FamilyLife Today®

Jordan Raynor: If you asked Jesus about his spiritual life, he'd look at you like you had three heads. You're talking about my life. I hear a lot of people use this term "secular work." Secular literally means "without God." That's what it means.

If you are a Christ-follower, you believe that the one true God literally dwells inside of you everywhere you go. So, the only thing you have to do to instantly make your "secular" workplace sacred is walk through the front door or log onto Zoom.

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

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Early, first five years of being the Detroit Lions chaplain, I don’t know if you even knew this, there was a belief among owners in the league that teams should get rid of their chaplains because chaplains are telling their players that what they do as an athlete and their work is not important. Only God is important.

Ann Wilson: I remember this because you were worried. And you were also frustrated because it was a misbelief.

Dave Wilson: It sort of swept across the league, and it’s a league of copycats. I remember thinking, if you’ve got a spiritual influence in your locker room, they’re going to tell your players playing football isn’t important, only worshiping Jesus in church is important. I was like, that is not what the Bible says. Work really matters.

Ann Wilson: Think about the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, and peace. An owner’s probably thinking, "This is what we do not want—somebody that has those principles in the locker room." You can understand their fear, but they don’t get it.

Dave Wilson: They don’t get it, and we’re going to get it today because I think that belief isn’t just at one time in the NFL; it’s all over the place. We have Jordan Raynor back. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Jordan Raynor: Dave and Ann, I love hanging out with you guys. Thanks for having me back.

Dave Wilson: You’ve written seven books in three years.

Jordan Raynor: Something like that.

Dave Wilson: So you like to work.

Jordan Raynor: I love to work! You have to, to write a book called *The Word Before Work*.

Dave Wilson: *The Word Before Work*. What a great title. A Monday through Friday devotional to help you find eternal purpose in your daily work. I don’t know if I’ve met a person more passionate than you on this topic. When you bring up the topic of work and God’s perspective, you light up. Why?

Jordan Raynor: I spent the first 10 years of my career as a tech entrepreneur. About halfway through that journey, I was in the process of selling my second company, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. When you sell two companies, the natural thing is to go start a third, so that was the plan.

One Sunday we went to church, and we had a guest preacher preach a sermon I think most Christians have heard before. This sermon made me feel so guilty about wanting to go start another business when there was a need for people to move to mud huts 5,000 miles away from home to make disciples of all nations.

My wife and I felt this tremendous guilt and started praying about it. Path one is to go start another business, but maybe we need to be going down path two and go start a church. One Sunday after church, I had this godly mentor of mine pull me aside. He said, "I hear you’re thinking about planting a church." I’m thinking this guy’s going to pat me on the back, maybe write me a check. He just looked me square in the eyes and said, "That sounds really dumb for you."

"For you," he said. "Jordan, you’re a talented entrepreneur. You’ve created a lot of jobs, you’ve served your employees and your investors really well, and I’ve seen you come fully alive when you do that work. Why in the world do you think you have to go plant a church in order to do ministry? Don’t you get that your work as an entrepreneur is ministry?"

I looked at this guy like he had three heads. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, "Here’s what I want you to do. With this conversation in the background of your mind, I want you to go re-read Genesis 1, which you’ve probably read 200 times, in the context of this conversation and tell me what you find."

What I found changed my life forever. I saw that long before God reveals to us that he is holy or omnipotent or loving, he tells us that he is a God who works, a God who is productive, a God who creates. Then, fast forward to Genesis 1:28. Long before the Great Commission, we find the very first commission to humankind, which is never rescinded, even post-sin: to fill the earth and subdue it, to take the raw materials of creation and just make it more fruitful for others' benefit and enjoyment. So I didn't go start a church. Spoiler alert. But that message changed my life, and it's why I'm so passionate about it today.

Ann Wilson: Go back to that Genesis 1, to subdue the earth. What does that mean? Because we’ve all read that scripture, but not all of us have taken it to that point.

Jordan Raynor: There are a lot of components of this first commission. First is "be fruitful and increase in number." We know what that means: have lots of babies, fill the maternity ward. Then you get to "fill the earth." This is different. Most scholars agree this is not just to have babies; it’s to create culture. We treat the six days as the end of creation. Day six was the beginning of creation. It’s when God passed the baton to us and told us to fill the earth like he did.

Then you skip down to this word "subdue." This is where things get really interesting. Wayne Grudem, the famous theologian and editor of the ESV Bible, says that "subdue" literally means to make the earth more useful for human beings' benefit and enjoyment.

Isn’t that what players in the NFL are doing every single day? Making this world more useful for human beings' enjoyment, doing it in a God-honoring way. Most people would say no, but Dave Wilson would say yes.

