Does Your Job Matter to God? | Theocast

Hi, this is Jimmy. Is God more pleased with missionaries and pastors than he is with stay -at -home moms and custodians?

What does it even mean to be faithful and mature in our everyday Christian life?

Today on the podcast, John and I discuss maturity and vocation and the everydayness that we all experience in our

Christian life. We kind of go after this over -spiritualization and radical movement and how it's affected our thinking of our jobs and our vocations.

In the members portion of the podcast, we discuss a hot topic, political spheres, and what does it mean for Christians to be involved in policy change and politics in general?

We hope this conversation is helpful for you. It certainly was for us. Thanks for listening and we'll see you there.

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Welcome to TheoCast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself,

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church here in Willmar, Minnesota. Our other co -host,

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, is enjoying fun in the sun on vacation, and so he's unable to be with us today.

But we wish him and his family well as they get some much -needed rest and recuperation.

So John, since it's only you and I, we get to have a little bit more fun. You know, Justin is normally the one that keeps us mature.

He does. Yeah. So he's not here today. So let's just, we can let our hair down a little bit. But John, tell me, give the people what they want.

What is your pro? What is your con for the day? Yeah. Well, before I do, I just want to say thank you.

We have to take a break in the summers where our schedules are so weird. So we throw in some of our favorite old episodes, and you've all been so kind to let us do that.

Thank you for the break. We're actually going to be gathering in about 10 days or two weeks,

I guess. Two weeks, yeah. Yeah, we're going to be all in Tennessee, and we're recording a new session. We're going to keep that quiet, but it'll be fun.

Yeah. Stay tuned for that. A new education series. So my pro -con. All right. This one's quite controversial.

I am, I am con. I am against Chipotle. I am not a fan of Chipotle.

I know. Whoa. I know. And I was reminded of it last night when I went to a new restaurant here in Spring Hill, and it's just a copycat of Chipotle.

And they take my tortilla shell, and they shove it full of the most inexpensive thing they can sell, which is rice and beans.

It's like 90 % rice and beans. And then they put like three slices of steak in there.

Yeah. And then they try and roll this thing, and it just explodes all over the place. I was like, you don't put so much rice and beans in there.

It wouldn't happen. But it's just, it's not Mexican food. It's not. And so I am anti -Chipotle.

And on top of that, what restaurant has been in the news more than Chipotle for people getting food poisoning?

Let's just be real about it. Yeah. You're right. You're not lying. And their salsa is, their salsa is a joke.

It's like, that's not salsa. That's like ground up tomatoes. That's disgusting. Quick question. Quick clarifying question.

So are you, are you anti or con like all Chipotle -like restaurants?

So we don't have, we don't have Chipotle in our town, but we do have Qdoba. I don't like Qdoba either. Okay. I don't,

I like Qdoba more than I like Chipotle. Yeah, I would agree. But I don't like either.

I don't, I don't go to, like when someone's like, hey, do you want to go to Qdoba? I was like, no, not really. I don't want to have a stomachache later.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It is a lot of food. Yes, it is. It's a lot of food. And it just annoys me that they just shove it packed full of beans and rice.

And I was like, what? That's not what I bought. I am for though, legitimate, real carne asada tacos.

And I mean, it is seasoned right. And the only thing on top of the taco is cilantro and onions.

That's right. And lime. And lime. You need lime. You have a lime, got a squirt on there. So, you know, the, that local taco shop where they don't have anything in English and no one speaks

English, that's where I'm going to support because they actually provide seasoned flavored food.

And it's majority of it is meat and the prices are right. So that's just, you know, there's my pro con for that.

I hear you. I mean, I don't mind. You have one of those locally in your town. I ate there.

With like the burrito the size of your head? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have like a good local taco shop. We have many good local taco shops.

Yeah. I remember when I remember one of your elders not only ate his burrito, but he also finished yours.

I couldn't do it. So he's also what? 6 '10". So there's a lot of... 6 '9". Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of body that needs calories there. That's right. Yeah. I agree with you.

Chipotle is fine. It's okay. I do like Qdoba better. And the reason being that queso is not an added fee.

