us to do, so we're inviting you to help us help Christians live like Christians. To send a gift or to become a monthly partner, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or text donate to 74141. That's the word donate to 74141.

Or visit LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners just tap donate. Well, Chip, let's get to that application we promised. As we wrap up today's teaching, the last point here from Ephesians chapter 6 was that Christian bosses and employers must treat employees with concern, respect, and fairness as they'll be held accountable by God. There's no threatening, there's no intimidation, there's this absolute commitment that it's not about making a buck, it's about transforming the lives of the people in your company.

I told the story today about a plant in Michigan that I got to tour, and I have to tell you it was mind-boggling to see the principle of Scripture actually lived out. As I saw the volleyball courts and the amenities, the medical care and doctors for pregnant women and healthcare, it was this statement by this company that said, we care about you, we value you, it doesn't matter what your job is, it doesn't matter if you're one of the lowest paid employees or the highest paid employees, there was built into the life of everything in that plant that there's integrity, that you matter, that we're going to treat people well. And I remember asking him, I said, well, wasn't this very expensive? And he said, well, yeah, we invested on the front end, but you know, when you do things God's way, and he kind of leaned back, he said, yeah, when you do things God's way, you know, God has a way of blessing. He says, you know, we figured we saved about $800,000 a year on medical expenses and some insurance costs because we staffed it right out of our company. And he said, you know, we just felt like it was our calling to not just give people a job, but help them have a life.

And we knew a lot of the people here weren't going to make great wages, and they came from places with not a lot of education. And we were absolutely committed as a company to creating an environment, both physically and in the work, and even with a spiritual flavor that allowed them to really understand that we're a company that would honor God. You know, we weren't, quote, a Christian company, but we were a company that lived by Christian principles. And I just have to tell you, not only did God honor it and, you know, the bottom line and all the rest, but the satisfaction that we got of seeing what happened in the lives of our employees, that they were loved, that their life was better. You know, it's the kingdom of God being brought into the actual workplace. And, you know, I could tell as John and I were talking, that's his name, it's up in Michigan, that he missed. You know, he's retired and they eventually sold that big company. And I could tell that he really missed the daily life of not just creating a great product and selling it to Detroit, but what I saw was a man who had transformed the lives of a community and individual workers, because what he saw was his work was a calling. Let me ask you, how about you? Is your work a calling?

And if so, what would it look like, what would be different for you to go to work tomorrow and say, this is the call of God in my life? Thanks, Chip. Before we go, I want to quickly tell you about a new resource we've developed here at Living on the Edge that goes right along with what Chip's teaching in this series. It's called The Real You. It's a free online assessment that'll help you better understand how God uniquely designed you and the specific purpose he has for your life.

Learn more about your thinking patterns, passions, gifts, motivations, and how you fit on a team. Then The Real You will suggest how you can live this out every day. Sign up for this free assessment by visiting therealyou.org. That's therealyou.org. Or text real to 74141. That's the word real, R-E-A-L, to 74141. We'll listen next time as Chip continues his series answering the call. Until then, this is Dave Druey thanking you for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge.