Work and rest. What’s the biblical balance?
Balance.
Many of us work too much, fueled by a workaholic drive. Others barely make an effort, doing the minimum to stay employed and get paycheck. Both groups need balance.
Many of us earn more than we personally need and fill our lives with experiences and stuff. Others among us struggle to get by. Both groups need balance.
This study lifts up the biblical mandates to work and to rest. It points us to actions that achieve balance.
As we apply biblical principles, we move from living and earning for ourselves to discovering that our jobs and paychecks are resources we can invest for the kingdom of God.
Our first lesson in this series is called, "Good Work."
Our Lesson Says
Work is a gift from God, not a
curse.
Work. Many of us treat it like a necessary evil in order to earn a paycheck. While many of us have jobs we enjoy, others of us have jobs that are hard, tedious, or even downright boring. If that is the case, we dread going to work. Even when we get home, we tackle a lot of our responsibilities with a sense of drudgery. The Bible does not gloss over the stress and difficulty that can come with work, but that was not God’s original intent. Work is a good thing, and God’s plan is for us to approach any task with responsibility and joy.
I. CREATION AND VOCATION – GENESIS 1:28
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”
In Genesis 3:17-19, God placed a curse on our work as a result of Adam’s disobedience. This curse affected our work, but work itself is not the curse. In fact, when we look at Genesis 1:28, we see that God ordained for Adam to be busy working. God gave Adam work before sin entered the picture.
God gave Adam three commands:
1. Reproduce: Adam and Eve were to have children who would also reproduce and begin the process of filling the earth.
2. Bring order: The picture here is one of subduing. This represents the responsibility for Adam and Eve to work faithfully to take advantage of the natural resources that God put around them.
3. Rule: Adam and Eve were to have dominion over all the fish, birds, and every living thing. God established an order right from the beginning.
Since work is a gift from God and not a curse, we can see that God’s plan in Genesis 1:28 is for us to be faithful in doing our work. God could have told them to sit idly by while waiting for Him to take care of all of their needs. Instead, God called Adam to be proactive.
What is the relationship between God’s blessing and our work?
- The only way to experience all that God has for us is to walk in complete obedience. Then we can be sure not to miss any good thing He desires for our lives. Obedience always brings blessing.
- One of the greatest ways we see work as a gift from God is the way God uses our jobs to provide for our families and those who depend on us. Without work, how would we meet those needs? Even in our moments of frustration with work, we can thank God for the provision that He brings through our work.
How does your current work fulfill your purpose and advance God’s kingdom?
- Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33 Through this scripture we see that our needs will be met when we focus on purpose. What is that purpose? To advance the Kingdom of God. But how is the Kingdom of God advanced? And how do we find our specific purpose in it? You have to understand that before God can really show you your specific purpose in life you have to be totally committed to Him.
What two actions of God in this verse suggest the unique relationship between God and human beings?
- As human beings, we have a unique relationship with God whereby He blesses us and communicates directly to us.
- What calling did God give to human beings in relationship to the created order?
- God has called us to serve as His agents in exercising responsible care for the creation in a way that honors Him as Creator.
II. VOCATION AND RESPONSIBILITY – GENESIS 2:8-9, 15
8 The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He placed the man He had formed. 9 The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.
When we arrive at genesis 2:8-9, we see two important factors in our understanding of work as a gift from God:
1. God placed Adam and Eve in a specific location.
2. God caused the land to flourish.
Think about this within the context of your own work. Understand two important principles:
1. God places you in specific locations. Think about where God has led you to work. Think about the education and experience that enabled you to get the job or do the work. Think about the relationships that were crucial in your hiring. Remind yourself that God has put together, piece by piece, every part of the picture of your life, including work.
2. God blesses where He places you. The garden was absolute perfection and unparalleled beauty. It provided a place for unbroken fellowship with God. God told Adam in chapter 1 to work the land. In chapter 2 God ordained trees to sprout up that would be beautiful for the eyes and full of fruit. Even though God gave Adam a task, it was still God who gave the blessing of growth.
How is your work a part of God’s overall design?
Work is a gift from God, not a curse. Since that is true, we must learn to see ourselves in a good place where God pours out good things. He helps us earn a living, provide for our families, and enjoy His blessings while on this earth. God puts us in specific places – and blesses our lives at that place – to advance the kingdom of God. All the blessings we have received from God have not been accidents. Thus, we must use them for Him. Here’s a key question to ask yourself: Why has God given me this particular work?
