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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of September 2024.
Before I introduce to you my guest for the day and our co-host and our topic for the day, I have some important reminders for you all. If you're a man in ministry leadership, we invite you all to the next free biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, which will be held Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County.
We are featuring for the very first time ever as our keynote speaker, Dr. Joseph Boot, a prolific author, conference speaker, and founder and president of the Ezra Institute, who will be flying in all the way from London, England, to be our keynote speaker at this important event.
Not only is your admission free and your time of rest, relaxation, refreshment, fun, fellowship, and feasting free, everyone in attendance will also receive a free heavy sack of brand new books personally selected by me and donated by generous Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom.
And if you'd like to register for this free event, just send me an email to chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And as always, give me your first name, or actually, I'm sorry, give me your full name.
I'm thinking of people who are asking questions during the show. If you're registering for the Pastors Luncheon, give me your full name, the name of your church or parachurch ministry, its location, and the number of men who will be joining you at the event.
Send that to chrisarnzen at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line, and we hope to see as many of you as possible at the next free biannual Iron Trip Insign Radio Pastors Luncheon. Well, I am thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest.
His name is William Bokestein, and he is pastor of a church located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is a congregation within the United Reformed Church of North America. The name of the church is Emanuel Fellowship Church, and we are delighted to be discussing an important theme today, Finding My Vocation, a guide for young people seeking a calling, which is the title of William Bokestein's new book.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip Insign Radio, Pastor William Bokestein.
Thanks so much, Chris. I am delighted to be on the program with you. It's been a while.
It has been too long, and I'm thrilled to have you back. Well, if you could, please let our listeners know more details about Emanuel Fellowship Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Yeah, well, I'm so thankful to be about to head into my 10th year of service here. I'd served seven years previously in Northeast Pennsylvania, and yeah, it's a lovely congregation in the United Reformed Church of North America.
We're about to celebrate this coming spring our 50th anniversary as a congregation, so we're thankful for the Lord's faithfulness. My wife, Amy, and our four children have been blessed to be here, and we're really thankful for this congregation.
Well, I'm assuming, like all the churches in the United Reformed Church of North America denomination, you adhere to the three forms of unity as your confessional standard?
We do, Chris, and so for us, that means that myself and the elders and the deacons of the church subscribe to the three forms, which means that we pledge to uphold the doctrine in the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession and the Cans of Dort as a faithful summary of the Word of God.
And so the three forms are certainly submissive to the Word of God, but we believe that they faithfully summarize Scripture, and so we hold to them faithfully. We may not teach anything different. We must defend this doctrine and teach it appropriately.
We certainly teach it to the congregation as well, and the congregation members have an understanding of it and vow to submit to this teaching. And not only do the three forms of unity function as a guide for our approach to Scripture, but we use them rigorously in worship as well.
So for example, right now I'm teaching through the Word of God using the Belgic Confession of Faith as sort of an outline for the sermon series. So it's 37 articles, which walks through the major heads of doctrine.
And one of the reasons that we think confessional subscription is so important is not only for the leaders to hold us accountable to Scripture, but also we feel that the topics, the questions in the catechisms and the topics in the confession, for example, they are absolutely the topics that all Christians should be concerned about.
And whereas there are differences in historic confessions, say on baptism or church government, we affirm together that the Lord is the ruler of the church, there is a government of the church, and we might practice that a little bit differently.
But that's an important aspect that all churches have to consider. Baptism is vital for the life of the believer, and whether you read in Scripture a Credo Baptist perspective or a Pedo Baptist perspective, what the confessions do is they force you to dig into Scripture and to affirm that this is a vital, vital topic.
So the confessions certainly are an important part of our life, although we want to make sure that we're applying them in ways appropriate to our 21st century North American context.
Well, if anybody wants more details on Emanuel Fellowship Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan, go to reformedifc .com, reformedifc .com, and God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program. And I'm delighted that we have a special co-host with me today, especially since the subtitle of William Bokastein's book is A Guide for Young People Seeking a Calling.
We have a Generation Z Christian on the program as my co-host, Brandon Vanderford. I first met Brandon at the Chief End of Man Conference, a put on by Church and Family Life in the mountains of North Carolina.
At the time, Brandon was working as their social media strategist and continues to represent Church and Family Life at various events across the country. And he has a keen interest in theology, history, and the general outworking of Christian doctrine and all of life.
And given that this is a conversation on vocation, it is worth mentioning that Brandon's full-time work is as a consultant for real estate investors. His company manages a portfolio of around 250 properties, and Brandon is a member of a fine Reformed Baptist congregation there in Raleigh, North Carolina, Hope Baptist Church, and will occasionally assist his pastor, Scott Brown, with research.
It's my honor and privilege to also welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Brandon Vanderford. It's a pleasure to be here today. Looking forward to this conversation. Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they want to submit questions of their own on helping young people seek a calling and find a vocation.
The email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Well, this seems to be a departure from the typical kind of book that you have written and had published, Pastor Bocastein.
I have interviewed you on historical figures that have made enormous contributions to the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation and even giving their lives to that end. What was the compelling factor that made you say to yourself, you know, I've got to write a book on helping young people find a vocation?
Well, Chris, actually, I was approached by the Publisher Reform Free Publishing Association to consider writing on this topic, and when I received the invitation, I was instantly interested. I mentioned a moment ago that my wife and I have four children.
One is a sophomore in college, one is a senior in high school, another a sophomore in high school, and then a fifth, a 10-year-old. And so these are the kind of questions that we're asking, you know, how do we help our young people think about their future?
What kind of education should they pursue, or should they jump right into a particular vocation right out of school? And so I got the invitation, was really excited about it. I approached my elders, I said, hey, do you guys think this is a worthy topic for me to take up?
