Facing Giants At Work

FACING GIANTS IN LIFE & WORK

50 Days of Transformation– Part 7 (Your Career)

Pastor Rick

April 19, 2015 Exodus 35:30-35 I Samuel 16

This sermon is my variation of the sermon from Rick Warren in the 50 days of Transformation Series. Some of the background information on David and Goliath is from Malcom Gladwell.

We are in our final week of 50 Days of Transformation. How many of you can look and see ways in which you are different. One of my goals under the physical transformation was to change my eating habits. I have done so, and as a result I am 20 lbs lighter than I was from week 2. Today we are going to look at Transformation at work or in a career.

We have celebrated Pastor’s Toby 30th anniversary because God put a calling on her life to be a pastor. But did you know that God created you and placed gifts in your life so that you could do a particular kind of work. In our Old Testament reader we met a two guys who were jewelers, sculptors, carpenters, craft designers and teachers all because God’s spirit put the ability in them to be skilled at such task. They had the same calling on their lives as Pastor Toby has on hers. Their skills were to be used to glorify God.

We think we can separate a secular job from a spiritual one, but God never makes the distinction. Our work or career is sacred to God, because that’s where God wants us to be to use us for God’s glory. Whether you are a cashier, counselor, driver, painter, secretary, supervisor or entrepreneur, your work is sacred to God and you need to see it as such. We are going to watch a woman take her calling and turn it into a ministry for God.

How do we get to the place of recognizing our calling from God. God always uses the circumstances in our lives today, to prepare and equip us for how He intends to use us in the future. Even those of you who are retired, are called to do ministry with the gifts God has given you. As you get to the place God is calling you, you are going to face certain giants in your life, that will seek to keep you from becoming what God intended.

In our OT reading, we say that God had Samuel anoint David to be the next king, when all David was, was a shepherd boy. Right after his anointing he was sent right back into the fields to take care of the sheep. You can look at where you are today, but that does not mean that’s where you are always going to be. You can look at us today as a church, but we are not where God is going to have us be in terms of our growth, our ministries and our outreach. Today, we’re just a shepherd, but tomorrow God is going to do something new.

God places dreams inside of us because God knows we can accomplish far more than we think when we align our lives with his. Do you realize that if all of us who sat in the video on transformation with our giving did what the teaching said, there would not be any financially struggling at New Life At Calvary. We’d feed more people each month, we’d have summer camp jobs for all our youth, and we’d have scholarship money for our students. Nobody would have to worry about an eviction because they could not pay their rent. We would be able to love each other in word and in deed.

You can be certain that for every dream God places inside of us concerning our work or careers, the devil is going to send some giant in our path to keep from obtaining it. We have a story in the bible that helps us to understand how to overcome giants that keep us from getting from where we are to where God wants us to be. It’s called David and Goliath.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. Israel and the Philistines are at war. Both sides are on a hill with a valley between them. Neither side wants to give up their position of being on the higher ground by crossing the valley to fight. Finally the Philistines suggest they both put up their best warrior, let them slug it out, and whoever wins the fight wins the war. It sounded good until the Philistines came up with a warrior who was big enough to make Lebron James look like a short little guy. The guy was so tall and big that someone walked in front of him with a shield to keep away enemy arrows. He had on a bronze helmet, a coat of armor weighing 125 lbs, bronze to cove his legs, a huge javelin that the tip of it weighed 15 lbs.