Are You Enjoying God In Your Work?
Sermon notes from Dawson Shields at Valley Creek Church on enjoying God in your work, tending the life he has given you, and looking to him through growth, creativity, and rest.
God enjoys you
All summer, we have been pursuing and enjoying God. But did you know that God enjoys you?
He is among you. He delights in you. Whether it is easy or hard to believe, you are his beloved son or daughter.
Are You Enjoying God In Your Work?
Dawson Shields · Valley Creek Church
We have been spending 60 days enjoying God and the life he has given us. You have a great God and a great life to live.
Today, we are talking about something that belongs to this season and every season of your life: work.
Do you enjoy your work?
Work is a massive part of our lives. Provision, relationships, resources, progress, necessities, and comfort come through work.
Joy is a pervasive sense of well-being. No matter what, all is well. Is that true about your work?
We will always have work to do. Yet many of us do not enjoy it at all.
Is this what is waiting for me?
At 19, I joined a men's circle with older men who were successful in their careers, loved their families, and loved Jesus. I wanted to be like them.
But whenever we talked about work, it was negative: just a job, a means to an end, something to get through.
They were where I wanted to go, but they talked about work the same way I did. I began to dread the idea of a career. I think we were looking at work through the lens of a curse.
18 Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground— because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
What is shaping your view of work?
Painful toil. Thorns and thistles. Cursed ground. These can become our narrative about work.
Work is hard. We deal with people, circumstances, and unexpected problems. But we cannot let a false narrative determine truth.
We have to let the promises of God determine what we believe about work.
A meaningful life
You have a life filled with meaningful things and meaningful people. It has been given to you by a meaningful God who cares deeply and intimately about what you do with your life.
Work fits into that life. It is not just something to get through. It is meant to be walked out.
Life is meant to be lived fully, including our work.
What is work?
Work is living out your created purpose by bringing the garden God has given you to a kingdom standard as a part of God's mission.
- It is what you were created to do.
- It is how you tend the garden God has given you.
- It is part of God's mission.
You were created to work
Work appears before the curse. God put man in a garden to work it and take care of it, enjoying God and the work he had been given.
God created work, and what God created was good. Work is not a curse. Worker is part of who you are.
A job is how we provide for ourselves and our families. Work is bigger: it is how we live out our created purpose.
Tend your garden
Your garden is the life God has given you, filled with meaningful things and meaningful people.
Work is how you steward, tend, shape, and take care of that whole life.
- A stay-at-home parent has work to do without a company job title.
- An employee's work is bigger than what happens before clocking out.
- A student's work includes studying, activities, sports, relationships, and the classroom.
God has given you good work
God has prepared good work for you to do in your garden. He has entrusted a life to you and invited you to work it.
Your life is not small. It is grand, big, and beautiful. Work is how you care for it.
When we understand that work is what we were created for and how we tend our garden, we begin to see it as part of God's bigger mission.
Your work is part of God's mission
Paul had a job as a tentmaker, but he understood his work was bigger than making tents. He identified himself as an apostle and servant of Christ.
In the same way, sales is part of your work, but you also represent Christ in your office. A teacher represents Christ to the next generation. A student represents Christ in hallways, friendships, and classrooms.
Where you are matters. You have access to people and places others do not. Carry Jesus with you there.
15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Let your light shine
You have been placed by God to let your light shine.
A bad day, a difficult boss, or a classroom going crazy does not change that you are a representative of Christ.
The daily things that seem meaningless have real meaning when you see them as part of God's mission.
Not a five-step process
At 27, I am still learning how to work. I cannot pretend to have a five-step process figured out. I am watching and learning from people who have worked longer than I have been alive.
And to my peers: there is no perfect career or situation that makes everything great.
Maybe we are so busy trying to enjoy work, or so busy hating it, that we are missing God in all of it. We need to get our attention back to Jesus.
Delight comes first
We think that once we have our desires, we will start delighting. But delight comes before desire.
We find true delight by looking to Jesus, falling in love with him, listening to him, and walking with him.
Our lives cannot be the source of our joy. We have to look to Jesus.
Work with God
Think about Adam walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. They were in relationship. God did not simply put Adam there and leave him to figure it out alone.
We have to look to God in the midst of our work.
Here are three ways I am learning to do that: growth, creativity, and rest.
Growth
God is working for my good when everything feels great and when everything feels wrong. He uses work to shape me and help me become more like Jesus.
From 16 to 21, I worked in a restaurant. Looking back, I can see God teaching me to work with all my heart, work with people from different backgrounds, forgive, and ask for forgiveness. God was doing that while I was selling tacos.
Now I am asking: God, what do I need to learn? What are you trying to show me? How is this for my good?
Work helps us become
Instead of just plowing through and getting it done, I want to look to God in my work.
God cares about us so much that he gave us work to help us become everything he created us to be.
Creativity
God gave people the earth and its resources, then invited them to work. There was no step-by-step manual for every task. There was room to be creative with God.
I love imagining Adam waking up and asking, God, what do we want to do today? How do we solve this problem? What needs our attention?
Every day, we get to work with God, solve problems with him, and create with him.
God cares about what you do
Does God care about spreadsheets? Yes. He cares about your classroom, home, office, and school. He cares about what you are doing and why you are doing it.
He wants to work with you.
Every day, you can turn to him and ask, God, what do we want to do today?
Rest
Rest has everything to do with work. Do you rest from your work each week?
God has gifted us the Sabbath. Work is to be done, and rest is to be received. Both matter.
We cannot make our whole lives about avoiding work, and we cannot ignore the rest God has given us.
Rest with God
One day a week, rest with God and enjoy your life with him.
Go outside. Eat a good meal with people you love. Watch a movie. See your friends. For me, that can mean a Saturday morning with college football, food, friends, and family.
Then I can return to work filled up and ready.
We do not rest from our lives. We rest for our lives.
Enjoy God first
Growth, creativity, and rest all begin with him: looking to him, talking to him, and being with him.
If I am not enjoying God, I cannot truly enjoy my life. So I am learning to ask: God, where am I not enjoying you in my work? Where do I need to look to you again?
Jesus modeled this life. Before his years of ministry, he worked as a carpenter. That part of his life was not meaningless, and this part of your life is not meaningless either.
What will others hear from me?
Now I have my own circle, and young men come to it. I do not want them to hear me speaking negatively about what I was created to do.
I want them to hear how I am enjoying God in my work: how I am growing, being creative with him, and enjoying healthy rhythms of rest.
God has given us a meaningful life to work. If we are going to enjoy work, we must first enjoy God.
An invitation for your whole life
Do not let enjoying God be only an invitation for the summer. Let it be an invitation for your whole life.
God enjoys you, and he is inviting you to enjoy him too.
Prayer
Jesus, thank you for showing us that work is good and purposeful. Teach us how to take our attention off our circumstances and turn it back to you.
Help us enjoy you and carry what we have learned into the seasons ahead. Thank you that our lives are not mundane or meaningless. Thank you for work, and thank you for your presence.
In Jesus' name, amen.
May you enjoy God in your work
May you enjoy God and the work he has given you.
God is good. Jesus has forgiven me. I am loved, and everything is possible.
