We’re looking this week at Psalm 127: Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.
How do we know if we’re working for God or not? How do we know if we are building with him, rather than for ourselves?
We need to know what God is working on. His big story, and where we fit into it.
Bible tells a story with four parts:
1. God created and cared for a good world, where we’d be in close personal relationship with him. IN harmony with world around us, providing needs, us working to sustain it. Were only asked to work with him, and not to try and be him.
2. We found ourselves longing to know what God knew, and rebelled against God in favour of working for ourselves. We separated ourselves from God, and now everything, including our work, is dysfunctional. Even our attempts to get back to God are broken.
3. God hasn’t given up on us, and in fact, became one of us in Jesus Christ in order to close that separation between us, and resolve the dysfunction.
4. He’s inviting us to join with him in recreating that original way of life, us and God in close personal relationship in harmony with our world, in something called his kingdom, moving towards a day when that is the only reality.
Good work is about participating in God’s ongoing creativity and cultivation…working for him, instead of putting our own goals first.
I had a friend studying Environmental Science. He was learning this kind of worldview (simplified to save space, but this was the gist): We are animals, wildly out of control like a virus, destroying the rest of nature, and the solution is to drive a hybrid, recyle, use less energy, the list goes on.
One day, he was finally crushed by the responsibility laid upon him, and said he felt he needed to change degrees. I asked why, and he said it was because I was a better recycler than he was! He felt he needed to save the world, and couldn’t…in fact I seemed to be doing better at it, and it wasn’t even my job or area of study.
The difference between us was that my environmentalism came from knowing and believing that God created, loves this world, and I should too. In fact, he put humans here to care for it, not as a virus. Of course, the dysfunction brought into our world by our rebellion against God (sin) is obvious in our many environmental issues – global warming, pollution, deforestation, etc. I can’t save it myself, but I know the one who can and is – God. I have a job to do, but also know it’s not in vain or overwhelming and futile, because I’m working for and with God.
We’ll see tomorrow some examples of how this good news story impacts other areas of work.
Question: Think about the example of a contractor – how would a home builder build in a consistent way with God’s story?
Then, watch the attached video of Kimberly’s story.
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When did you first hear about life coaches? I hear about them all the time, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon.
I had a terrible time finding its origins. A Google search reveals mostly ads. Searching through Huffington Post reveals article after article written by life coaches, but nothing about what that means. A search on Maclean’s, a reputable news source reveals mostly quotes from interviews with life coaches, and only two articles about the idea, including one about 25 year olds coaching each other through their “quarter life crisis”. This is when Millenials hit the workforce and find it’s not all they’d hoped for, and a lot of hard work.
Some have decided to share these ideas with others for up to $70 an hour by becoming life coaches. In fact, a friend suddenly announced she was quitting her job and going to be a life coach. She tooks osme courses, but many don’t. More and more people taking on the title – pastors, bloggers, etc. as they find it’s something people want.
The profession is not regulated – so anyone with advice to offer, good or bad, can call themselves a life coach, and if you’re willing to pay them, you can put your career and life in their hands.
We do all need help – I meet with a mentor regularly, maybe you do too. We need doctors, psychologists, home inspectors, investment advisors, and so on. We need good advice.
So how do you tell the difference? How do you know when you’re getting good guidance on your life’s mission? We regularly find that our little missions in life – to buy a house, to get a job, to be happy at work, etc. could benefit from some guidance.
But we should be especially careful about the big mission – the reason God put you on this earth in the first place. That’s not one to take lightly.
That’s what we’ll talk about this week – as Jesus’ followers were given a mission, and they weren’t going to be alone in doing it, they’d have the ultimate guide.
Question: Who would be your ideal coach or guide in life? What could they do, say for you?
