Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenge. Today is Thursday, so it’s the day we try to apply and live out what we’ve been learning all week. We’ve been looking this week at how followers of Jesus are meant to treat their bodies as a temple for the Holy Spirit. As something that doesn’t belong to us, but that belongs to God. That is something that God uses to have a physical presence here on earth. That’s how we’re meant to see our bodies. It’s a wholly new way of seeing our bodies because up until we became followers of Jesus, we were probably tempted to see our bodies as our own. As something that nobody had any businesses influencing how we use but us.
But Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, makes it clear that our bodies are not our own. They were bought at a price. The price was Jesus’ blood shed on the cross, so we want to take our bodies really seriously because they were bought at a very high price. The price of God coming to earth as one of us. Taking on a body of his own and then sacrificing it for us and our bodies.
When we do take what God has given us, our bodies bought at a price, and we abuse them. When we over indulge, when we over consume or we have too little activity in our lives, when we abuse ourselves, that has very serious affects on our body. We know that when we over indulge, when we eat too much, we immediately don’t feel good. But then there are long terms effects as well. When we do that as a regular pattern, it leads to diabetes, to obesity, to all sorts of physical health concerns that have a real impact. Not just on our physical bodies, but on our emotional and spiritual health as well.
Drug and alcohol abuse have a physical toll on our body, yes, but also a spiritual and emotional toll as well. It clouds our minds. It clouds our judgment. It clouds our ability to focus and rely on God for our stability, our hope, our contentment in life. We very quickly learn to depend on a substance for our meaning in life, and it takes over and becomes our God.
The Corinthians attitude was that anything goes. Basically, as long as it feels good do it. We might add today in our culture as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody else, it’s fine, but that whole attitude, whether it’s the Corinthian 1 or Western 1 today needs to be countered. One way to counter it is by intentionally limiting our consumption in this world. In a world that tells us we can and should have everything with no limits, what we can do as followers of Jesus is actually put limits on our consumption.
One way Christians have long done this is by fasting. By intentionally setting aside periods of time, like one that’s coming up, lent. 40 days before Easter, minus some Sundays, was the traditional time that Christians intentionally limited their consumption. People do it in traits way today by “Oh, I’m not going to eat chocolate.” Or, “I’m not going to drink coffee.” But in a larger sense, Christians were meant to actually refrain from eating. From eating during the day or from eating certain foods. Christians were intentionally limiting themselves and it had not just a physical impact on their bodies, but a very real and spiritual impact.
When Christians fast, they identify with those around the world who don’t have food to eat. Who don’t choose not to eat. They simply have nothing to eat. It’s not a choice at all for them, and so the Christians can intentionally choose to identify with them and understand a bit better what’s going on in the life of somebody with too little food to eat.
Fasting also has a very real spiritual impact in that it reminds us that we are not our own. That our food is not something we’ve earned, something we’ve created, but rather something that God has put on this earth through powers completely outside human control. God has made food available to us in this earth. He makes the sun shine and the rain fall. Willingly breaking our daily, weekly routine of consumption can remind us of what it’s like not to have God, and to remind us that the rest of our lives are completely reliant on God whether we realize it at the time or not.
It’s often in fasting that people find their ultimate strength is truly in God. They find they’re able to worship God in a new way because they are focused solely on him. The emptiness in their stomach quickly gives way to reminding them of the emptiness that would be in their lives without God. It’s a great way to focus your thoughts on God and to recognize his place in your life, and I encourage you to do it. It’s actually going to be our challenge for you this week. To set aside some time this week to fast. That might look like skipping a meal or it might look like skipping something else you find yourself over dependent on in this life. You find you’re watching too much TV and it’s preventing you from having some physical exercise in your life, then fast one night a week from television and do something physical instead.
If you’ve been finding you’re overly reliant on something like alcohol or caffeine or some other substance, then take a break from it. Find a way to break that cycle of dependence and learn to depend on God instead. If it’s something that’s truly awful for you, like dependence of a substance overly dependence on alcohol or a drug, then break that cycle completely and get some help doing that. You won’t be able to break it just by taking a day off. But if it’s something like caffeine or an occasional drink that you want to take a break from, then take a break to remind yourself of your dependence on God. Then moving forward, maybe, continue to enjoy what God’s created, but not as the center of your life. Not as the source of hope and contentment, but rather as just one thing to enjoy that God happens to have created in this world among many.
Challnge: Try fasting. Not just once, but try to make it a regular thing in your life by skipping a meal once a week or once a month, or think ahead to when lent starts. I’ll remind you in these challenges of that, but think ahead to when lent starts and what you’re going to do during those 40 days before Easter to focus yourself more on God and his provision for you, and his having bought your body with a price. The price being his own body dying on a cross and how you’re going to honor that, rather than using your body to pursue all sorts of things in this world as if they were God himself.
So we’re going to fast to focus on God as our ultimate source of contentment, of nourishment, of everything we need in this life. Here is your challenge: What do you find yourself depending on, more than is healthy? Take a fast from it, and use that opportunity to think “Big Picture,” about physical changes that are going to help you grow on dependence and Christ alone.
Have a great day putting that into practice. Might to be today that you do it, but it might be today you decide when and how you’re going to do it. Maybe discuss that with your friends from the train or bus or from work or from home. Discuss together how you’re going to do that and how you’re going to support and encourage one another when it gets hard. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow as we pray and reflect about this. Bye for now.
