FamilyLife Today®

Jordan Raynor: On the new earth, we're going to be working, and we're going to long enjoy the work of our hands. Is it possible to grow in your love of the work? Yes. I think that looks different for different people. I think it’s why we get to try a lot of different things to find the thing that God made us to do exceptionally well in service of others.

When you find that, as you get good at the thing, whatever that thing is, passion grows alongside it.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today®, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today®.

I didn't know it when we got married, but I married a worker. I sort of knew, but man, oh man, you woman, you can work.

Ann Wilson: It's irritating, isn't it?

Dave Wilson: No, it's awesome. I mean, there are times it's irritating, especially when you're pushing me to work harder, but I did not know it’s like you love it.

Ann Wilson: I do love it. It feels like therapy to me. People bring me energy, but even just manual labor is like, this just feels so good.

My problem is I want my kids, and wanted our kids, to have that same attitude like, "We get to work today." So when they had the attitude of, "Do we have to do this? It's so dumb," I'd be like, "Are you kidding? We get to do this." I was so annoying.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, and you want your husband to do the same thing. And here he is. You're a hard worker too, but not like you. But we've got Jordan Raynor back with us today to talk about work because not only are you the worker, man, I never watched you work except here in the studio, but I can imagine you're a lot like Ann. You attack work. Am I right, Jordan?

Jordan Raynor: Engage. Attack. Engage. There we go.

Dave Wilson: That's what I thought. So we're going to talk a little bit today about your book, *The Word Before Work*.

Ann Wilson: Which is a devotional, and I love that. Tell us just a little bit.

Jordan Raynor: It's only Monday through Friday. He lets them have Saturday and Sunday off. I give you some slack because I know you’re all—no, I’m just kidding.

Ann Wilson: Why Monday through Friday?

Jordan Raynor: Because listen, I hope most of our listeners are spending time in the Word in general daily, applying the gospel to our lives, renewing our minds as we live in this increasingly post-Christian culture.

I think we have to be renewing our minds with God's Word specifically as it relates to our work if we're working outside the four walls of the church. So that's what this devotional is designed to do: five days a week, Monday through Friday, in two minutes, with a little bit of scripture, a little bit of exposition, and some really practical takeaways. Just take God's Word and apply it to what you're doing, whether you're an entrepreneur, a barista, a stay-at-home parent, a bus driver, whatever it is.

Ann Wilson: You're in for a treat because Jordan brings energy and passion to his work, and if you feel bored and unmotivated in your job, you've just stepped into the right place and what to listen to.

Dave Wilson: So here's my question, Jordan. If you're like Ann, you fired people that don't work well. I watched her fire our boys every week. "You're fired!" because they weren't excited about the work and they're dragging.

Ann Wilson: Well, we have one son—we did lawns, we had a lawn business, and then we had a deck-finishing business. And so this one son would always just drag the tools. He’d drag them behind him, and I’m like, "Come on, guys, let's have a good attitude." By the end of the day, it's like, "You're fired! I would fire you because it seemed like he was lazy to me." And I was very poor in helping them to have a good attitude because all I did was judge them, and it was terrible.

Dave Wilson: But it must have worked. He's a really hard worker.

Ann Wilson: Not because of me. In spite of me.

Dave Wilson: By God's grace. It is. But have you ever felt that same thing? Because you have this perspective: this is holy work, even a yard job is holy work. Jordan, you have three children.

Jordan Raynor: I do.

Ann Wilson: And so this is your passion.

Jordan Raynor: I haven't fired them yet. No, I haven't fired them yet because they're young. But now I'm thinking a lot about this. I'm thinking a lot about how to get my kids to see a biblical vision of work and that work was God's first gift to humankind. That the sixth day, contrary to how most of us preach it and teach it in our children's books, was not the end of creation.

It was the beginning. It's when God passed the baton to us and told us to create like him. So I'm trying to plant that idea in their minds at a really early age, but also have a lot of grace with that, recognizing that we live in a fallen world and not everyone loves their work. That's a result of the fall of Genesis 3 and just having grace with them and my employees the way that my Heavenly Father has grace with me.