Dave Wilson: It wasn't really enjoyable in Detroit. I'm sure it was meant to be. But you're right; it's entertainment.

Jordan Raynor: This is what we are doing every day. We are imaging our heavenly Father who first and foremost, before he shows up as a preacher, shows up as a creator and is taking this world and making it more useful for our fellow image-bearers. That’s the very thing we were created to do.

Keep in mind, we’re still in Genesis 1. This is prior to sin entering the world. Sin comes on the scene in Genesis 3, and work becomes difficult. Even after work is cursed, God still reiterates the first commission after sin over and over again. In Genesis 9 after the flood, the first words to Noah are to fill the earth again. It makes the Ten Commandments, for crying out loud. Yes, the fourth command is a command to Sabbath and rest, but it’s also a reminder that we’re called to work six days a week. Work is God’s first gift to humankind.

Dave Wilson: Where do we get this idea—and it’s a prevalent idea—that spiritual work is better and more important?

Jordan Raynor: I think there are a couple of roots to this. One is this false divide between the spiritual and the material. The word "spiritual" doesn't appear in the Old Testament. Why? Because all of life is spiritual. If you asked Jesus about his spiritual life, he’d look at you like you had three heads. "You're talking about my life." I hear a lot of people use this term "secular work." Secular literally means "without God." That's what it means.

If you are a Christ-follower, you believe that the one true God literally dwells inside of you everywhere you go. So the only thing you have to do to instantly make your "secular" workplace sacred is walk through the front door or log onto Zoom.

Ann Wilson: That’s so good, Jordan.

Jordan Raynor: Instantly sacred. Everywhere you walk is sacred. That’s number one; I think the source of this is this false divide between the spiritual and the material.

I think the second one—and this is going to open up a bigger can of worms—is that in the last 200 years of church history, for the first time in church history, we have treated the Great Commission to make disciples as the exclusive commission of followers of Jesus. This is very new in church history. I’ve got many theologians who have said prior to 200 years ago, nobody interpreted Matthew 28 as the exclusive mission of the church.

Is the Great Commission commanded of every follower of Jesus? Absolutely. Non-negotiable. All of us are called to make disciples. But we have a dual commission. We are called to the first commission—to fill the earth and subdue it—and the Great Commission as we go about that first commission.

And by the way, in our increasingly post-Christian context, it’s not pastors and full-time missionaries that are making the most disciples. It is mere Christians—entrepreneurs, baristas, and accountants who are working alongside people who are never going to darken the doors of a church. So we have to bring the church to them. Ironically, by making the Great Commission the only commission, we’re becoming less effective at the Great Commission because we’re making people feel guilty about going to work in the very places most likely to carry out the Great Commission and make disciples.

Dave Wilson: I love to hear your comments on this. When you talk about the Great Commission, I remember in seminary, studying Matthew 28 and for the first time realizing that the word "go" is actually a participle. If you don't know English, you're like, "So what's the big deal?" Most of us go, "Oh, participle, that's an '-ing' word." So what he’s really saying is what you just said. "As you are going, make disciples." So what you just said is literally the call of Jesus on our lives. The Great Commission means wherever I send you, make disciples.

Jordan Raynor: 100%. Most biblical scholars that I’ve read agree that the NIV translation, "Go and make disciples," is a really poor translation of Jesus’s words in the original Greek. It has huge ramifications because, as you said, Dave, the better translation is "as you are going, make disciples."

By the way, Jesus himself didn’t go more than 200 miles away from his hometown, and he was the greatest disciple-maker of all time. So if we’re telling our people that we’ve got to go away from our current vocation and location to make disciples, that’s a slap in Jesus’s face because Jesus didn’t go very far and he changed the world forever with the gospel of the kingdom.

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 18th, 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 Kristi Blackburn, Cheryl Shumake's going to be with us, Kathy Lipp, and Brian Goins, 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.

Ann Wilson: Especially as Americans, we work to retire. Work is like, "Oh, I have to go to work." The way you're living feels like, "Oh, I get to go to work." We have this mentality that work is this terrible thing, and it sounds like you’re saying, no, work is this gift that God’s given us.

Jordan Raynor: We’ve got to be careful here. The three of us love what we do. I have a lot of friends who don’t, and they feel more of the effects of the curse in this specific area than we do.

Dave Wilson: It's hard; it's toil.

Jordan Raynor: It’s hard, it’s toil. That’s the reality. What’s been lost in the conversation, though, is that there’s still creational goodness in all good, God-glorifying work. All work was created to be good. And by the way, one day it’s all going to be perfect once again.