Right. You can just get queso for free. And their queso is actually good. Yeah. Their queso is good. I don't like Chipotle's queso.

And Chipotle, I would say, is just... The last time I was in one, it was so messy.

Everything was a mess. Like the whole line was a mess. So I hear you. Anyways, I don't want to badmouth the workers at Chipotle.

I love you. I'm thankful that you work there. I just don't prefer your food. Yeah, that's right.

But we know that they faithfully serve in their vocations and callings.

They do vocation. There you go. There's your transition. Jimmy, what are we talking about today? Yeah. So that's exactly what we're talking about today.

Something that actually our church has been doing is we've been walking through the Lord's prayer and just looking at the different petitions that Christ has given us to ask of the

Lord. And this past week in our church, we looked at give us this day our daily bread.

And one of the things that I posed to our church is the question, have you ever stopped to consider how it is that God answers that petition?

That God answers that request, give us this day our daily bread? Well, that opened up a whole conversation about the idea, the doctrine of vocation and what it is that we do on our daily basis.

Because here's the thing, when we consume Christian podcasts, we read books, we listen to sermons, we do all of these things that are quote unquote spiritual.

But the fact of the matter is this, that every single day, the majority of our time is spent doing very mundane, very everyday things.

And what happens is we can have this dichotomy, which we will begin to deconstruct here in a moment.

We can begin to have this dichotomy where this is when I do my spiritual thing, listening to Theocast on the way to work.

And then when I get to work, this is when I do my everyday thing and I fill out reports or I am a teacher or a doctor or whatever it is that you may do.

And so what we want to talk about today is kind of the everydayness of the Christian life, specifically in regards to vocation and how we tend to under -spiritualize or over -spiritualize some of these things.

So, John, why don't you help fill that out a little bit more? Yeah, absolutely. This is, you know,

I've worked, I've only been a pastor, a full -time pastor for the last, I want to say 10, 12 years.

Before that, I was bivocational. And well, right now, technically, I'm still bivocational. Not a full, like my full salary doesn't come yet.

But I worked in the secular world for the majority of my life. I worked for Apple and had a career for Apple.

And before that, I worked for Stanford Hospital. So the majority of my Christian life and my adult life was not as a full -time pastor.

And I can remember thinking, oh, I can't wait till all I do is Christian work. And I just, and all

I do is, is read, you know, read scripture and study and shepherd and care for. And I had in my mind that that was the real, where the real work of the

Christian life is done. Where God really uses people is in those who have the vocation of ministry.

And Luther really came after this during the Protestant Reformation because there were people who thought, man, if I could just be a monk or if I could, you know, be a priest, then that's where God really comes in and uses and transforms the world and transforms lives.

And he completely flipped it on its head and began to help people understand that God is not just using one vocation to accomplish his mission.

And I would say, you know, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Jimmy, but I would say the majority of the world does have this sense of the pastors do the work of the ministry and everyone else is, it's just not necessary for the advancement of the kingdom.

Those are, that's how we see it in those two, into those two lights. Yeah. I mean, again, referencing what

I said earlier, we, we often create this false dichotomy and now that, that isn't to say that we don't believe that pastors and missionaries and those who are in full -time or we should say, you know, paid vocational ministry are unimportant and that there's no distinction because certainly the work that, that you and I do as pastors, that Justin does as a pastor and the missionaries that we know, it's valid.

It's important. It's very important. And not everyone is called to be a pastor. Something I like to say is we, we have given our lives to this work, right?

We have given our lives to the studying of scripture and the proclamation of the gospel to sinners, and so there is a uniqueness there.

However, I think when we misunderstand the doctrine of vocation, what we begin to do is we almost take this, this spiritual hierarchy sense where the work of the pastor, the work of the pastor almost becomes almost like Roman Catholic, where it's like, we are the

Pope or we are the Cardinals and everyone else is these mere underlings that they just, they work to serve us in the church, so to speak, because we, you know, we bring them the

Bible each and every week. And so what we want to do, I think, is we want to encourage the everyday listener.

Perhaps you listening right now, you don't work in the ministry. You are an accountant.

Most likely. Yeah, most likely you're an accountant or you breed dogs or you are a farmer or whatever it is that it may be that you do.