And they were very enthusiastic. One of my longtime elders said, you know, I have not had teaching or sermon series or anything like that on the subject of vocation in my 60-plus years of life in good, solid churches.
And so as we talked about this together, we realized this is not only important in my own life and for the life of the young people in our congregation, but this is something that a lot of us have just never been introduced to.
I surely didn't. I was raised in a very godly family, good, faithful Christian church, but I do not recall the subject coming up in my training either, certainly not in church. So we just want to be, we want to guide our young people as best we can.
And it's certainly the responsibility of parents. Yes, we're training our children to become independent and to move out and to take on their own responsibilities, but we want to do that in a way that equips them best to succeed and to be a blessing to God's people and to the church and to honor the Lord.
Now I'm going to ask our co-host, Brandon, the same question, but I'll ask you, Pastor Bill, first. The subject matter here of finding a vocation, what have you experienced as a pastor, as someone who has no doubt counseled young people, have you found anything that is remarkably different in the mindset of an average young person in our day and age in the 21st century that is different from what you remember when you were a young person back in the days when fire was invented?
But is there any different thing that might be either, or perhaps you could give us both, things that are impressive about contemporary young people and things that perhaps are even disturbing or things that you have worries over?
Yeah, that's a great question, Chris. A lot of that will depend on the particular context of young people. I grew up in a rural setting and wonderful neighborhood or community, but I wasn't thinking an awful lot about a career.
I certainly wasn't thinking about the importance of education. I didn't really have a plan, and I'm not saying that was true of the other young people in my community, but that's just kind of how I grew up.
So I do still see some of that. But I think one of the things that's different today is I think there's a lot of pressure on young people to succeed, and not just to succeed, but to have a sort of airbrushed vocation and family.
And we now are in the age of social media, and everybody sees their friends and their neighbors apparently at least doing really well in life. And I think there is added pressure for young people. And so I think that's a struggle.
And if we go further back from when I was young or when even our parents were young, we find that today there's so many options for an occupation. And in the day of the early church or even into the Reformation age, there wasn't not the emphasis on opportunities or options, but they just didn't exist as much.
You typically were going to follow in the footsteps of your parents. So if you're a young man, you're probably going to do what your dad did or something quite like it. And so interestingly, the older writers, even the Reformation writers, don't talk too much about finding a vocation because they just assume that you're in a particular station with your family, and you're going to just grow up and assume your place in society.
So that's not the case for young people today. Some, of course, go on and do something similar to maybe what their parents or people in the community did, but others have just so many options. And so I think that can be troubling for people.
And then I think maybe one more thing, Chris, I think there is increasingly a fear of commitment. And I think we see that in relationships, but we also see it in work life. And so whereas maybe like my grandfathers, between the two of them had, I think, two jobs, two or three jobs, maybe, that they worked at their entire lives.
That may frighten young people today to think, well, I've got to choose a vocation that I might be stuck with for the next 40, 50 years. And that can be really frightening. So, yeah, I think for those reasons, it's really important for young people to look at the doctrine of vocation and see how freeing it is from some of the fears and the challenges they face today.
And Brandon, you are primarily today supposed to be asking questions alongside me, asking questions of Pastor Bill Bocastine. But I did want you to answer from your own experience as a young person, as a Generation Z person who's already established himself with a very promising and growing business.
What have you observed amongst your peer group and perhaps those who are younger that both impresses you, gives you reasons for optimism, but also perhaps depresses you?
Well, I will say that reading Pastor Bocastine's book, it was very comforting because as you're talking about some of these distinctions that we've seen, these changes intergenerationally, these things are not that far in the rearview mirror for me, even though I can say I feel very established on my career path at this point.
But it's a very comforting book. It kind of reminds me of Kevin DeYoung's Just Do Something in a Certain Way. It's like the book of Ecclesiastes. It shows life isn't an algebra problem that you have to solve.
It's not that complicated. Fear God, honor God. I believe it was one of the reformers that said, honor God and do what you please. And that seems to, I think, factor big into this conversation. But when we're getting into the weeds of what we've seen change, I think over the last 30, 40 years, well, you, William, you overviewed a lot of that very well when you go into the optionality.
In some ways, even when you were looking for your first job, industrialization was a thing that you were reading about in your history books, of course. Globalization hadn't progressed to the point that we now see it at.
So people who grew up in my small Indiana town 20 years before me knew that most likely they would grow up and go work at the GM plant. My generation didn't have that same option. So I think a lot of the obvious steps have kind of left the communities in this nation.
And now you're looking on Indeed .com at two million job openings that can be worked from anywhere. You're not tied to a location because of the advent of the Internet. And in one way, that opens up momentous opportunities, but can also be very paralyzing.
And I think that that's a huge factor. I think that if we talk about the young person's outlook on the future, that tends to impact the way that they see their vocation as well. I think that a lot of young people today need to have a much more optimistic outlook towards the future than they do.
Looking at politics, looking at current economic trends, even if you're looking at the price of houses and saying, you know, I can see how the young people in my congregation can still make it. I think there certainly is an amount of stress that these people are feeling, you know, almost locked out of the world.
And I think showing them that there is a path forward, that they do have control over their lives, is going to have a huge payoff. I don't think those same discouragements were probably—maybe they were, but I don't get the impression that older generations were dealing with this angst in the same way that, for whatever reason, Gen Z is dealing with it.
Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break, and if anybody wants to join us, once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.
If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are asking a question about your own son or daughter, and you don't want to embarrass them.
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But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back, right after these messages from our sponsors.
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We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sense that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church. A congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
God bless you.
