Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away. Hi everyone, welcome back to Ask Away. I'm Jo Vitale. [Laughter]

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Vince Vitale [00:00:48] Are you still recording? 

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Jo Vitale [00:00:50] I am. 

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Vince Vitale [00:00:50] Okay, keep it going. We've tried four times to start this episode, guys. You don't get to see the behind the scenes, but it's just so funny. Once we get into it, it's all smooth. But the start is just we’re always cracking up over here. So, yes, this is Ask Away. That is Jo. 

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Jo Vitale [00:01:05] I am Jo Vitale. 

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Vince Vitale [00:01:06] I am Vince. We hope you're having a great summer. Back to you, Jo. 

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Jo Vitale [00:01:10] That was strangely hard to do. Anyway, good to be here with you all today. Yeah, I do hope you're having a great summer. Our four year old has been dancing around in his new t-shirt today, which it has a picture of fries and ketchup on it, and then it just says across the top, "It's Friday, let's ketchup," which he thinks is absolutely hilarious. I think it's the first time he's understood language enough to get like a wordplay. So he's telling everybody about his t-shirts. 

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Vince Vitale [00:01:36] As if they don't get it. He'll say it over and over. 

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Jo Vitale [00:01:36] Yeah. Totally. But he's loving it, so that's fine. But it's got me thinking his t-shirt about today's topic because all of us know the phrase, don't we? Thank God it's Friday. That feeling of like finally we have made it to the weekend. I can see my friends. Let's catch up. Let us do something fun. But how often do we just spend our lives living that way? Just waiting for the next break from work, the next leisure activity. My brother was telling me this week about a wedding he'd been to where they were surrounded by couples who were considered to have made it in life because all of them were like mid-thirties and they'd already all retired. That's all like ridiculously "successful" they were considered to be by the world standards. Meanwhile, my brother and his wife are both teachers and they're like, well, that's not going to be us for a while. But it's interesting, isn't it? This is the question for today. Is that the goal, to get to retire young? Like, it's that when you have made it? If you won the lottery, would you stop working? Is that the goal of life? And what does that say about our work in the first place? If we're doing everything we can to get to the end of it, is it just a necessary evil because we need to put a roof over our heads and food on the table? Those are some of the questions that we want to dive into today as we hopefully reimagine the way that we conceive of work and what it can be in our lives. 

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Vince Vitale [00:02:59] Yeah, I was reading a New York Times article about work a while back and it started with this editor's note that said, "We hope you're not totally miserable at the office tomorrow. But if you are, here's one article that may explain why." And then the article began with these words. It says, "The way we're working isn't working. Even if you're lucky enough to have a job, you're probably not very excited to get to the office in the morning. You don't feel much appreciated while you're there. You find it difficult to get your most important work accomplished. Amid all the distractions, and you don't believe that what you've been doing makes much of a difference anyway. By the time you get home, you're pretty much running on empty and yet still answering emails until you fall asleep. This experience is common not just to middle managers but also to top executives." And then the article goes on, "For most of us, in short, work is a depleting, dispiriting exercise and in some obvious ways it's getting worse." And I just thought, ugh, unfortunately, that does characterize many people's experience of work. It's that whole thank God it's Friday mindset. But that is so sad when you think about it because most of us spend about half of our waking life working. 

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Jo Vitale [00:04:11] More if you live in America, because people here don't even take vacations. 

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Vince Vitale [00:04:14] That's right. How depressing to think that half of our lives is inevitably going to be a depleting, dispiriting (interesting that spiritual language there) experience. As always, thankfully, the Christian worldview, the Christians story has something to say to this, and not only that, really radically reframes our thinking, and it starts right at the beginning, Genesis 1, the first depiction of God in the Bible is as a worker. For six days he worked, and on the seventh day he rested. God decided to work when he didn't need any money, he wasn't behind on a mortgage payment, he didn't have to put kids through college, he didn't need any boost in self-esteem. He didn't need anything at all. And that means that work is inherently good. It's good because God Himself is a worker. 