And so what we want to do is encourage you in your vocation in terms of how you think of it and how you process it.

And so, John, what would you say to the person? I'm going to throw this question out to you.

What would you say to the person perhaps as, because I've had this conversation before, you're sitting in your pastoral counseling office and this person comes to you and they say, you know,

Pastor John, I just, I just don't feel very spiritual in what I do every single day.

How would you encourage that person? Yeah. And those are conversations I have had and will have.

Yes, it can seem like, you know, when I worked retail or I worked in a hospital, it just didn't seem like anything

I was doing was selling phones and selling computers and I wasn't really impacting anybody's life. And, you know,

I was just advancing a technology company. So I understand those feelings. I can, and it feels like day in and day out,

I'm not impacting the world. I'm not doing anything for Christ. I didn't share the gospel that day.

I didn't give money away that day. I didn't even make enough money to give money away. And the encouragement is that we have created the system that what

I do on Sunday matters for God and what I do on Monday through Saturday doesn't. What I do on Sunday advances the kingdom and what

I do on Monday doesn't. And we've created two worlds. We've created the spiritual world and the unspiritual world.

Well, what we're doing when we do this is that we are disconnecting how

God works in this economy, in the world. Two of the commands that we've been given, one is to love our neighbor.

And the purpose of loving our neighbor, as Jesus says, is that so the world will know that I have come. This unrealistic affection that we can show is a form of demonstrating the gospel for people.

Now, I don't think love is the gospel, so don't hear me say that. But the second thing that Paul says is that whatever our hand finds to do, we do it for the glory of God because it's worthy of God's praise.

But there's a part of vocation that we don't see, and that is what

God is accomplishing through this meaningless task in our mind, this meaningless task. We don't see what

God's accomplishing. So the first thing I will tell you is that your neighbor to whom you are to love is your coworker, is your customer.

And if you serve them well, and you serve them right, and you do right by them, and you do for God's praise and God's glory, then that is just as important and is advancing the kingdom as it is of the sermon that's being preached on Sunday.

And I know that sounds like, wait, wait, wait, there's no way me selling, me mowing the lawn, me changing a diaper is the same as the pastor preaching the gospel, but it is.

According to Scripture, it actually is. I think this comes up more frequently than we like to think, that often what you can hear from churches, what you can hear from the pulpit, is this idea that the workplace is your mission field.

And to some degree, great. I appreciate the sentiment.

But herein lies the rub that your workplace cannot be your mission field if you are a bad employee.

I'm just going to say that flat out. If you cut corners or procrastinate or create crisis for people at work because you're too busy evangelizing at the water cooler,

I just don't think that that works, homie. I don't think that that's how God has designed it to be.

Now, again, I'm being a little bit dramatic here. So, John, you're bivocational.

I, myself, am bivocational. And every day, Monday through Friday, I am faced with 20 plus students for eight hours a day sitting in front of me, and they depend on me to deliver curriculum, and their parents depend on me.

In fact, their parents pay a good amount of money for their kids to sit in front of me and learn from me.

Now, what if every day I just said, look, I'm bivocational, and you guys are here to learn, but I really have to do some things, and so I'm just going to flip on a movie, and you guys, you'll figure it out.

I don't understand how that's either honoring to the Lord or honoring to the people that are sitting in front of me. No, rather,

I have to understand that, yes, I have some unique challenges being bivocational, but I think part of me being, quote unquote, spiritual is coming to school, showing up on time, being a respectable employee, honoring my authority that I work under, honoring the coworkers that I work alongside with, letting my yes be yes and my no be no, and teaching to the glory of God and the good of my students.

The same could be for if you're a doctor. Now, especially if you're a doctor, we don't want you to cut corners.

Sometimes, if I'm dying, I want to know some treatments. Yes, please share the gospel with me, but also point me to some medications that I could use that could take away this pain.

I want us to be so careful that we don't create this false dichotomy that even at work, we can come in and say,

I'm going to do a really spiritual thing by talking to my coworker about my church service, which there's nothing wrong with that.

But when you're doing it at the expense of actually doing your job, you're actually, I think, undermining what we're trying to talk about here, which is the doctrine of vocation.