God created us to work, and to do so with joy. Because of our sin, work is often meaningless and toilsome. With jaded hearts we view work as either our giver of meaning or our identity, or as a necessary evil. The work of Christ redeems our earthly work. Because Jesus overturned the curse God placed on our work due to our sin, our occupations once again can serve their proper place.
In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character, Phil (played by actor Bill Murray), finds himself reliving the same day over and over again. At first he finds humor in it, but eventually he becomes depressed. Everything becomes meaningless to him. Sulking one day at a bar, he asks, "What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?" Another man at the bar responds, "That about sums it up for me." I wonder how often Ralph's answer would be our own. We go to work every day, doing the same things with the same people, seeing the same results. Deep down we know that there has to be more to life than this. And so we ache.
Originally our work had meaning and fulfillment. As Adam and Eve tended the garden they found sweet satisfaction in serving God and each other serving God. After the fall that satisfaction gave way to exhausting toil. Thankfully, futility is not the end of the story. Through the work of Jesus our work is renewed, once again having meaning.
We've made work meaningless (Gen. 2:15-17; Eccl. 1:1-11, 2:17-23)
We like to think that if our faces wound up on the cover of a tabloid, things would be different for us than the average celebrity. We think to ourselves, "If I had more money, more power, more sex, more knowledge, more fun, a more successful career, better opportunities, I would be happy and fulfilled." Israel's King Solomon had everything that he could ever want. His response to this is shocking. "So I hated life . . ." Everything was meaningless to the man who had everything, even his work. He gave himself fully to his role as king, but finally "gave up [his] heart to despair over all the toil of [his] labors under the sun." Solomon's words echo a Genesis 3 world of "thorns and thistles," and not the Genesis 2 world of "working" and "keeping" the garden. As Robert Bergen has written, "Without the taint of sin, ‘work' was an undiluted blessing." "Undiluted blessing" is hardly what many of would say as we roll out of bed on a Monday morning, unless our words drip with sarcasm. Our sin has separated us from the satisfaction work was supposed to bring us, partly because we now expect it to provide ultimate fulfillment. But work was never meant to be our god. Therefore, our idolatry leaves us empty, unsatisfied in our longings for something work cannot deliver. Because work makes a poor god we resign ourselves to despair.
Application: God created you and me to work. This is not a necessary evil, but a blessing. The only way our attitudes toward work will change is for us to find ultimate meaning and satisfaction in God.
III. RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM – GENESIS 2:16-17
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
In the midst of the perfection of Eden, God told Adam not to eat of one tree. Everything else – the entire garden – was fair game. Instead of doing the work of the garden and enjoying the fruit God provided, Adam focused on the one thing he couldn’t have. Consequently, he fell into sin. How often do we do that? “If I would’ve stuck with what God had called me to do, I never would’ve gotten myself into this mess!”
Adam’s Responsibility & Freedom:
- Adam had a choice between right and wrong.
- Adam had a choice between obedience and disobedience.
- Adam had a choice between a blessing and a curse.
What choices in your work will lead to blessings or curse?
- Deuteronomy 28 – Blessings for Obedience / Curses for Disobedience
We are also put in specific places by God to do what He has called us to do. We have choices:
- Will I show integrity?
- Will I cut corners?
How we make work choices shows what we believe about work. Sadly, many view work as a self-serving way to achieve status or accumulate things. Others view work as a sad reality to be endured. We must always be on guard against the enemy’s tactics of causing discontent over what God has called us to do.
Live It Out
So what are some ways we can do this?
1. Guard against discontentment. When you feel dissatisfied at work, mentally list at least three ways God has blessed you in your job.
2. Encourage a coworker. Find a tangible way to encourage someone in their work. For example, leave a thank you note for the custodial crew. Give words of appreciation to the supervisor who led an excellent meeting.
3. Thank a mentor. Recall the person you described in the page 15 activity. Write that person a note or message to express gratitude for teaching you how to work.
God uses work to teach us how to follow Him more deeply. So hop out of bed, get the coffee going, and anticipate what God will do.