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Jo Vitale [00:05:10] Yeah, and I just love not just that God is working, but the kind of work He does it's creative, isn't it? I mean He's just taking so much delight in what He's producing. It's not like He does six days and then He gets to the end and He's like, "Phew, I'm so glad that's done now. I finally get to rest." Every day at the end of the day, He's like, "Whoa, this is good." It also means beautiful in Hebrew. This is beautiful. This is good. Look what I've made. This is awesome. And then the next day the same. And then makes human beings in his image, he's like, this is very good. This is the best yet. This is so exciting. But there's something about the nature of God's work that's so creative. It's bringing forth life out of nothing. That is the sort of work that God is about. 

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Vince Vitale [00:05:52] And then not only God, but then the first depiction of humankind in the Bible is again as workers. Remember, this is before the fall. So this can't be a curse or a punishment. And God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness." Why? "So that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals." In other words, so that humankind could work. And God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden. Why? It says explicitly to work it. To work it and take care of it in Genesis 2:15. And then when God says it's not good for the man to be alone and he creates Eve as his companion, what's the context for that? The context is work. Working in the garden, and not being good for man to do it alone. So, really interesting. Right there at the beginning of the Bible, we have a strong statement against any form of discrimination against women in the context of the workplace or work. We're supposed to do this together. Beautiful vision that's laid out right at the beginning of the bible. 

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Jo Vitale [00:07:01] Yeah, so cool because there's not even a division of labor there. They're both made to work, but also the same work. It's not like, okay, Eve, you go off and be fruitful and I'll rule the earth. You have the children; I'll do the heavy lifting. They're doing the work together. They're partners in all of it. It's just such a beautiful picture of community. I love the vision here that what we don't have in this creation story is this idea of God getting to do all the cool creative work and then making humans to do the menial tasks, to go and just do the drudgery that God doesn't want to do. Actually, another ancient creation myth of you do find that language of people being made to do this work because God's don't want do it. So they put people to work so they don't to have to, but that's not what we have here at all. Actually, this work that people are made to do is part of what it means to be made in God's likeness and to be his image bearers. And the sort of work is actually creative, just as God is the creator. And yes, He creates from nothing. We can't do that. But He gives us the raw materials and resources in creation to then go and be sub-creators of type, to be fruitful and multiply, to bring forth life from the garden that He has given. 

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[00:08:11] Interesting to me that the garden actually needs working because this is before the fall. So, it cannot be that there's something wrong in the garden and now work needs to be done. But no, it's already perfect. And yet there is work to be done. There is good work in taking the raw materials that we have and bringing life out of them. And I don't think it's just in a literal sense of have babies and do farming, but it's more comprehensive than that. It's this vision for life where we're called in every sense to multiply and to be fruitful. To take care of the earth, to steward it well, to enjoy and take care of it. The same work that God enjoys. And so it's such a cool thing because in this sense, we're in God's likeness. We're actually invited to participate with Him in creation. We're invited into the very same things that He's already doing. And I was just reminded this again. We've just come back from a campervan trip with our family and it's a lot of work being in a camper van actually. There are a lot of things you have to do you can't see like filling and emptying pipes, charging it, trying to do cooking in this tiny little space. It's tempting to feel frustrated by the amount of work you're doing on your "vacation". 

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[00:09:19] But what struck me about halfway through when I was getting annoyed that it was taking like three times as long to fry anything on the tiny little stove-- Vince is laughing because he knows how annoyed I was. But then our little kid's voices are piping up in the background, "Can I help? Can I help you put that pipe in dad and fill the water? Mom, can I help you with the cooking in the tiny van?" They wanted to be involved in all of it. And to them, it wasn't drudgery. It was actually this life giving joy because they were getting to do all this stuff with their parents. And it was so convicting for me that my mindset was so negative on these little things we had to get done when we pulled up at the campsite every night; whereas, they're like, yes, time with mom and dad doing all this good stuff together. And so, I love it that that's kind of this creation image that God is a good worker from the very beginning, and then Adam and Eve are created to work. And so coming before the fall, we just know that this isn't a curse or a punishment for sin. And then, of course, we get to the New Testament as well. 

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Vince Vitale [00:10:17] Yeah, no, it's a really good point. Kids don't have this kind of hierarchy of types of work and what's valuable and what's not. I was reflecting on that as you were speaking. Our kids when we invite them into our work, they're just excited. They just run for it. And they don't think in their head is this particular valuable work? Are people going to think highly of me because of this sort of work? No, they just want to participate. They understand better than sometimes we do as adults the inherent value in the work. So we see that in God from the beginning. He's a worker. We see that in Adam and Eve being created to work. And then the first depiction of Jesus as an adult is also as a worker. Jesus likely worked as a carpenter or a builder for maybe 18 years before his public ministry. 