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So go to royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron. Well, we are now back with my guest, Pastor William Bokastein and my co-host Brandon Vanderford, and we are discussing Pastor Bill's book, Finding My Vocation, A Guide for Young People Seeking a Calling.
And can you please, I think it would be wise for you, Pastor Bill, to provide for us a working definition of not only vocation but calling, because those are more lofty titles than work, than getting a job.
And I have experienced as an eyewitness a phenomenon in my life, especially with the adult children of friends of mine. Sometimes you will have somebody who is so enamored with their fantasy of pursuing a vocation or a calling, sometimes it may be unrealistic according to their abilities, and they don't ever get a job to at least temporarily be working to purchase those everyday things that we need to buy with our own money, and they wind up being a financial burden on their parents and other people from whom they borrow money or just ask for money.
So if you could give us good working definitions for those three terms, vocation, calling, and job or working. Yeah. So, Chris, I think a real good definition.
Comes from 1 Corinthians 7, verse 17. And before I read that, I use vocation and calling interchangeably. Vocation is just the Latin version of calling. And so 1 Corinthians 7, verse 17 says, "...only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.".
So there's a little bit of repetition there which helps us understand the definition. So, to which God has called him is the idea of calling, but that's referring to the life that the Lord has assigned to him.
And so what we're looking to do is to discern as best we're able the life that the Lord has assigned to us. And I think that helps to get at the second part of your question. There is some searching that is required perhaps in honoring the Lord's call on your life, because life is not yet unfolded.
We don't know exactly where we're going to go, and we do have to do the best we can, I think, to pair our respective skills and opportunities and limitations and desires with the vocation, the job, the occupation, and other life commitments like marriage or singleness.
But on the other hand, the Lord has assigned to each of us a life right now. And so for the person who's sort of wrapped up in dreams about a certain kind of life, they may be forgetting the life that the Lord has assigned to them right now.
And so I think, as Brandon was saying earlier, vocation can be very comforting. It says, hey, right now you have a life to live, and you don't have to know the path that the Lord is going to take you down in the future.
And that can relieve us of a lot of pressure. I just need to be faithful right now with what I have. At the same time, and this is sort of the dual aspect of vocation, it's not only comforting, but it should infuse us with a sense of responsibility.
I have a responsibility right now to do what I'm supposed to do. And so for the person who has dreams of being whatever, right now they should be productive. They should be, as Paul warns the Thessalonians quite strongly in both of his epistles to that church, they should not, if at all possible, be a burden on others.
They should work steadily and faithfully unto the Lord to provide for themselves, as Paul says in Ephesians 4, and to provide out of the excess to those who are in need around them. And so we need to see as Christians that our lives do not belong to ourselves.
The Lord has called us to a certain kind of life. And so recognizing that, it's a huge reversal, I think, of the mentality that many people today have, and certainly many people in the Middle Ages had, where they were just sort of a cog in the cultural machine.
Better to say, no, if I'm a child of God, and if I've been called by the Lord as his son or daughter, and if the Holy Spirit has worked this effectual call in me and given me new life to be able to love God and love my neighbor as myself and obey God's commands and live by faith, then I have a calling right now to honor this God.
And that doesn't depend upon whatever my future may hold. And I don't have to realize all my dreams to be satisfied with my relationship with God and the opportunities that he's given me to serve him.
And Brandon, do you have a question? Are you there?
Well, if I could just—I am. I am here. If I could just add to that, one of the things that I would say along these lines that I found very helpful in the book is just this idea of every person working their role in God's common grace on this earth.
You know, you read in the Psalms, he covers the heavens with clouds, he prepares rain for the earth, he makes grass grow on the hills, he gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that cry.
So you're reading about God's provision, but then you think God has given each individual person a role in that provision, in that distribution of his common grace to all mankind. And you might say in a certain way, you know, in the same way that we see pastors and elders as ministers of special grace through the word and of the administering of the sacraments.
But then we read in Romans 13 that the civil magistrate is also a type of minister of God. You could almost say that every person seems to be, in a certain sense, a minister of God's common grace on this earth if they're working in a vocation or in a calling that is honoring to God.
I loved the quote in your book from Bonar, so shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free, but all my life in every step be fellowship with thee. Amen. Yeah, and Brandon, what you're touching on is something that Paul stresses in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
And I'm convinced he's not speaking just about life in the church here or in the church as a gathered assembly, but also just the church as a scattered people in the world as well. He says there are varieties of gifts, there are varieties of service, there are varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all in everyone.
And so that's what makes a society work. And so we should see ourselves, as Calvin says, as stationed to a particular post in God's service where we're sort of doing our part in, yes, in the church, but in the world as well.
And I love how Michael Berg describes the high calling of vocation. He says, if you do your work faithfully, you're truly changing the world. This is not a small thing, the fact that you are, whatever part of the economy you're participating in, if you're doing it well, and it's a noble calling, a valid field of enterprise, you're blessing people.
You're affecting them in a way that hopefully, under God's blessing, is improving their lives. And that's an incredible reality. If we think about the fall of man into sin, that could have been the end of joy and productivity and flourishing and relationship.
But it isn't. It wasn't because of God's patience and his kindness and his promise of a savior. The fact that we have a society in which we can work and flourish and do things that we're good at and provide for ourselves and our families and those around us, it's a wonderful, wonderful gift that God has given to us.
I think that perspective is important when we wake up every morning, maybe earlier than we want, and go to a job that isn't exactly what we want it to be. I'm a worker in God's economy, and my work is valuable.
Not only is what we would think of as more spiritual work, honoring to God, but the everyday things that I do, if done in faith, in accordance with God's law, for the sake of God's glory, God is actually pleased with my work.
That can revolutionize the way that we go to work. Going back to the.