That when you go to work, do your job well. Fill out those reports and fill them out correctly the first time rather than creating crisis for everybody around you to pick up.

Some people think about choosing their careers, and when someone chooses to go into ministry, it seems like this is such a big deal.

It's like, oh, I'm going to go into ministry. But choosing a career can sound less important, and God's not really involved in it.

And what Luther was arguing for is that, no, people can be called a cobbler. They can be called to shoe horses, to be a printer, to be a restaurant owner, where God is calling them into that.

This is their purpose. This is what they should be doing because this is how God's going to use them to advance

His kingdom. The advancement of the kingdom comes through Christians who obey God, who love

God, who do it for His glory and love their neighbor. And that's how God uses us to advance

His kingdom, which I know it sounds crazy that we think, oh, no, the advancement of the kingdom only happens when the gospel is being preached.

But there are so many things that need to occur in order for that to take place. For example, obviously,

John and I, we receive some monetary funding from our churches in order to do the work of the ministry.

Now, what would happen if nobody in our church faithfully woke up each morning and went to their jobs and brought home finances and they gave those to the church?

I mean, it would be really difficult on us. It would be really difficult on our families. I have very specific people in mind at our church that often they struggle with what it is they do.

Is it important? How does me raising this crop or how does me doing this job or selling this product, what does this have to do with the ever beautiful doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone?

And I would say, well, actually, it has a lot to do because your job enables you to meet people.

It enables food to be grown. It enables products to be sold that help us all live our everyday lives, and so it helps fund ministries.

It helps fund people. It helps fund pastors and missionaries. And so, again,

I think often we can over -spiritualize and almost under -spiritualize at the same time what it is that we do on an everyday basis.

That's right. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. One of the things that we forget is that we don't live in the church building.

The worship of God, we've been programmed to think that the worship of God only happens on Sunday morning at 10 a .m.

when the worship pastor, which is a weird title to me, worship pastor strums his first string.

It's like now we're worshiping. All pastors are worship pastors, by the way. Exactly.

Well, even the title. And the other one that's funny to me is executive pastor. I was like, no, I don't know about that.

That's a weird one. That's a weird one. To all the executive pastors who are listening, I'm not saying it's unbiblical. It's just all biblical.

Yeah, do your job well. That's all we're saying. Exactly. But worship happens when we are living in the reality of our justification.

So when we think about we have been set free from the bondage of sin, that God loves us as he loves his son, we are adopted, we have all the benefits of Christ.

Now we go and live. We live in light of that. We love, we eat, we drink, we sleep, we work, knowing that we are a part of God's great family and a part of God's great mission.

And the way in which God is accomplishing this mission is how I love my kids, it's how I love my neighbors, it's how well

I do my job, because God is in me, transforming me, using me for the advancement of his kingdom.

This is why, I said this last night in our men's Bible study. Can God just take home to heaven individuals whom he loves?

Yep, because he has. On a fiery chariot, boom, gone into heaven. But God, in his wisdom, has decided that he's leaving his children here for the purpose of a mission, and that mission is to advance his kingdom and that the lost sheep of the world would be found.

Well, guess what? If we're going to have to be a part of that mission, we're going to need jobs because we're going to need to provide for our families.

And it's not like, well, I need to provide for my family, so I'm going to go do that. No. Even in accomplishing your job, if it's selling laundry detergent, if it's selling cars, you are a part of God's advancement of his kingdom.

And every person you come in contact with, that for God's glory and for their benefit and for their love and demonstrating love, you do that job and you do it well, and you do it out of love and concern.

And if you're in a vocation where there's dishonesty happening, like you're lying or you're stealing, well, that's going to be a hard job to do for the glory of God.

Leave that job. That is not what God wants you to do. I don't care how much money you're making. If you're lying to make money and you know it's a lie, well, then change jobs.

I mean, that's pretty obvious. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

I think particularly this is where I want to encourage young moms, because I think if there's any demographic that perhaps is listening to us that probably struggle the most on a day -to -day basis, it's with just monotony and frustrations.

It's young moms. They have two, three, four -year -olds at home that it is a thankless job.