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[00:11:03] How did Jesus choose to spend his adult years on earth? Think about the proportions; 18 years in what we would say is the secular workforce. Three years in unpaid ministry. That should tell us a lot about the value God places on all different types of work and remind us to resist any form of sacred secular divide where we put what we see as ministry above other forms of work. So God created work, it was his plan A, it's not just plan B for those of us who aren't lucky enough to inherit riches or win the lottery. Work is sacred. We understand it might not always feel that way. It doesn't mean that there are not hard days, but your work is not just a necessary evil. God has created you for it and called you to it. It is part of His good design. 

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Jo Vitale [00:11:53] So I want to pick up on something you said there Vince, because you said it's sacred but it doesn't always feel that way. And I guess for some of us the question is like, why? Why then if it's so sacred, doesn't it feel that? And, of course, this vision that we're given for work, it comes before the fall in Genesis one and two. But crucially there is a fall. Genesis 3, a curse comes and then we're told that you're going to work by the sweat of your brow, and with hard toil and labor you will bring forth a fruit from the ground through the thorns and the thistles and that pain comes into the picture. But here's the thing I really want to highlight in Genesis 3, it's not actually the work that is cursed; it is the ground. Those frustrations come and it's clear and Romans talks about all of creation groaning, that there's a frustration to the world and sometimes we experience that too. But the work itself, the nature of work has not come cursed. 

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[00:12:50] And I think it's so important that we see how even in the New Testament, we're still told that there is good work to do. Ephesians 2:10, "We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do." And that really stands out to me because that is written at a time where the ground is already cursed, work is hard, there are so many challenges and trials that we have to overcome. And yet even into this time that we are born, into this cursed ground situation, as we're struggling in our labors, both literal and metaphorical, to bring forth life through the pain, God actually still has good works for us to do. And actually, part of the good work we're called to do is to join Him in renewing the world, in restoring the world and saying, yeah, even though the fool has come, I haven't washed my hands of you. I'm not saying, okay, well, the world is ruined now and messed up, so I'm stepping out. 

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[00:13:44] Quite the contrary, God comes closer. He enters into the world. He becomes incarnate in order to bring forth renewal, to bring forth life out of death. And then he calls us in our work to be doing the same, to still being fruitful and multiplying, to caring for the earth. And actually, crucially, it's in the context of this fallenness and this curse on the ground and this trial and challenge that we experience in our work, that we have the opportunity to be witnesses to the truth of who God is, even in the hardship. Matthew 5:19, Jesus says, "Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and bless your Father in heaven." And so I think as Christians we actually have this crucial witness we get to play through our work of telling a story of renewal in a cursed, fallen world with cursed ground, but the story of good works done to glorify God by serving his creation and by serving one another. And so in that sense, our work in some ways becomes even more meaningful because it's testifying to the ultimate reality beyond the struggle that we're now in. 

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Vince Vitale [00:14:48] Yeah, great. That's a really important qualification. And now I want to say something about the language we tend to use when we speak about work, which actually reflects both the goodness and the frustration of work that Jo's been talking about. So I'm a fan of etymology. That's what attracted Jo to me in the first place. Oh, no, wait. That might have been the analytic philosophy. Yeah, probably both. 

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Jo Vitale [00:15:11] Actually, I just liked your shoulders. 

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Vince Vitale [00:15:14] I was a real catch talking to Jo about etymology and analytic philosophy. But I like thinking about etymology because language reflects culture, which reflects people. So when we understand the nature and the history of our words, it often teaches us about ourselves and about human nature generally. And there are a whole variety of words related to work that are really interesting to me, at least. So, for example, business. The etymology of business trace it to an old English word that carries the sense of anxiety, hence the similarity between business and busyness, and hence the New York Times article that I referenced. And then because work is experienced as anxiety producing, we think the best we can strive for is a work-life balance, which is another interesting use of language. 