Dilemma that some parents have of older children who are seemingly or apparently waiting for their dream job, their dream career vocation to fall out of the sky, and they refuse or put little effort, if any, into getting work now to help provide for the families of which they are a part, but also just to provide for themselves and things that they need for everyday living.
Don't these young people need to be reminded that on top of those day-to-day needs that having a job enables one to fund and provide, they are, perhaps if they save wisely, etc., going to have extra money to invest in their dream that they want to pursue.
Perhaps that means some kind of training. Perhaps that means some kind of equipment. Am I making sense here? Yeah, that's exactly right, Chris. I think.
In addition to that, yes, they're working to be able to truly flourish, and the Lord wants that for us. That's why, as the Westminster standards say, the accumulation of wealth is actually a requirement of the Eighth Commandment, which forbids stealing, because without wealth, all you're able to do is what James ridicules.
You see someone who's poor and needy, and you say, I hope things are well with you, but you can't do anything because you don't have any assets. Accumulation of assets with the appropriate safeguards, guarding against the love of money and greed and miserliness and everything, it's a godly pursuit.
The Lord owns everything, but He loves His children to participate in that ownership. I think you're exactly right about the fruit or one of the end results of work, but the other thing that we often miss is that even the process of working well should be rewarding.
There's days when you work well, you're focused, you're disciplined, you do the job that you've been called to do, and you go through your day, you get to the end of the day, and you're tired, and you go to sleep tired, but with a sense of satisfaction that I've been faithful in what God has called me to do.
That's huge. That's so rewarding. We often forget that we're forming our character while we're working. Yes, there's an end goal or a product of our work, but one writer whose work I read in the research for this book said that we are ourselves the most important product that's being formed in our labors.
That could be good or bad depending on how you go about your work, but if you think about the way that you're going to be molded in your working life, you're going to end up one way or another at the end of your life in large measure based on your work.
Think about what your work is doing for you based on the inputs that you bring to the job.
I think that's very important. Yeah, and you never know when you're working this job that you never thought would lead to a dream career. You never know how that might actually develop in your life where you change what your dream is, maybe because of a talent and a skill that you didn't have before is developed, and maybe even somebody that you meet at this mundane job.
Actually, I always wanted to pursue a career in art. I was an art major in college, and although I did create one book cover for a Reformed Christian author, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, professionally I have done very little in that area.
While seeking employment for just day-to-day needs financially, I answered a Help Wanted ad in college. I was so stupid at the time that the Help Wanted ad said that I would be applying for a job in telephone sales, and I was so stupid that I thought that meant I would be selling telephones.
I wound up selling print ad, which later went into jumping to a different company, a radio ad agency at a Golden Oldie station, and I began selling radio advertising. Then when a major New York City Christian radio station became Christian, I got a job there.
I began filling in for the talk show host on occasion when he recognized I had a knack for writing very good questions. When I began to fill in for him when he was on vacation, and even after he passed away, the management had me fill in as a temporary host until they found a permanent host for the program.
That all led to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I never, as a younger person, thought that I would be involved in radio at all.
That is so true, though. I just want to jump into that for a minute if I could. Because going back to one of your earlier questions, one of the liabilities that young people have today is that they are growing up in a moment where we expect instant gratification.
So much of what we have today is instant. Even when we were kids, if you wanted to communicate with someone, you might send a letter and you'd wait several days for them to receive it, and now it's instant messaging and texting and things like that.
A lot of things we want to see happen right now, and that's just not realistic. We're not capable, usually, early on in our years of rendering the kind of service that is going to grant us the kind of reward that we're looking for.
I want to encourage young people through this book to have a long view of success and of passion. It doesn't mean you won't realize anything until you're in your 50s or 60s, but it is to say that you do not have the wisdom and the character and the skills now that you will later.
I would think Brandon's experienced this as well. I'd be interested to hear that. Chris, you've shared your story, but I think that when you're first starting out, even if you love your job, you do not know how to do it very well.
That is going to be a limiting factor in terms of how much satisfaction you gain from it. I've been a pastor for 17 years. I've got tons of growth, I hope, ahead of me. When I was first starting out, I kind of knew what needed to be done, but no experience.
Everything was just harder and a little less rewarding because of just the place that I was in life. We do want to find as best we can a fit, but you're right, Chris. You don't know how that's going to end up.
The people that you meet, the things that you learn, the providence of God opening up for you, the trust that you put in the Lord, even when things aren't going well, all of that is going to add up to, in time, what, sadly, we too often expect to happen instantaneously in our day.
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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Pastor William Bokastein, and he is the author of Finding My Vocation, a guide for young people seeking a calling. That email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
And because I just mentioned moments ago my friend Mary Beakey, who wrote her own book on a similar subject, I am reminded to read some of the powerful commendations for this book by William Bokastein, one of which is by Mary Beakey, wife of Dr. Joel Beakey and author of Teach Them to Work.
Mary Beakey writes, young people seeking God's will for their life's calling will discover a treasure trove of wisdom in William Bokastein's Finding My Vocation. Vocation covers all of life as they prayerfully make decisions for their future, they will consider biblical principles of work and relationships, they will access their God-given talents and providential circumstances, they will aim to serve their family and their neighbor, and they will honor God.
A rich, fulfilling, Christ-centered life awaits them if they follow the principles found on these pages. Quite a powerful endorsement from my friend Mary Beakey, and it also reminds me to get her on the program.
I have interviewed her husband many times, but I've got to interview Mary. Also, another guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Ted Tripp, who is a conference speaker and author of Shepherding a Child's Heart, he writes, this timely book will be a birthday gift for all my grandchildren who are trying to find their calling.
