Job Series

INTRO

• How many of you still remember the playground at your elementary school?

o I am a proud product of Sarah J. Anderson Elementary in Vancouver, WA.

o We had an awesome playground.

o True story:

• Getting tooth stuck in head…

o Once I recovered from that little episode, it was right back out onto the playground.

o What was your favorite game at recess?

• We had a balance beam out on the playground, and at least once a week, we would play games of “chicken”.

• Chicken tested your mind – and your brain!- but most of all, your sense of balance

• Demonstrate…

o As we all get older, we lose our sense of balance, both literally and metaphorically.

ALL THOSE SPINNING PLATES…

• You can try to convince me that you are still the same person physically that you were all those years ago, but why don’t we just avoid going down that road.

• Instead, let’s talk about the metaphorical balancing act we do as grown-ups.

o For most of us, life is a juggling act.

o We run here or there, constantly on the move.

o I’m just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to the balancing act of life.

• During the day, I’m at work.

• In the evenings, its my son’s baseball games, Adventure Camp, and church softball games.

• On Saturdays, its time to get to all of the stuff around the house that needs fixing.

• And on Sunday, its time to preach the Word, shake babies and kiss hands.

• I may have gotten those mixed up.

• At some point, I kiss my kids goodnight, give my wife a firm pat on the back and tell her “good job”, and then steal a few hours of sleep.

• Wash, rinse, repeat.

• The old visual metaphor for this kind of life is the guy spinning plates, running back and forth to keep them spinning so that none of them come crashing down to the ground.

• Does any of this sound familiar or hit home for you?

o What do we do when we feel overwhelmed in life?

• The truth is, the plates will come crashing down at some point, because we generally do a very poor balancing act.

o Here’s what I have learned: there are 24 hours in a day, and we need 26 in order to make life work.

o Of course, that’s our fault.

o Let’s think about God’s design for a single day:

• According to doctors, how much sleep should we get each night in order to be healthy? (8 hours)

• And how many hours does the average fulltime employee work each day? (8 hours)

• So, if you subtract 16 from 24, how many hours does that leave?

o When God put the universe into motion, and set the Earth on its solar journey around the sun, leaving us with a 24 hour daily orbital revolution, He gave us just enough time to perfectly balance work, play and sleep.

o So, what’s the problem?

A GODLY WORK ETHIC

• Over the next seven weeks, I want to explore how we can learn to balance life better by following God’s advice.

• Since we can’t create more hours in the day to accomplish all that we think we need to, instead we need to do a better job of achieving balance each day.

• This morning, I want to tackle the preeminent thing that seems to unbalance our lives: work.

o From my own, basic observation, there seems to be two approaches to our jobs:

• On the one hand, we have a nation of workaholics. People working 60, 70, 80 hours a week out of a driving compulsion to “get ahead.” People who get in to work early, stay late, and bring their work home with them.

• On the other hand, we have a nation that worships pleasure and entertainment. We work our jobs only to get a paycheck. We live from the time we punch out till the time we punch back in again. Work is only an evil necessity that allows us to do the things we really want to do.

o Whether we care to admit it or not, most of us approach our job this way, and our inability to manage work leads to life being thrown off balance.

• Everything in life can be approached from a Godly point of view, including work.

• So, what does a Godly work ethic look like?

o First of all, there is nothing wrong with working.

• I know that seems like a no brainer, but let’s state that as a fact anyway.

• All through out the Bible, we see people with careers.