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[00:16:06] Because saying we want a work life balance already concedes that work will not be life-giving, that it is lifeless and therefore needs to be balanced off with life. So we strive for a work-life balance and then, if we're lucky, one day we'll retire and never have to work again. Now, think about the word retire. We talk about someone retiring to bed when they're done in the evening. And retire has French roots meaning to retreat from battle or to remove from active service. Does that really sound like God's ultimate plan for his people? Does God ever want us to retreat from the cosmic battle that we're in or remove ourselves from active service? That just doesn't resonate with me. 

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Jo Vitale [00:16:53] Those words actually really capture something of the spirit of how we're approaching work, don't they? But there's also like a balance here because on the one hand what Vince has just pointed out is we can lean towards trying to escape from work because we find no meaning in it, but then the flip of that is we also go the other way and we get absolutely consumed by it. Think about the ways that we use language, even when we introduce ourselves to somebody by our job title. It's like the second thing out of our mouth often. Or people ask the question, what do you do? And by that they mean what is your job? As if that is all there is to you. Or we'll call someone a career woman as if she were only one thing and that is her job. Or even we use the phrase workaholic, which in some contexts it's praised as a good thing, it's almost like a compliment, but we're using addiction language. 

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[00:17:43] And so, I just find that so fascinating that either way, we've kind of missed it. We're not supposed to live life escaping from work. Then we're living half a life. But on the other hand, if we look to work alone to satisfy us, it's such a fickle goal. One minute you're on this meteoric rise, the next second the economy crashes and you're unemployed, or just the world moves on really fast and you're suddenly being passed over for roles you're more than qualified for, but they're being filled by younger innovators whose youthful zeal is valued more than their experience. When we make it a God, it just fails us. Either way, it is not supposed to be all or nothing to us. We're not supposed to despise work, but nor are we supposed to worship it either. 

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Vince Vitale [00:18:21] That's good. So there are some words and phrases and these accompanying ways of thinking that push against a Christian vision for work, but then there's also language that's actually very aligned with how God wants us to conceive of our work. One of those words is the word company. Its closest cognate, companion, or companionship. And then the 'pa' root right in the middle of that word company, that means to protect or to feed. And it's also the same root that's found at the beginning of an agricultural word that we tend to think of as much more relevant to the church than to business. And it is the word pastor, adapted from pasture. So the word company begins to tell us a story about what a company is and what God intends a company to be. A place of companionship on life's journey where people are protected and fed and even pastored. And company is also a biblical word. It makes its first appearance early on, book of Genesis, in a key moment in the history of God's people, chapter 28, when Isaac blesses Jacob, we read, "God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may become a company of peoples.". 

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[00:19:39] And then, right after God renames Jacob Israel, God says to Jacob, "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply a nation and a company of nations shall come from you." And then again, in chapter 48, Jacob tells Joseph, "God said to me, 'Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you and I will Make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.'" So this idea of company is not only used early on in the Bible, but at absolutely critical moments in terms of God's entire plan of salvation history. And then in the New Testament, when Jesus is first announced in Luke two, we read, "And suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God." So we learned that there's a company of spiritual beings in heaven. And then if we turn to the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, there's actually a subtitle in the NKJV that reads, "The Glorious Company." And it says, "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the joyful assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.". 

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[00:20:59] So again, there's a company in heaven, and that word assembly also very interesting in this passage because if you think of an assembly line like in a factory, every specific component of the line is essential for it to be productive. And that is exactly the way the New Testament describes God's vision for the church. Look to 1st Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4, every part is essential. Every part is working together in perfect unity. And when we talk about corporate worship, we talk about going to corporate worship on a Sunday, when the church gathers together and functions in unity, well, that's from the Latin corpus, as in Corpus Christi, the body of Christ. So all of these words are intimately related. Church, assembly, company, even corporation, and they begin to give us a vision for what work is intended to be. And now we might be tempted to think that the Bible's use of this idea of company only refers to a gathering of people, like when you have company over for dinner. And it does have that meaning. 