Ann Wilson: I have to share this story because this is something that I did very poorly. This son that I would always fire, he just liked doing things and working his own way. And I didn't recognize that. I thought it should be done this way, my way, instead of really understanding his personality and his bent.

So this one day, he's a teenager, so our house was toilet papered by his friends. So I said, "Guys, you need to go outside and pick up the toilet paper," and I give him a trash bag. Well, he's not doing it for hours. And I come out and I’m like, "What are you doing? This should be done by now."

And he has taken a broom handle and he's taken the broom off. And he's gone into the house to get a kebab skewer. And now he has taken duct tape and he's duct-taped it onto the handle of the broom so that he can take this new device and poke it and lift it up to put it in the garbage bag. And I'm thinking, "You're taking more time—you'd have been done by now." But to him it’s like, "Look at what I have created." And I wish I could have celebrated how we work in a different manner instead of expecting it all to look the same.

Jordan Raynor: Man, that's a challenge for me. I think I would have done exactly the same thing you did. But no, this is a really good example of a practical outworking of applying the Word to your work. When I look in scripture and I’m reminded in Genesis—I bet Adam and Eve worked differently. I bet they had different working styles. God has created each of us uniquely.

And that means we're all going to work uniquely. And yes, that's going to frustrate us under the fall and in a post-Genesis 3 world, but to be able to see that there's creational goodness there. God created us to be good. There is a way that he has hardwired us to work. And so if he created my kids that way, there's something good in there that I need to celebrate. Which is very hard—I'm preaching to myself. This is not easy.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, but it's pretty interesting that same son—he's very techy and now he works in the tech world. If you put anything in front of him that's tech-related, he will outwork everybody. Hours to make sure that he can wire this thing this way.

But I remember when he was in high school, one of the guys that did cement at my church hired him for the summer. And after one week, Ron came to me and he's blue-collar dude, this guy's a worker. He's awesome. And he goes, "Dude, your kid doesn't know how to work."

And I'm like, "See, I told you!" And Ann's like, "I fired him a hundred times." He goes, "Yeah, dude, he just doesn't have it." I go, "Ron, you have my permission, make him a worker." And he goes, "Are you serious? I thought you were going to say, 'Don't push my boy.'" I go, "No, push him, man. I've tried. He's a good kid, but maybe you're the—"

And you know what? At the end of the summer, he comes to me and goes, "Your dude can work." I go, "What?" He goes, "I made him a worker." I'm tearing up because in some ways God brings other people sometimes around your kids, and CJ is an incredible worker, and a lot of it I owe to Ron Posell, this cement guy that taught my boy how to work.

Ann Wilson: Wait, you're not giving me any credit?

Dave Wilson: Oh yeah, Ann gets credit too. Definitely wasn't me, but as you think about that, is that something we can grow into? Becoming a better worker?

Jordan Raynor: Oh, no doubt. Listen, we believe we're all in this journey to our future glorified selves. That's the process of sanctification. On the new earth, we're going to be working, and we're going to long enjoy the work of our hands. So is it possible to grow in your love of the work? Yes. I think biblically we could say that pretty definitively.

I think that looks different for different people. I think it’s why we get to try a lot of different things to find the thing that God made us to do exceptionally well in service of others. And when you find that, as you get good at the thing, whatever that thing is, passion grows alongside it.

We have this backwards in our culture. We think you start with passion. You find the thing you're passionate about and then you go do it, and you're immediately happy. It's not how it works. You get to love what you do by getting really good at it, which shouldn't surprise Christians because we model the one who came to serve, not to be served. Jesus served us, and as we serve others through the ministry of excellence, our love of the craft grows alongside it.

Ron Deal: Hey friends, Ron Deal here, director of FamilyLife Blended®. Did you know Blended and Blessed®, the only worldwide livestream designed for couples in blended families, is free this year? Saturday, April 18. We're going to be live in Oklahoma City. If you show up there, we're going to charge you for lunch, but other than that, it is free. Free to livestream.