Marvin Alasky, who's also been on this program, former editor of World Magazine, says this thoughtful book may help young people follow a good path and recalibrate if they've gone astray. And David Bonson, who's also been on this program, author of Full-Time Work and the Meaning of Life, also son of the late Greg Bonson, world-renowned Christian apologist, he says, practical, motivating, challenging, and encouraging a scriptural take on one of the most important issues we will ever face.
And those are just several of many powerful endorsements by key people in the Christian faith to help whet your appetite to get a hold of this book. Well, we do have a listener in Winooski, Vermont, named Candice, who has a question for you.
And in fact, I'm going to not only have William Bokastein answer this question, but I'm going to ask my co-host today, Brandon Vanderford, to answer it as well. Candice asks, since there seems to be a very disturbing and frightening rise in the popularity of Marxism among young people, has this in any way that is significant and dramatic affected the way the young folks of today are pursuing vocations?
And we'll start with you, Bill. Yeah, that's a really good question.
So, yes, I think so. There's, I think today, a decreased emphasis, certainly among those who have Marxist tendencies, a decreased appreciation of personal responsibility. And that really flies in the face of the biblical doctrine of vocation.
And the doctrine of vocation assumes a sort of free enterprise where each person is doing their work, not under compulsion by the state, but under the oversight of God, does their work freely as free people unto the Lord, not working for the Lord as slaves, but as sons, but contributes to a society voluntarily.
And the other thing is, we, you know, to look through, to look at the world through the grid of oppressor and oppressed as Marxists do, is not going to help workers to do the primary thing that vocation requires, which is to love your neighbor.
What vocation does is it assists us to do what Paul requires, and Philippians 2, to look not only into your own interests, but also into the interests of others, but to do so from the heart, not under compulsion.
And so it is a troubling trend, but the doctrine of vocation, blessed by God, offers something that Marxism cannot, which is the satisfaction that I'm living before God, I'm doing my part in society, but I'm doing it because I love my neighbor.
And if Jesus is correct, and I'm sure He is when He says that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and if giving is done out of cheerfulness, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians, then there's great reward in voluntarily working for your neighbor, and not doing so as just part of a mechanism of the state.
Now, Brandon, I'm assuming, being the strong Christian young man that you are, being a member of a very fine Christian congregation, that you're spending most of your time with fellow believers, but how often are you interacting with any of the young people that might be enamored with at least a romantic understanding of Marxism?
You know, truth be told, I don't encounter people very often who would say that they hold to the tenets of Marxism. Now, obviously, this is going to be a much bigger issue in the community that your listener lives in, up in Vermont, and they keep re-electing Bernie Sanders.
That is a message that resonates in that community, but here in North Carolina, it's not something I hear a lot about, at least not explicitly. There are certainly people who like their government programs, that help pay the bills from their perspective, and that type of welfare state is a type of soft Marxism, but I haven't encountered a lot of people who advocate for it directly.
I wouldn't be surprised if we do see a trend of more and more people calling for a more Marxist system, because I do think that Marxism appeals to the populist sentiment that we kind of have seen growing over the last 10 years, and I think there are two ways that the church can approach this.
I think, first of all, there is a moral problem, and second of all, there is a morale problem. So the moral problem is going to be addressing the underlying issues of why doesn't this person perhaps want to work?
One of my favorite depictions of a Marxist is early on in C .S. Lewis's novel, The Great Divorce. He's on this bus ride, and there's this Marxist. He sits beside completely failed in all of life, and of course, everyone else was the problem.
So that's the one type. I think that there are economic pressures that particularly the Democratic Party will point to and say that Marxist solutions are the solutions, and I think the way that we should respond in those cases is to look at the problem, go to the people who are listening to these bad solutions, say, I hear you when you complain about this, but there is a better way, and this is the better solution that you can find in God's word.
You know, I'm actually a little.
Surprised that you haven't encountered any Marxists there in North Carolina because it has become a swing state, and you would wonder how anyone in their right mind would even consider voting for the left side of our current presidential race that's going on, and not only presidential, but races in all the categories of political office that are currently at for grabs.
So I mean, how about liberalism in general? Do you encounter many people in that.
Persuasion? I think I do. I encounter, even with clients that I speak with regularly, people of different persuasions, but on the whole, real estate is a fairly conservative coded profession, even a lot of the people that I work with professionally steer to the right.
Even in the previous office that I worked in, we had about 50 people and only two of them that I'm aware of, you know, held progressive views. I think that is one of the interesting things, you know, not to take us off on a tangent, but a lot of these viewpoints are fairly siloed.
I think the Democrats that you run to in day-to-day life tend to not be highly ideological. I think a lot of the ideological Democrats you're seeing on college campuses, and I just don't spend a lot of time.
In those crowds. Right, and they are among the few people that would publicly and proudly gleefully announce that they're Marxist. Absolutely. And most of them probably are not even Marxists. There are spoiled brats who are having their tuitions paid for by their parents, and they're looking for something to do that's exciting and gains them public recognition.
And all that kind of thing. But I do think, I'm sorry, I do think that in some cases, this goes back to what William was saying earlier, there is this desire for significance that I think can sometimes push people in the more socially liberal direction.
You know, we all have the caricature in our mind of the young liberal arts artist who decides to become a socialist so that she can spend all of her time painting. And I do think that there is an element of this person grasping for meaning in the wrong place.
So I think one of the ways that we can answer that and one of the ways that we do see this answered in this book is finding work that has significance. I think it can be something of a challenge in the modern world due to industrialization, globalization.
People don't necessarily see the end product of their work. But if people find a vocation where they can see, I believe, the fruits of their labor, you're going to see the incentives in that direction go down because people see where their sweat is going.