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[00:22:05] But biblically, there's more to it than that because we know from various passages in scripture that there will be work in heaven. There will be work in the new creation for all eternity. Isaiah 65 is one of my favorite passages about this where we get this prophecy of the age to come and God says, "I will create new heavens and a new earth." And then listen to all this joyful language. "Be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. For I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people." What's the context for all of this joy? Here it comes. "They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. My chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain." What a beautiful picture of the life to come where God will give us the dominion we were created to have in the first place in Genesis 1 and where our work will be fully redeemed? I've heard someone put it this way, eternity is not a vacation, it is a vocation. And we tend to think that it's a sad fate if someone works until the day that they die. But biblically, we're going to work far longer than that. And if we don't come to value work, heaven's going to be a real shocker. But thankfully, Isaiah says that we will long enjoy the work of our hands and eternity our work will be so profoundly satisfying and fun then no one will say, "I can't wait for the weekend. Thank God it's Friday. I really need a vacation." We just won't hear those phrases 

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Jo Vitale [00:23:59] I love what you're saying here Vince. Because maybe in heaven, what's jumping out at me is that there might not even be a distinction between work and play. Just think about professional sports as one example. One of the reasons that people find the idea of doing professional sports so appealing-- other people, not me, obviously-- is that people are getting to play a sport and they're paid for it. You're like, how are you getting paid to do this, to play a game? How amazing. 

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Vince Vitale [00:24:24] The thing that you love. 

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Jo Vitale [00:24:25] Right, the thing you love. But it just makes me think like is all of our experience of work going to be like this? You get paid to do that; you get to do that? Will we do just the most meaningful work of our lives and experience it in that way? And all the saints will be just cheering us on, just doing what we love. But I think the key thing here is that every day that we work in this life can be filled with eternal significance when we understand that it's training that's preparing us for the joy of the work that we will do in eternity. So like a little bit of homework for you. If you haven't before, spend some time reading that chapter of Isaiah 65 because it's just so rich and specific about God's vision for our work and specifically all these different components of work that it holds up for us about work needing to be joyful and just it being works of justice and successful, but also long lasting. And if you work for a company, you put your company vision and values alongside this passage and just see how they compare. 

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Vince Vitale [00:25:28] I totally agree. If you're in leadership in a company and you've ever thought, oh man, I wish that the Bible had a sort of passage that would help me figure out what company vision and values should look like, Isaiah 65 is right there for you, dig into that. Another reason that I love the biblical vision for work, why I find it so encouraging is because it means your biggest job is still ahead of you. The pinnacle of your working life is not behind you. I like asking business leaders. What do you think your biggest job will be in your working life? And they look at me strangely, like, how am I supposed to know? Well, you're supposed to because the Bible tells you. The Bible says that you are co-heirs with Jesus Christ to the throne of the universe, Romans 8.17. You were created to have dominion over the earth. And it literally says in Revelation 3.21 that you were going to sit on the throne of the universe with Jesus and reign with Him. Isn't that incredible? No matter what business seat or company seat or work seat you have sat in, it is nothing compared to the seat you will sit in one day. And we have this depressing understanding of the arc of our working life. 

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[00:26:44] If you plot it along a graph where we think we reach our pinnacle maybe sometime in our 50s, and then it starts to kind of go downhill until eventually we just retire and don't work anymore. That is not the biblical trajectory for work. Biblically, none of us have reached the pinnacle of our career. Even if you are the CEO of a public company, not even close, your biggest work is ahead of you. None of you are retired. There's no such thing as retirement in that sense in the Christian life. Maybe you're on a lengthy sabbatical, but your working life is not over. Not even close. It's just getting started. It's even interesting to think, this is sort of a side note, about whether your actual companies, if you work for a company, will exist in heaven. I don't know. Speculation. But maybe. Pretty cool to think about. I wouldn't be at all surprised if God chose to do it that way, to redeem at least some of the actual companies in their redeemed, perfected form. It's the thing that our God would do who loves renewing all of creation. But either way, what we can say with confidence is that for every single person who puts their trust in Jesus, none of your work will be wasted and your best work is still ahead of you. And this should completely free us from spending our days worrying about whether we will ever run a big company or have a big job or whether we'll ever sit in the seat because Jesus has already promised that one day we're going to sit on his seat with him, his throne. 