Churches can bring a group of couples together and enjoy the day absolutely free. Gayla Grace is going to be with us, Davey and Christy Blackburn, Cheryl Shumake's going to be with us, Cathy Lipp, and Bryan Goins is our MC. It's going to be a wonderful day. I hope you can join us. Learn more and get the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Dave Wilson: Hey, talk about the "who" of work because I know as a preacher, there have been times when I talk about work from the pulpit. Over 30 years, I bet I've said this multiple times either on stage but especially privately with a businessman. I say, "Man, I'm jealous of what you get to do every day."

And they look at me like, "What? I'm jealous of what you get to do today. You work for God." And I'm like, "Yeah, but every day you get to go to an office or whatever you do and you're around people that are far from God, and you're strategically placed there by God to reach them and make disciples where you are. I got to work with Christians all day. That's pretty boring."

I'm kidding, but they think they want my life and I'm like, "No, I want your life because you get the 'who' part." What we do is important—I'm not saying it isn't—but who we get to do it with is probably more important because that's where we get to lead people to Jesus.

Jordan Raynor: I talk about this in *The Word Before Work*, but I've interviewed a lot of people on how to do this effectively in a post-Christian context that doesn't require putting tracts in the breakout room. I think we all know that's not effective.

Dave Wilson: It's not the "Jesus loves you" belt buckle.

Jordan Raynor: I don't think that's it. It could be it for you, Dave, but let me just give five things real practically for our listeners to do if they want to make disciples at work. Number one: be so good they can't ignore you. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul calls us to win the respect of outsiders. Guess what? Mediocrity doesn't win the respect of outsiders in our current cultural climate. Mastery does.

Dave Wilson: I mean, that is such an important thought because often we think it's the tract, it's not cursing ever—and again, those are good things. Just work unto the Lord and people will notice.

Jordan Raynor: There's a reason why I put this first.

Ann Wilson: And you use the word "mastery." What's that mean?

Jordan Raynor: I don't know that we can really nail down a definition of this, but it's being so good they can't ignore you. It's being so good at your craft that you're invited to the meetings. Everyone wants you in the room because they know that you're making the workplace better. So that's number one.

Number two: don't just be so good they can't ignore you in your skills, be a friend. Be the person in your office that cares about people beyond their productivity. Number three: at some point you got to identify yourself as a Christian. You can't just be good at what you do. At some point you have to raise your hand and say, "I'm a follower of Jesus," if you want other people to follow Jesus.

Then number four: I think you just got to pray a lot for the Lord to open up doors to move conversations from the surface to the serious to the spiritual with people. He's the only one who can open those doors—we can't pry them open. And then finally, number five: straight from 1 Peter 3, we just got to always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that's within us.

I think that includes the personal reasons—our testimony—but also our universal reasons. In our increasingly post-Christian culture, we got to be brushed up on apologetics and be able to defend the very rigorous intellectual and historical case for Christ. So those five things are a really good starting point. We can go deeper into that if you want, but in the people that I've interviewed who are disciple-making machines in the workplace, those are the five common things I see them do.

Dave Wilson: It's interesting when you were reading those, I think about—remember I said yesterday I'd give this message every year to the Detroit Lions players about how to work? I had three I's. I'm a preacher—they got to be I's or S's or T's. And so I said, "If you want to work unto the Lord: intensity, integrity, intentionality."

You just said all of them. Like your intensity should be, "I'm going to do my work as excellent as I ever can." Integrity means, "I'm so trustworthy, they know everybody in that locker room knows that man can be trusted." And intentionality is, "I'm not just working—I got to be intentional about who I'm working for and make that known at every opportunity's an intentional moment to say 'I'm going to give glory to God and lead people to Christ.'" That's what you just said.

Jordan Raynor: Absolutely. Yesterday we talked about how the Great Commission isn't the only commission, but it is a commission. And one of my favorite stories about intentionality and making disciples comes from William Wilberforce. If our listeners don't know, Wilberforce is most famous for basically getting the credit for abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire. No big deal.