And I think that one of the reasons people are largely dissatisfied with work is, well, because you oftentimes don't. If you work in insurance, you can touch a lot of paperwork, but you might not ever see that new roof that goes on your client's.
House. Well, guess what? I just wanted to tell my listener that she has won a free copy of the book we are addressing, Finding My Vocation, by William Bokestein. And we want to thank our friends at Reformed Free Publishing Association, RFPA .org, for providing this limited number of free giveaway copies to listeners that are sending in questions.
And we also want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, for shipping out these books to our winners. And you, I believe, Bill,.
About to say something? Well, I would just go back to that discussion we were having a minute ago. If you think about, for example, in Acts chapter 4, the Bible says there was not a needy person among them because the people who owned lands or homes sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold to assist the needy.
So that's a beautiful exchange of generosity. But it assumes a few things. It assumes that there were some people who were acquiring wealth, either vocationally or perhaps through inheritance or whatever.
And so if you look at that equation, now, yes, the Bible says the poor you always have with you. That's just a reality. Some people will be generationally underprivileged or be the victim of an accident or whatever else that prohibits them from working.
But if you had an option of being on one side of that exchange or the other, you would, most of us would say, well, I'd like to be the person not receiving because I wasn't able to provide for myself, but being generous.
And so vocation gives us something to strive for so that we aren't just receiving, but actually giving and being useful and productive. So yeah, I echo what you guys are saying. A Marxist outlook does not contribute to that biblical paradigm of striving and excelling so that you can benefit others freely and generously.
Okay, we have Christiana in Pleasant Grove, Alabama, who asks, Pastor Bocastein, is your book exclusively for Christian young people, or would it have benefit giving this to someone who is lost, whose soul you are praying for?
Well, that's an excellent question. And I do think it'd be beneficial. And here's why. When you read the Bible, you see that the doctrine of vocation is a Christian doctrine. It requires that a person has a right perspective on life, that they have true faith in God, that they are not living for themselves, but living for the Lord.
And then on top of that, they enter into a valid occupation and work faithfully. So to have a vocation really does require being a Christian, but I would frame that as an incentive. This is not the reason to be a Christian.
But so what I do in the third chapter is emphasize how the conversion that a person undergoes to Christ actually enables them to live vocationally. Instead of striving for meaning and value through work or whatever other things you undertake, the Lord justifies you by faith in Jesus Christ and says to you that you cannot gain more value in my sight than you have right now because of the atonement of Jesus Christ on your behalf.
And then I just sort of walk through a list of other ways that conversion enables us to live out a calling. It activates the motivator of gratitude. We're not working for God so that he will bless us and give us things.
We're working for God because he has rescued us from the tyranny of the devil and given us an eternal inheritance that cannot be taken away. And vocation imparts the qualities and the convictions that we need to do well in work.
And so while the book is obviously not evangelistic in a strict sense, it certainly does emphasize the beauty and glory of Christ as the only way that we can truly live with a purpose and with a sense of the life that God has called us to.
And so I'm super thankful—and I mention this in the book as well—for unbelieving contributions to culture. Calvin scolds Christians who don't recognize the way that God works in the world through unbelievers as well.
And so there's so many benefits that we have through the works of unbelieving people. But I do think there's a strong encouragement throughout the book for those who would want to have the kind of life that vocation opens up to us to find that life in.
Jesus Christ. Okay, we have Tyrell in Uniondale, Long Island, New York. And Tyrell wants to know, in a day and age when the Left is telling young people you can do anything that you want to do and don't let anybody tell you you can't, that very often is obviously a lie and giving people false hope to pursue dreams that they are unable to ever fulfill.
But at the same time, how do we prevent ourselves from unnecessarily crushing the dream of a young person? Sometimes we might do that by telling them that they are not possessing a skill set or talent to pursue the dream of their choice, but it may be that we are the ones ignorant about that particular area, and it could be all about our difference of taste or something like that.
Yeah, that's a very interesting question because—.
It's a great question.
Because I've often wondered, if Bob Dylan was unknown and he was one of the contestants on America's Got Talent, I wonder how quickly the buzzers would go off, because he's got that—his voice is an acquired taste.
I think if you never knew who he was and you heard him start to sing, you'd think, this person has no ability to sing, yet he's one of the most globally renowned heroes of the music industry. But anyway, what are your thoughts on that?
That's a really wonderful question, and he's exactly right. Especially as parents or as advisors to young people, you do not want to unnecessarily squash a young person's dreams and squelch their passions.
We ought to be encouraging young people to do things that they're excited about, but we should do that in a way that's responsible and informed. If someone is passionate about being a professional football player, for example, that's fine.
You should encourage them to do well in football. But you should also let them know that the percentage of junior high football players who go on to play in the NFL is very, very small. I don't think that's discouraging them, but it is saying, hey, you should definitely have a plan B and a plan C, and so on.
It is false, as Terrell says, that we can do anything we want to do. We just simply can't. There are certain fields that I just absolutely could not succeed in. I don't have the capacity for it. So to say that you can do anything is actually more discouraging than saying, listen, you're a special person.
You have incredible gifts and qualities, and those will be channeled in some way by God's grace into a very rewarding field. Let's try to figure out what those things are. So in the fifth chapter, I'm focusing on encouraging young people being well-informed.
You should know your options. So football player, okay, that could be one option. Probably not your best option, but let's not squash it right now. But let's see what other options are out there. And then you need to know yourself.
And to know yourself, you really have to listen to others because we're all very biased when we're examining our own selves. So I think I'm amazing at something, but the people around me might say, well, they've got to break the news to you and say, well, it's not quite as it seems to you.
And so if we have the humility to listen to people and say, well, maybe the thing I'm super passionate about is possibly going to end up as a hobby for me or as a side gig or as a way volunteer in church or whatever else, musically or something.