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[00:28:14] The rest of the world has the burden of having to worry about what the future of their work life will look like. We don't need to because we already know. So to start to pull all of this together, here's the question we want to encourage you to take to prayer today. What is the connection between my earthly career and my eternal calling? Or what is the collection between my earthly work and my eternal Worship? It's not just that your work is a way of refining your personal character and faith. Though thank God it is and that's so important. It's not just that you can treat your colleagues well and hope that they will ask you questions about your faith though that's important too, that's all part of it but it's much, much deeper than that. You have been called to prophetically play a part in creating companies, places of companionship with you in a pastoral role that allows people to begin to imagine what eternity will be like so that the company you work for, or the specific department or role within it that you have influence over, no matter how small, might in some way foreshadow the life to come, might make people long for the heavenly company that they were made for. Through your work in a finite, imperfect company, you get to point people to the infinite, perfect, glorious company that they were ultimately created for. 

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Jo Vitale [00:29:40] What I love about this vision for working communities, serving one another and blessing one another, is that this actually applies to the kind of work you do in whatever company you're doing it. It's a much broader vision for company than just corporate America or corporate wherever you may live. I'm not in an office. Much of my company is me and my kids, but we're a company too. Whether I'm a CEO or a nonstop working parent, I'm doing the same kind of pastoral God-honoring community building. Wherever we are whatever communities and relationships we're spending time in we're also building companies. 

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Vince Vitale [00:30:14] Absolutely. A friend of mine Matt Morris said in our work we try to make places that are a little more like heaven every day. And I thought, yes, that is literally what you are doing with your work. You are creating a physical embodied invitation to eternal life. Isn't that awesome? I think that's just a tremendous privilege. And if you remember one thing from this episode, maybe remember this. In the Old Testament, it's actually the same Hebrew word 'Avodah' that is used for both worship and work. Isn't that cool? It's the opposite of what the world says, right? Rather than a work-life balance, it's a work-life continuity because Jesus is Lord of all and all of life, including work as a gift from God and it is intended to be worshiped. 

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Jo Vitale [00:31:03] And that is just so crucial because if our work becomes what we worship rather than a form of worship, it will crush us. I can still remember in our first year of marriage when I was working on a master's and I was struggling so much with my essay writing that one day I came back into our apartment in the middle of the day, but the lights were off, and so I thought Vince was out, and I just shut the door behind me and I just yelled out into the darkness, "I can't do this anymore." And I just burst into tears. And then I heard this voice like say from the bedroom, "Jo?" 

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Vince Vitale [00:31:40] Like are you okay? 

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Jo Vitale [00:31:41] Yeah, I think Vince is like are you talking about our marriage? What are you talking about? But I was just so overwhelmed because I think I'd always done well academically as an undergraduate. And suddenly I was having a really hard time. And it was a very humbling year for me, but it was also course correcting because it showed me that actually my identity was in the wrong thing. It was about getting good grades and succeeding at my work rather than in who God said I was and how he saw me. I tell that story just to make the point that work is good when it's worship, but it's not good when we worship it. I saw this tweeted online the other day. It's kind of a paraphrase, but it went something like this. We are image bearers with work to do, not workers with an image to maintain. Work is a gift of grace we receive because of who we are in Christ, or it's an idol that we think we need to use to earn our identity and save ourselves. But when we see it as a form of service to Him, that's also what 'Avodah' means, to serve. Then worship is what it was intended to be, enjoying God's company and participating with him in his renewing of the world. And when we see it that way, our experience is transformed. Even when it's hard, even when the ground is cursed, even when it is menial and mundane and tough, it's a totally different experience. 

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[00:32:56] I was reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book Gift From the Sea this summer. I was just struck by one comment she made where she says, "I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact, to borrow from the language of the saints, to live in grace as much of the time as possible." It's Christ who is that central core to our lives. And when we abide in Christ, when we live not defined by our labors, but in grace, then those labors are no longer determined by how cursed the ground is, but by the freedom that we have in him. And it's just absolutely transformational. And it is just so important for us to understand this because most of us are going to spend half or more of our waking lives working, whether in the home or outside of the home, and in some respects, possibly even more when it's in the home. There's just more work to do there. And we can't have that percentage of our lives cutting against what we believe to be true in the gospel. So as you reflect on this episode, I just want to end with this question, what keeps your work from being worship? Because if you can prayerfully zero in on an answer to that question, what keeps my work from being worship? Then you may be a significant step closer to becoming the kind of worker that God has created you to be. A worker who, with God, enjoys the work of your hands.

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