What a lot of people don't know is that when Wilberforce entered the British Parliament in the 1700s, there were only a handful of serious Christians in Parliament. By the time he left, there were about 250, and a lot of historians credit Wilberforce. And he had this genius, simple tool to aid his intentionality. It was a little journal that he called his "List of Launchers."

And so it was basically just a list of people's names. So he’d say, "Dave," right? And next to Dave's name, a list of topics that would launch the conversation from the surface to the serious to the spiritual. So there was one example: "Ask them what books they're reading. Ask them about the education of their children and whether or not they talk about faith at home. Invite them to church on Sunday to hear Reverend Venn," or whatever it was—I can't remember this guy's name.

But just little prompts. And I've been doing this for about a year now and it has been a game changer. So for example, before I go into my haircut with my hairdresser, Melanie, I'll just take a real quick look at what I wrote down from our last conversation of where we left off—one bullet, two bulleted ideas that I can easily memorize before I go into that—and just make sure I'm intentional about taking that conversation somewhere so we're not just talking about sports and kids the whole time. It's a game changer. It was a game changer for Wilberforce, it's been a game changer for me.

Ann Wilson: That is so good. I've never heard that about Wilberforce. That's beautiful. Well, you shared a story with us at lunch, and I know we're going to tie this into this work and in your devotional, but share the story with our listeners about Sixto.

Jordan Raynor: Sixto Rodriguez. So we were talking about this because you guys are from Detroit. He must be a neighbor. He must be a neighbor. He's still living there to the best of my knowledge. This is a great story about the eternal significance of your work. You'll see it in a second.

Back in the '70s, there's this Mexican-American musician living in Detroit named Sixto Rodriguez, and everybody thought he was going to be the next big thing. He worked with the top producers in the world, people who produced Michael Jackson and Ringo Starr. These guys said that Bob Dylan was mild compared to Sixto Rodriguez.

So they record this album called *Cold Fact*. They release it and it totally, utterly bombs. There's this great documentary called *Searching for Sugar Man*. They ask one of the producers, "How many copies of this record did it sell?" They're like, "I don't know, in America, like six?" Something like that.

Well, one of those six people took the record from Detroit on a plane to this far-off land of South Africa. And she gets off the plane, she starts playing it for her friends, and they're obsessed with it. Problem is you can't buy the record because it didn't sell anywhere. So they just start bootlegging the record, and soon it's everywhere. Within a year or two, it was everywhere all over South Africa.

They actually start selling it in stores, and somehow it's very shady—somehow the royalties got lost in translation from the record label in South Africa to Detroit. The point is: for 30 years, Sixto Rodriguez had no idea that he was bigger than the Beatles, he was bigger than the Rolling Stones, he was bigger than Elvis Presley in South Africa. That's big.

So he's staying in Detroit. He's working manual labor. He's dirt poor. They live in 26 homes in 25 years. And then out of nowhere, he gets a phone call one day. Some people in South Africa tracked him down. They finally found this guy. And they call him up and they say, "Is this Sixto Rodriguez?" He says, "Yes." He says, "Do you know the impact that you've had in South Africa?" He's like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." "For the last 30 years in South Africa, you have been a bigger star than Elvis Presley."

And he was just bowled over. He could not believe it. And I think there's a beautiful application for believers here. We talked about this yesterday in Psalm 37:23: that the Lord delights in every detail of our lives. And I think most of us are going to work every day having no idea about the impact that our work has in these seemingly distant unseen land called the kingdom of heaven, not South Africa.

But Psalm 37:23 says God delights in every detail of our lives. His pleasure is eternal, and if that's true, then everything we do today with excellence and love and in accordance with God's commands is literally shaping eternity. I think it's going to shape the interactions we have with the risen Christ on the new earth.

I think Jesus is going to come up to you when you're, I don't know, plowing a garden or building a great city on the new earth. He’s going to say, "Hey Dave, I remember when you were chaplain for the Lions and you had the opportunity to lie to get some teammates to stay on the team—I don't know what it was—and you didn't do that. And I saw that, and my Father and I delighted in that. Well done, good and faithful servant."