That's meaningful. That's valuable. So we're just trying to temper our passions with a healthy dose of reality.
And guess what, Tyrell, you have won a free copy of Finding My Vocation by William Bokastein. Once again, compliments of our dear friends at Reform Free Publishing Association, rfpa .org, who have donated a limited number of copies that we can give away today.
And we also want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, for shipping these books out to you. And we want to make sure that everybody knows who has submitted a question so far, in case I forgot to tell them, that you've, so far, everybody that submitted a question has won a copy of Finding My Vocation.
Make sure you give me your full mailing address in whatever city and state you are located. Brandon, before we go to our final break, do you have a.
Question of your own for William Bokastein? Well, I think that one of the things that I appreciated in the book that I thought was very valuable and maybe he could expand on for the audience was how core work is to our identity.
It's not something that we're just doing between this age of, say, 18 and 65. It's a part of God's eternal plan for us. So he points out that in the first verse of the Bible, in the beginning, God created.
Well, we have Christ point out to the Pharisees that the Father was working then and continues to work until now. And he writes in the book, in the age to come, human labor will be released from vanity and bondage.
Our calling to work will not be nullified. And quoted Pastor Tom Nelson, your time here in our Father's fallen world is a preparation for an eternity of activity and creativity. So I think people don't tend to have an eternal mindset when it comes to work.
It's not how people think of heaven. Is that something that maybe you'd expand on a little bit more? Yeah. Well, I don't know if when Chris mentioned David Bonson as a host, as a guest on this show,.
I don't know. Chris, did you guys discuss full time? I mean, is that the title of his book? His newest book, yeah. No, no. This was a few years ago.
Okay. That'd be a good one for you guys to discuss because that really gets to the heart of Brandon's question. So work is important to our identity. Now, that's true if we first find ourselves in Christ, because anything that's a replacement, whether it's work or our wit or our looks or our relationships or whatever else that we put in place of the Lord and in place of a relationship with Christ, is an idol.
It's going to mislead us and it's going to cause us to build an identity that doesn't honor God and doesn't lead to flourishing. But if we find our place in God, then work is key to our identity because responsibility is essential to who we are.
If you go back to the story that Chris started reading about in Genesis 1, you see Adam and Eve being made in God's image, so having their chief identity as image bearers of God. But what's included in that is that they are workers.
God works. Jesus is a worker. The Holy Spirit is a powerful worker in our lives. God works and we're created to work like him. So if you're able to work and are not working, that's going to impair your identity.
That's one of the reasons Paul is so strong in Thessalonians about working. He's not just concerned about the drag that you'll be on society if you're able to work but not doing so. He's also concerned about the person who is not going to flourish, who's not going to understand what it means to be a producer and a helper and a creator in the sense of working creatively with the materials that God has given to us.
That's really what we were made to do. So our existence is pointed toward the things that we do. You're exactly right. We have to find our place in God's love and receive the gospel, trust in Christ, and then we're freed from working for the wrong reasons, finding our identity in what we perform.
We're receivers now of the graciousness of God and we're free to look to our neighbor and to find ourselves within that community as a meaningful part. You are not in entirely what you do, but what you do is an awful lot about who you are.
And we have to go to our final break. If you'd like to join us with a question, submit it immediately because we are rapidly running out of time. The address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Don't go away. We're gonna be right back after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.
Here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity. And besides that, they feel so good.
I'm so delighted I discovered Post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding. No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot. Jeffrey Rice of Post Tenebrous Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan.
All his work is done by hand, from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching. Jeffrey uses the finest and buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors, like the turquoise goatskin tanned in Italy used for my Nessie Allen 28th edition with a navy blue goatskin inside liner and the electric blue goatskin from a French tannery used to rebind a Reformation study Bible I used as a gift.
The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome. Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather, making whatever he rebinds a one-of-a-kind work of art.
For more details on Post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding, go to ptlbiblerebinding .com. That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. I'm Dr. Tony Costa,.
Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.
It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island and beyond.
I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.
When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.
This is Darrell Bernard Harrison, co-host of the Just Thinking Podcast, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
I'm Pastor Kent Keller of Faith.
Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
I'm Andrew Rapport, the founder and executive director at Striving for Eternity Ministries,.
And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Mark Rimaldi, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
I'm Christopher Cookston, pastor of Prineville Community Church in Prineville, Oregon, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Matt Tarr, pastor of High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.
We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist.
Church on Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sensed that same God-given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word, and delighting in the gospel of God's.
Sovereign grace. God bless you. Chris Arnzen here. I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but that's not the only reason I love them.
CVBBS .com carries the finest in theologically reformed literature from 16th century classics like Calvin's Institutes, 17th and 18th century Puritan treasures like the works of Jonathan Edwards, 19th century volumes by the Prince of Preachers Charles Spurgeon, all the way up to the 21st century with the best of R .C. Sproul, Steve Lawson, Votie Baucom, and more.
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That's CVBBS .com, enriching minds and maintaining the theologically reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support. Now shipping worldwide. And folks, please never forget that this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates.
If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice in any state of the 50 United States, please call my friend Dan P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law at 1 -800-NOW-HURT, 1 -800-NOW-HURT, or visit Dan's website 1 -800-NOW-HURT .com, 1 -800-NOW-HURT .com.
And please make sure you tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Buttafuoco and Associates from Chris Arnson with Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I also want to once again remind all men in ministry leadership that the free biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon is coming up on Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loysville, Pennsylvania, featuring for the very first time our keynote speaker, Joe Boot.
And not only is this a free event, every man in attendance will receive a heavy sack of free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by generous Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom.