Anytime I have a buddy who hates his job or her job, I point him to Isaiah 65. It’s one of the most beautiful promises of scripture. Isaiah is talking about the new earth. I think in verse 17 he says, "See, I’ll create a new heavens and a new earth." Then he goes on and says, "My chosen people will build houses and live in them. They will long enjoy the work of their hands; they will not labor in vain."

Contrary to this American caricature of heaven as a glorified retirement home, our eternal reality on a new material earth—that is not exclusively "spiritual"—contains work. What that means is if you hate your job today, look forward expectantly to the day when you will long enjoy the work of your hands. And if you love your job, may that fuel your anticipation for eternity.

Heaven isn't boring; heaven is the most epic adventure of all time because we will be ruling and reigning forever and ever—Revelation 22:5—with Jesus the King, and that includes good, perfect work that we will long enjoy. Those who claim that saving souls is all that matters—that’s a slap in the face of Jesus because Jesus came to make everything new.

The curse of Genesis 3 broke the spiritual and the material realms. So unless Jesus returns and restores every part of this material world, this earth, and makes it like new again, then his redemption is incomplete. But his redemption is complete. We know that he’s won back every square inch of creation, and that gives value and meaning to the material things that we do today.

He has redeemed them. He has redeemed this earth, he has redeemed our souls, and so working with both souls and the material world—whether you’re working grinding coffee beans or making laptops or creating spreadsheets, whatever it is—that is good work because God never once renounced his claim that this material world, in the words of Genesis 1, is good.

Dave Wilson: That leads me to ask this question: if I’m a Christian and I understand this right perspective, how does it change the way I work? When the NFL was saying, and I had a head coach who disagreed with that idea but he wasn't sure, and he said to me, "Can you speak to that?" I did a chapel on it.

He said, "You’ve got to do that chapel every year just to remind us." One of the points I made is that owners are saying we don’t want Christian players on our team because they’re going to care more about God than what they do on the field. I said they should, if they understand what a Christian player understands about work, they should be begging for you to be on their team.

You should be the hardest working people in the locker room. You should be there first, you should leave last. Why? You’re not playing for an owner, you’re not playing for a paycheck; you’re playing for the King of Kings. He’s given you a gift, he’s given you work. It matters. Your intensity should be unbelievable. You should be the most caring person in the locker room. You’re loving people. It should be like, "I don’t know what these people are, but I want those kind of guys in the locker room," because that’s how Christian workers work. Am I right?

Jordan Raynor: 100%. If you get this high-level concept that work is a gift from God, a good gift, and whatever work you’re doing today—so long as it’s not explicitly out of line with God’s commands—is good, then the practical outworkings of this are endless.

You pointed to excellence. We claim to be image-bearers of God. Look outside your window. How does God work? How does God create? I was just in Zion National Park. "Excellence" falls so far short of describing the God of the Bible, but that’s what we can ascribe to.

If you believe your work matters and you are an image-bearer of God, you’re going to work with excellence. You’re going to work hard. You’re going to work with care for people beyond their productivity. You’re also going to work with rest because you know that the God of the universe loves you on your most and your least productive day, and that you can rest and still find favor as his child.

I could go on and on, but when you get this, when you understand that your work matters to God, the practical outpourings of what that means shape at a very practical level how you do your work. That’s why I wrote what I think is the first daily Monday through Friday devotional.

Ann Wilson: Which is really cool.

Jordan Raynor: To help people connect the Word to their work because the implications of this are legion.

Dave Wilson: I did a whole week of your devotional last night. Me too, I was doing prep. I wanted to read through what you wrote. I remember the first year we started our church in Michigan, I was at a restaurant near where we started it, and this owner comes up. I didn't know the guy.

He says, "Hey, this is my restaurant. Can I talk to you a minute?" I’m like, "Oh no." He pulls me sort of aside and he goes, "Hey, I heard you’re Dave, you have this church, blah, blah, blah." He goes, "One of your guys, he’s a high school kid, works for me as a busboy." Then I’m like, "Oh, what did he do?" And he goes, "He is the best worker I’ve ever hired."

Jordan Raynor: Wow.

Dave Wilson: I go, "What?" He goes, and I know this kid, but he goes, "He shows up early, he cares for people. I mean, he goes way out of his way to—he’s so caring, he’s just—he’s a model." Then I look at him like, "Well, that’s great. Why are you telling me?" He goes, "Are all your people like that?" I wanted to say yes, but of course not, but I thought, what a picture of the way a Christian works in what many people would call a secular job. A busboy—that doesn't matter. To him it mattered.