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Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenge. Today is Thursday, we've been exploring a topic all week and today, we are going to try to apply it to our lives. This week we've been talking about how Jesus resets every area of our lives including how we see work. We've talked a few times this week about how work can take on a life of it's own. Work can consume us. Work can drive us. Work can become our idol. It can become something we worship, something we elevate above all other things and that drives all other things in our lives. Work can become our god. Whenever we take something good in this world, we make it our ultimate good. It becomes our ultimately bad for us. That's a definition of sin.
Back in our series that we did this past summer on work and rest, we explored what it looks like to work well as a follower of Jesus and we saw four ways to approach work as a follower of Jesus today. Way to apply what we learned from Colossians on Tuesday about work and working continuously, working for God, working well and try to apply that in the early practical way of life today.
Sometimes our work can be redeemed. Sometimes we have been doing work maybe for ourselves, maybe just for the money but you know what, it's good work consistent with God's kingdom and we can continue to do it well and now we can offer it up to God. I told the story in that series about an animator who had been animating for work and now she had the opportunity to animate scripture for a church I had started. That was the way for her to offer her work to God. That was great.
Sometimes our work needs to be challenged. Sometimes we have been engaged in work selfishly that simply cannot be done by somebody in God's kingdom. Say you have been working in the porn industry. You become a follower of Jesus, that needs to get reset. You can't continue working in that industry, but you can challenge it. Your role in God's kingdom maybe to challenge that industry. To speak out against it. To let people know what it's really like the dangers of it -how it's actually a form of modern slavery. I could go on but you can see how some kinds of work can't be offered or redeemed for God, they have to be challenged.
Finally some work can be subverted. There are times when our work is something that we have been doing for all the wrong reasons. It's not directly supporting God's kingdom to do that work but it's also not something that needs to be completely confronted and challenged and what we can do is we can be there as a follower of Jesus and subvert what's happening there that is selfish, that is sinful, that is broken. We can undermine people's belief in the idol of work and money and power and show them a different way by being there.
Followers of Jesus can't withdraw from every industry. We can't withdraw from finance and art and culture. We can't withdraw from transportation, from supply chain management. We can't withdraw from consumer products. We can't withdraw from construction. I could go on and list all these industries. We can't withdraw completely from the world. Christians need to be there and sometimes that looks like challenging and sometimes it looks like redeeming and offering it and sometimes it looks like subverting it and I highlight this one because that's really what Colossians was talking about.
Paul was talking to slaves who happen to have become followers of Jesus. They are stuck in a system of slavery. It is the status quo where they live and what he wants them to do is undermine it. He wants them to subvert. He wants them to continue working for their owners but he wants them to know they are not truly owned by them. He wants them to be free, even though the world thinks they are slaves.
Now most of us have more freedom than the slaves that Paul is talking to but sometimes circumstances or responsibilities give us no choice. Sometimes we find ourselves in the kind of work where our only choice is to subvert. We have to stay there. We have no other choice to leave that work, we have to stay and subvert it. To undermine work’s ability to control us, to own us.
Really no matter what work we do, we can find ourselves feeling owned by that work. We can't find ourselves handing over the entirety of our lives, our entire identity, our entire sense of security and confidence in life to our jobs. We can use our job titles to describe all of who we are. When we are doing that, we are selling out to work, we are selling ourselves to slavery, willingly. That is the system in our world. That is the system of slavery in our Western world. We willingly sell ourselves to work and if that's happening in your life, then please subvert it. Undermine its power over you and continue to show others while you work alongside them, what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus in your industry.
Keep working. Work well at it. Show them what it's really like to be an artist who does art for the Kingdom of God. Show them what is like to build for the Kingdom of God, to create for the Kingdom of God. To organize for the Kingdom of God. To lead for the Kingdom of God. Whatever kind of work you do, show people what that work looks like when it is done well and done for God and so doing it will subvert works power over yourself and over others.
Work may think it owns you, it may act like it owns you. The world may think that your work owns you, but you can undermine its power over you. Break yourself free from the chains of slavery and the only way you can do that is by turning to Jesus Christ as your soul source of self worth, of security and identity in this world. When you turn to him, as that soul ultimate source of meaning in life, you will find that things like work and money and so on, all comeback to the place they were always meant to hold in your life. Not the center or ultimate place, but on the periphery.
When we work for the Kingdom of God, living in the Kingdom of God, even well for the Kingdom of this world surrounds us, what we are doing is we are showing, to react to some of the things I said yesterday, that work could go wrong. We are showing people that we are not our own saviors but we are saved by God's grace.
Our self worth and our self identity are not found in our work but they are found in Jesus Christ and that's where we see ourselves as workers in God's creation, advancing God's kingdom and not as the creator ourselves. We see ourselves for who we truly are, we see other for who they truly are. That's what Paul is telling bond servants and masters to do it in his letter to the Colossians we explored on Tuesday and that is what we can do in our working lives today.
And my challenge for you today is to think what concrete tools can I use to help me do the three things we've really talked about this week. What tools can I use in my workplace to keep working. To keep working there I can be a presence for God, I can either challenge it or subvert it or redeem it. What can I do to work well there? How can I show that this is work for God's kingdom, for the sake of work being good and finally how can I work for God and doing you are going to bring other people along for the ride too. Map that out today. Think of what concrete tools you can use to actually make this happen. To keep working, work for God and work well.
Well have a great time discussing with your group what that looks like to put that into practice. I'll see you tomorrow as we take time to pray and reflect. Don't forget to read the Bible in sync as well. Bye for now.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