And by the way, I just got the word yesterday that among the many books that will be given away at the luncheon, my friend Bryce Craig of PNR Publishing has confirmed with me that he is shipping out hundreds of copies of Making Sense of the World, How the Trinity Helps to Explain Reality by Verne Poythress.
Every man in attendance will get that book free amongst many other books that will be available there donated by generous publishers. And this is a 224-page hardback, so that alone is well worth your trip from wherever you may be traveling.
If you want to attend this free luncheon, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. Give me not only your full name, but the name of your church or parish or ministry, its location, and the number of men who will be joining you.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. By the way, since I just mentioned Bryce Craig, I want to announce to our listeners a prayer request for our dear brother Bryce, who's been a friend of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio for many years, decades.
Bryce tragically has recently been, actually a year ago, I just found out yesterday, been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, and the symptoms are already prominent. Please pray for our dear brother, whether it be a divine, miraculous healing, or just that he is able to serve Christ with joy, even in the midst of this painful trial that he is enduring.
So please keep him in your prayers. And last but not least, please continue to pray for my dear friend Gary Wolf, who I've known since high school. We were saved in the same church in Amityville, Long Island in the 1980s.
Gary has stomach cancer and is right now in the hospital with blood clots. I don't know if that has to do with the chemotherapy he is undergoing, but please pray for Gary Wolf. His dear, precious sister not long ago passed away from the same stomach cancer that Gary has.
So please pray for Gary Wolf. We are now back with my guest, William Bokastein, and we are talking about Finding My Vocation. We have an anonymous listener, and the anonymous listener says, is it the obligation of a Christian child to follow in the footsteps of his father, who has been running a business and providing a craft or service as a part of a family operation for generations without the child's help that could bring the end to a generations-long product, service, or craft?
And I was wondering if a parent could heap upon a child too much pressure to continue this family business, even if they have no desire in their heart to do so.
Wow, that's a great question. That's a tough situation. I would say right away, um, no, I don't think a child has an obligation to do that. As a mature adult, you must continue to honor your father and your mother.
The fifth commandment never goes away. You never outgrow it or mature from it. But it's interesting that when the Apostle Paul speaks to children, young children, in Ephesians chapter 6, he says, obey your parents.
But he's speaking to little children at that point, and older children do not have the obligation to obey. They must honor, they need not obey. So a young person in this situation would have the freedom to take up that calling or not.
I would want to encourage the young person to seriously consider it, maybe try something else for a little while. I've got friends who, for example, grew up on a generational farm, and the parents, I've learned this in a few different situations, the parents said, we would love you to consider taking over this farm, but we want you to work somewhere else for a couple of years just to see if, you know, if it's not your passion.
If you want to come back, we want you to do this. So there may be some wisdom in doing that. But the other thing to consider, which the latter part of the question gets at, is this sounds like the kind of business situation where a person running it would really have to be passionate about it.
And so to sort of pressure a young person to take on a business like this that they're not passionate about, perhaps, might not be profitable for anyone. And so maybe there's a support role that the family member could stay on.
Maybe there's a board role that the person could take on or something like that. But there are some jobs that you really do have to be passionate about to fulfill. Not all jobs require passion in the same way, but some do.
And a family business, huge commitment. Yeah, so I encourage, give reasons why this might be beneficial. But you need to respect the conscience, I would say, of the young person.
And anonymous, please, if you care to receive a free copy of this book, provide for me via email your full name. Obviously, that information won't be divulged on the air since you remain anonymous. And your mailing address, because you have also won a free copy of Finding My Vocation by William Bokastein.
And once again, this is a gift from our friends at Free Reform Publishing Association, rfpa .org. And it will also be shipped to you compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. So thank you, Anonymous, for the great question.
And I'd like you to take two minutes, Brother Bill, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds.
Of our listeners today about this subject. Well, thanks for that opportunity, Chris. When I was young, I didn't really, I wasn't thinking through these things. Just like everybody else, I knew that I had to work, I had to survive, I had certain responsibilities.
But I was not looking to the future. I wasn't even taking my present responsibilities very seriously. And I can tell you that taking on a biblical appreciation of vocation is really revolutionary. And so there's much to be gained by seeing yourself as stationed by God in a particular place, having a place to work for the Lord.
That's something that the Lord will give to you. But you also have responsibilities. So I want to encourage young people to think about their vocation as an exchange, something that you're bringing to some table somewhere in order, hopefully, to receive fair compensation and appreciation and opportunities to use your craft and your skills to God's glory.
But that means that you have to bring to that table, have something to offer, bring with you wisdom and character and skills. And I would especially emphasize character. There's going to be knowledge and skills that you can learn on the job, but right now is the time to be crafting your character.
And so I would encourage you to look at, for example, as we do in the book, the second table of the law, where God calls people to honor authority, just for example. And that's something you're going to learn, hopefully, in the home with your parents, but you're going to take that into your whole life, respecting those who are in authority or not.
And if you don't, you won't receive the blessings that God has for you. So cultivate character, trust the Lord to do the right thing by you, even though you don't know where the future is going. The Lord does.
He'll take good care of you, and you can rest in His care no matter where He brings you. Do your.
Responsibility and leave the rest to the Lord. Amen. And I want to repeat the website of the church pastored by William Bocastine. It is reformedifc .com. That's Emanuel Fellowship Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The website for the church where my co-host today, Brandon Vanderford, is a member, that website is hopebaptistchurch .info. Hopebaptistchurch .info. And that's in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Brandon, do you have your business website.
That you care to share? Well, sure. The business website is redwoodnc .com. That's like the tree, R-E-D-W-O-O-D-N-C, short for NorthCarolina .com. Well, I want to thank everybody who listened,.
And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.