Jordan Raynor: 100%. There's lots of talk about exile right now. In the West, we feel increasingly like we're in exile. First Peter is a letter to exiles. What does Peter say in First Peter 2? He says, "Do good, live good lives amongst the pagans." Not retreating to your Christian subculture; engaging the city, rushing into dark places, going and working in that industry that you think is God-forsaken, for the glory of God. So that people can see your excellence and your love and your genuine care and they get glimpses—you're scratching off little glimpses—of the eternal kingdom of God and the God who is King of all things.

Ann Wilson: This is so good. And I’m now thinking, as a mom of the stay-at-home moms or dads that are feeling like, "I want to get back to work, but my husband and I, we’ve committed to being home with the kids." I remember that stage when our kids were little, and I felt like I have no life.

I have no life, I have no value, because so much of my value was in my work. I was trying to get a perspective of, "God, I know that this is a gift. I know that you’ve given me these kids and they’re a gift to us, but it feels like it’s nothing." Jordan, what do you say to those parents that are home?

Jordan Raynor: I’ve been so encouraged that those parents have found this devotional book to be helpful. I make very clear in the book: we define "work" as the thing we get paid to do. That is not how God defines work. God defines work so broadly that his definition of work in Exodus 20:10 includes animals working.

Ann Wilson: What do you mean by that? Explain that.

Jordan Raynor: So in the Ten Commandments, we get to the fourth commandment, and he issues the Sabbath command. God says, "Let the animals rest from their work." It’s the same word described as human labor. So this term is very broad in scripture.

To me, that’s very encouraging because I think we can define work very broadly, not as the thing we get paid to do, but basically the opposite of leisure and rest. So if you parent, you’re a stay-at-home mom, stay-at-home dad, you’re doing the work that God has created you to do in this season. And that work is just as important. Now, society’s not going to value that work very much, but the God of the universe does. Look at Mary. I think Mary’s all the evidence that you need. Elizabeth is all the evidence that you need. Exodus chapter one, which is all about mothers and women, is all the evidence you need that God calls that work of parenting very much work.

Ann Wilson: I can remember being at home, and I can also remember cleaning toilets. This is my life now; this is it. But I remember praying, "Lord, do you see? Do you see what I’m doing down here? This is nothing."

And I felt like God was saying, "This is a worship moment, Ann. Every one of these moments as you’re wiping bottoms and you’re wiping noses and you’re cleaning toilets and no one sees and no one’s applauding, I’m applauding every one of those little and big tasks. No matter if you’re speaking before thousands or if you’re all by yourself cleaning your toilet, I see it and we’re applauding it in the heavenly realm."

Jordan Raynor: Psalm 37:23 is one of my favorite verses. It says the Lord directs the steps of the godly, and he delights in every detail of their lives. Every. Not just when you’re sharing the gospel, not just when you’re donating money to church, although he certainly smiles upon those things.

Every time you change a diaper with excellence and love and in accordance with God’s commands, every time you make a latte and create a spreadsheet and land a deal with excellence and love and in accordance with God’s commands, our heavenly Father sees it, he delights in it, and his delight is eternal. Hebrews 6:10: He will not forget the work that we do for him. He is not unjust; he’ll remember it forever. It contributes to his eternal pleasure. And so that should fuel our purpose and pleasure in the present.

Dave Wilson: I was going to ask you, Jordan, to speak to the person that’s struggling with their job, and you just did.

Ann Wilson: So good.

Dave Wilson: I remember when I was coaching high school football, I’d be walking down the ramp to the high school field. I was just a volunteer coach, but every time I made that walk, I prayed and I remembered what I’m doing here. It isn’t trying to win football games; it’s I’m a light for the kingdom, I’m loving these boys, I’m modeling to them what a man looks like. I’m working unto the Lord, and this is a beautiful thing.

But I had to remind myself as I walked because I’d get caught up in football. And that’s good too, because it’s part of the work, but it’s like, no, this is what I’m about. You just did that. If somebody’s listening, I’m going to play Jordan’s words over again before I go to work today because I need to be reminded. It’s going to be hard. This is not an easy job, but it matters, and God’s put me here. Or you could get his devotional and read it every day. That’s good.

Ann Wilson: Man, I love Jordan Raynor. He is such a systems guy, he’s such a Bible guy. Again, his book is called *The Word Before Work: A Monday Through Friday Devotional to Help You Find Eternal Purpose in Your Daily Work*. Don’t we all need that sometimes? We just need to be reminded this has an eternal purpose, even in the mundane days. You can find his book at FamilyLifeToday.com; just click the link in the show notes.

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