Live it Out & Think About It
The opportunity to fulfill our calling from God to work for Him – our vocation – is not the same as our work or labor to make a living – our employment. Vocation is larger than employment; serving God is more important than making a living. That said, we have a responsibility to God, to our world, and to our society to engage diligently in both and to discover how our employment can become an outlet for fulfilling our greater calling under God. The earnings that come from our employment provide us with increased opportunity to honor the Lord and to have resources for helping others. But more than money is involved. Even those who are unemployed, no matter the cause, are responsible to honor God by investing themselves in service to the Lord to make our world a better place.
Prayer of Commitment
Dear Lord, thank You for the trust You place in me by calling me to serve You. Help me embrace the work You have given me as a gift, even on those days when I am weary and filled with stress by it. Amen.
Added Commentary:
How to Find Your Specific Purpose in Life
You’ve probably heard someone say that God created you for a purpose— but how do you find that purpose? How can you know what you are supposed to do?
Needs Motivation vs. Purpose Motivation
It begins by understanding the difference between NEEDS MOTIVATION and PURPOSE MOTIVATION.
These two concepts represent two different ways of looking at the world and our situation in it.
Needs Motivation is all about man chasing after his needs. His physical needs such as food and clothing. His emotional needs such as family relationships and career development. With Needs Motivation, man has to make it happen.
With Purpose Motivation, God makes our needs happen. All you have to do is focus on the purpose He has given you to do. God handles the details of meeting your needs.
This process of Purpose Motivation is advanced by Jesus in the gospels. Consider the following scripture:
Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
Through this scripture we see that our needs will be met when we focus on purpose. What is that purpose? To advance the Kingdom of God. But how is the Kingdom of God advanced? And how do we find our specific purpose in it? You have to understand that before God can really show you your specific purpose in life you have to be totally committed to Him.
The truth is that every man, woman and child was placed on earth to advance God’s purpose and each person was endowed with a natural gift in doing so.
It’s man’s rebellion that throws life into confusion.
For example, what would you think of a LION that rebelled against its nature? Could it ever be satisfied living like a mouse? The same is true for you. If you live against your nature, will you ever be satisfied?
The following are 10 steps you can take to advance God’s Kingdom and find your specific purpose in life.
1. Die to self. Advance God’s purpose rather than your own.
Here’s what the Bible has to say about that. If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. Matthew 16:24-25
2. Decide you are going to TRUST God to meet the needs of your life.
Making this decision is the tipping point to finding your specific purpose in life. God can begin to show you what you were designed for. Trust can be tricky though. That’s because we’ve been conditioned for so long to think that we have to meet our own needs.
Even the Christian church gets confused today and tries to secure its needs through “faith”. God, I believe you for healing. God, I believe you for miracles. God, I believe you for money. When our “faith” is simply predicated to the level of our need, then we have missed the point of Purpose Motivation. “Faith” simply becomes a religious metaphor for what everyone else in the world is doing— Needs Motivation.
This is what Needs Motivation looks like:
This is what Purpose Motivation looks like:
True faith trusts God. It doesn’t worry about its needs. It focuses on Kingdom purpose.
When your heart has reached this level of understanding and preparedness, you are ready to discover your specific purpose. Look no further than the desires of your heart.
3. Look inside yourself and ask, “What are my deepest desires and most persistent thoughts?”
These thoughts don’t just come to you by happenstance. God has placed them in you from the beginning of time. The reason they excite you and give you passion is because they are the seeds of works God prepared in ADVANCE for you to do. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in ADVANCE for us to do. Ephesians 2:10
Some people are afraid to follow their dreams for fear that they are doing something wrong or selfishly sinning. As long as it isn’t overt sin such as lying or stealing, DO IT. Let God get the glory through it. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17
4. Align your desires with your natural gift.
God has given seven natural gifts to man. They are: Preaching, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, showing mercy (Romans 12:6-8).
Preaching is declaring the truth. Serving is practicing the truth. Teaching is explaining the truth. Encouraging is applying the truth. Giving is supporting the truth. Leading is organizing the truth. Mercy is ministering the truth.
But which gift is yours?
5. Determine your gift by understanding the EFFECT it has in someone’s life.
Different gifts cause different “effects” in people. By identifying which “effect” brings you the most joy, you can understand your gift.
Preaching: Are you a big picture guy? Do you like getting people EXCITED about a cause? Can you speak well? Are you comfortable in front of a crowd and enjoy the spotlight? Then your gift is Preaching! The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to rally people to a common cause.
