From the desk of Kathryn Redman...
Why Work? The short answer is because God is a worker, and the quickest way to experience the joy and satisfaction that your life was meant to hold is to imitate Jesus, God made man. Jesus says He only does what He sees the Father doing, and He came to protect us, and to show us how to experience life that is so fulfilling that it would be more than we ever imagined and better than we ever dreamed possible. Why work? Why not? The trick is to rewrite our understanding of what work is and how to do it like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is time to redeem work and take back another part of our inheritance! Are you with us?
No matter where you are in your journey, understanding God’s purpose for work is super important. It may sound like a mundane, boring topic, but trust me, it isn’t! It is full of hope and encouragement and excitement and challenge.
This past Sunday Michael and I had the privilege of beginning a four-week series entitled “Why Work?” If you were there you heard Michael lay out the biblical evidence that God did not create work as a result of sin, or as a punishment to us humans, but rather that work existed in the garden before things went all wrong. Based on Genesis 1-2 we see God as a worker. Work is a part of the character and nature of God. He works. It’s what He does. He models 6 days of work, 1 day of rest. And, as you already well know, we were made in the image of God so guess what? We were made to work and to rest. It’s what we should be doing. If you missed last Sunday, I want to encourage you to check out the podcast (http://www.ncchico.org/podcast/) or videocast (http://www.ncchico.org/videocast/) of the sermon so you have the foundation. I know he’s my husband so I might be biased, but it was good stuff!
Work is such a critical part of who we are, but it has been misunderstood in many Christian circles. If you have a job outside the home, you probably spend more of your awake hours at work than you do at home. Does God care about your 8-5 job? Is work outside of the church as important as work for the church? Is the highest calling for every Christian to be a missionary or a pastor? What are we supposed to think about work? What if we hate work and are just “working for the weekend”? How do we find meaning and purpose in our work?
We are super excited to have the chance to talk through these topics and more as we head into week 2 of the series. We are calling this week “Myths and Elephants” because of a comment Michael made as we were planning and preparing. He said it felt like “we opened a can of worms and found a herd of elephants!” This week we will look at some of the elephants in the room. We will unpack some of the teaching and thinking that has led us to misunderstand or undervalue the role of regular everyday work in the Kingdom of God. Still not intrigued? We had at least two retired people who talked with us after the service last Sunday and said something like “my first thought was ‘this topic isn’t relevant for me, it’s for the younger folks’ and then about 3 minutes in, I realized it is relevant for me.”
As noted in the opening paragraph, the trick is to rewrite our understanding of what work is and how to do it like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is time to redeem work and take back another part of our inheritance! Can’t wait to see you there!
Don’t forget to set your clocks forward an hour!