He's going to go to Ann and he’s going to say, "Ann, I remember watching you in those years of wiping diaper after diaper after diaper. And yes, there were some days where you cried out, but there were a lot of days when you did it with a smile on a face, and my Father and I remember that and we took great delight in that." Everything we do has an impact in the unseen dimension of heaven, and that should fuel our purpose and our joy right now.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, and I'm just thinking there's someone listening—a mom, a dad, a son or daughter—who's just struggling with work. And I know it can be really hard, especially what you said, Ann, about being a mom and just the grind of that. Nobody sees it. You're sort of invisible.

Ann Wilson: It feels like it doesn't matter.

Dave Wilson: Our daughter-in-laws are doing that right now with these little kids, and you just see: it's hard. And what you just said, they need to be reminded: Jesus sees. He applauds. He is applauding right now, and he actually will give you strength and power to get through a hard work day.

Ann Wilson: Jordan, do you have any other applications for us? I love those five things. I'm thinking, "Oh, it'd be good to put those on our computers, on our visors as we're going into work."

Dave Wilson: You just get the book and read it every morning.

Ann Wilson: But those were good. As you're stepping—what are some practical things that we can do? Anything else?

Jordan Raynor: To be making better disciples?

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Jordan Raynor: So for me, this Wilberforce "launchers" framework has been very helpful for me. But this language of surface-serious-spiritual has also been really helpful. I borrowed this from Matt Chandler, who I credit in the book, but just to have a roadmap. Just to be able to identify in a conversation: am I—are we talking about surface-level things?

Ann Wilson: Which most of us do.

Jordan Raynor: Which most of us do. That's where we stay. We stay at the surface. But how can I take that to the next step in the map? To something more serious? Not necessarily spiritual, but just serious to really get to know what's going on in that person's heart, in that person's home, in that person's life, what hard things are going on.

And then ultimately to get to spiritual. And listen, if we don't get to the spiritual, we can trust that God can use anybody else to bring that person to Christ. He doesn't need you. He doesn't need me. He wants us to participate, but for me, that's a really helpful map to have in my mind to remind me of where I'm trying to take those conversations.

Ann Wilson: Hey, what happened to Sixto? Did he go back? Did he go to South Africa? How are we going to end this story?

Jordan Raynor: You got to watch this Oscar-winning documentary called *Searching for Sugar Man*. He gets off the phone, I don't know how much later, they put him on a flight to South Africa from Detroit. And he brings his daughters with him. And they get off the plane and these limos pull up, and they're like, "Must be someone important here."

And of course the limos are for them. So they get in the limo and they go to the stadium with tens and tens of thousands of people, and Rodriguez gets on the stage and they won't stop screaming. I mean, it must be 30 minutes of just pandemonium. This enormous star that they loved.

And it's just a beautiful picture—you got to be careful here, all analogies break down because Jesus is the only star of heaven. But I think in a small way, that's what "well done, good and faithful servant" looks like. But with an audience of one, not tens of thousands of people, but that applause will be louder and more meaningful.

If we do our work as unto the Lord, as Colossians 3 tells us in this life, there is going to be varying applause based on how we steward this life and steward our vocations in eternity. And that should fuel our purpose in the present.

Dave Wilson: Oswald Chambers said, "It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people—and this is not learned in five minutes." What a true statement.

Ann Wilson: What a great conversation with Jordan. I am pumped up when I listen to him talk about the purpose of work and God's purpose for work. I need to listen to him every single day before I go to work and maybe even as a mom you need to be reminded, "Oh, this really matters to God, and what we all do really matters to him."

Again, his book is called *The Word Before Work: A Monday Through Friday Devotional to Help You Find Eternal Purpose in Your Daily Work*. And again, you can just go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click the link in the show notes, and I think that you'll love this and it will encourage you again just to be reminded of our purpose in our work.

Dave Wilson: We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife Today® helped them when they needed it the most. And that's what being a FamilyLife Today® partner is all about—helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann Wilson: And we'd love for you to join us. So click the donate button at FamilyLifeToday.com and become a part today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today® is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.