Serving: Are you more comfortable “doing” the truth than you are “expressing” the truth? Do you want your actions to speak louder than your words? Do you like to help people? Then your gift is Serving. The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to make someone’s life easier by what you do for them.
Teaching: Is it important to you that people understand WHY they believe what they believe? Are you interested in the mechanics of why something is true? Can you explain it to people? Then your gift is Teaching. The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to help people UNDERSTAND why something is true.
Encouraging: Do you have discernment? Do you have the ability to say the right thing at the right time? Do you like to encourage people when they are down? Then your gift is Encouragement. The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to give people HOPE.
Giving: Do you have a knack for making money? Does everything you touch turn to gold? Do you have a desire to see worthwhile efforts get off the ground? Then your gift is Giving. The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to bring someone’s vision to life though your financial support.
Leading: Are you organized? Are you detail oriented? Are you able to understand the process of making something work? Are you able to inspire others to follow your lead? Then your gift is Leading. The “effect” that brings you joy is in your ability to make things run smoothly through your organizing skills.
Mercy: Are you sensitive to the hurts of others? Do you see the value in people no matter what they have done? Then your gift is Mercy. The “effect” that brings you joy is your ability to validate people.
Once you find your gift or gifts (people often have more than one gift), determine what vehicle you will use to express your gift.
6. Determine what VEHICLE you will use to express your gift?
By vehicle I mean your STYLE. What is your style? Perhaps God has given you a creative way to express your gift. That is your style. For example: You have a DESIRE to help children. You have the GIFT of mercy. Your STYLE is a magician. You go to hospitals and make kids laugh by doing magic tricks that highlight the Gospel of Peace. In this way you validate kids that would otherwise feel totally inadequate.
Vision: Insight into which gift best fits you provides a foundation from which to build your life. It is the beginning of VISION. Vision is actually self discovery. True vision always looks inward before it looks outward. Self discovery is “fanning into flame” the gift that is already in you. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of hands. 1 Timothy 1:6
7. Get moving on your dreams. These dreams are your purpose.
God wants you to get moving on your dreams. He wants you to take a step of faith so He can fulfill His purpose in you. It’s the rolling stone that gathers no moss. The Bible puts it this way: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-8
8. Follow a logical path in fulfilling your dreams.
Getting where you want to go is like climbing a ladder. Take it one rung at a time. Ask yourself,”What I need to do to make my dreams happen today?” or “What’s keeping me from advancing my dreams today?” When you can answer these questions, you’ll have the next step to fulfilling your dreams.
9. Overcome obstacles that keep you from moving forward.
Sometimes it can be as simple as taking a class, getting an education. Sometimes we get in our own way, we don’t listen to God. Remember this is His master design. He already has a script for you. Back off and wait for Him. Give God time to perform His work. Spend time meditating and going through the internal/external process discussed in Truth Based Thinking.
I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:13-14
10. As confidence grows, opportunity finds you.
People are drawn to confidence. The confidence that God brings isn’t conceited. After all this isn’t about you. God put it in you, God gets the glory. What happens is that people begin to recognize the gift that God has placed in you. Remember your gift has been foreseen since the beginning of time. God prepared you for it. The whole earth has been waiting for you to appear.
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. Romans 8:19
The authority you weld in your given gift is God’s authority. You become the tip of the spear in advancing His truth into your world because you are doing what He designed you to do. People will want to know the reason for your success. Be prepared to give an answer.
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. 1 Peter 3:15
Conclusion: When you find God’s purpose for your life it will feel natural. When you discover who you were designed to be and live in it, you feel free. When this happens the money you need to live finds you. God made us to be gatherers, not laborers. The labor God placed on man in the Garden of Eden was a curse (Genesis 3:17-19), but Christ lifted the curse and returned us to God’s original intent (Galatians 3:13).
Notice that God gave Adam a garden to tend. God created the garden, God watered it. God made it grow. Adam simply gathered its fruit.
The same is true for you. God gave you a garden in the form of the gift He placed in you. You don’t labor to make it grow. You don’t create it. You discover it. You cultivate it. As you operate in your gift, God brings opportunity and you simply gather the fruit or the resources you need to live.
This is the abundant life and how finding purpose works. It’s being you and giving yourself to others. It’s living the way God designed you to be. I have come that they may have life, and have it in full. John 10:10
Great start to a great series on the Christian work ethic.
See you on Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