They're waking up, they're changing diapers, they're giving meals that often get thrown on the floor or are not thankfully received.

There's a lot of criticism and hardly any thanking. Yeah, that's exactly right.

It's like young moms in pastoral ministry, right? That was a joke.

That was a joke, people. Calm down, calm down. I mean, just to encourage the young moms that when you discipline your child for the thousandth time, or when you make chicken nuggets or macaroni and cheese, or you try to give them healthy meals and it's not gratefully received,

I think that you can take comfort and rest in the fact that you are doing that which

God has given you to do. That a lot of times young moms, I will hear young moms and they'll be frustrated because they have so little time to read their

Bibles. They have so little time to spend extended minutes and hours in prayer because they're just constantly being yelled at and pulled at and they're incessantly disciplining and different things like that.

I just want to say to them, take good courage and faith and rest that the

Lord Jesus Christ understands your situation. He very much gets it.

I'll never forget when we had our first child and man, your first kid, it just kind of rocks your world, doesn't it?

We don't even remember. What did we do? What did we do at night when we didn't have kids? I don't even know. My wife and I, we joke about that all the time.

Will Smith, he's funny. He was talking about buying, I think it was like a microwave, and he pulls out the manual and it's like the size of an encyclopedia on how to use this microwave.

He goes, and then they send you home with a human being. They're like, here you go. No instructions included.

That's right. Exactly. Man, your first kid, it rocks you. I just remember feeling so tired and quote unquote spiritually lethargic and I was talking to another pastor.

He just put his hands on my shoulders. He says, Jimmy, you don't think that the Lord Jesus Christ understands that? You don't think that he gets it?

Oftentimes we think, and I'm talking to you young moms or young parents, that oftentimes we think that it's like God has given us this.

He's graciously given us these children and he's like, hey, I gave you a kid because I thought you could handle it.

That's right. I gave you a kid because I thought you would just kind of step up your spiritual game. Well, at the end of the day,

I think God is far more merciful than that. That God is like, hey, I gave you a kid and boy, do I know that it's tough.

That's right. It is hard. That's why I made him cute so you wouldn't kill him. It is so difficult.

I just want to encourage the young moms that Luther once said that, and I'm paraphrasing here, that often the mom that is changing diapers is far more spiritual than the monk who is babbling psalms for hours on end in the monastery.

When you change diapers and you help your kids to be nourished and to be fed and to be disciplined, you're doing the

Lord's work in your home. That's right. That's okay. Take rest and comfort and joy and peace and faith in that.

This is what God has provided for you to do in this time of your life. Praise be to his name.

The pressure that most people feel has come from the revivalism, the missions movement, which the revivalist movement and the missions movement did produce some good.

Yeah, absolutely. Some great things. But it also created some really bad influences on Christianity.

I would even say the new radical movement where there are the lazy Christians who aren't taking their faith serious, and then there are the

Christians who are doing the radical opposite of the lazy Christians, and they are taking their faith serious.

That's right. They're selling their homes, and they're moving to Ecuador, and they are evangelizing, and they're living on nothing because it's more important that the gospel be advanced and live on nothing than it is to change a diaper.

I've told this story before. There was a couple in Haiti, and they had just read

Radical, and they got rid of all their jobs. In six months, they were living in Haiti, and they had a little nine -month -old who was starting to crawl, and she's always carrying him around.

She felt guilty that she wanted to buy this $40 mat because in Haiti, everything is just filthy.

She wanted just so her kid could have somewhere to play on the ground and not get dirty. She felt guilty that she could use that $40 for something else, which

I immediately opened up my wallet and handed her a $50 bill, and I said, please go buy that. But there was this pressure on her that it was an unspiritual thing to take care of her daughter.

I mean, come on, let's be frank. It wasn't like she was wanting to buy some gold toys for her kid to play with.

It's not unrealistic to take care of your kid in that way so that they're not filthy at the end of the day. Moms feel this pressure that what they do doesn't matter.

Changing a poopy diaper, making mac and cheese doesn't do anything for the kingdom of God. Then they look at the person who's helping the homeless who has a blog, and they're changing the world through their blog.

They have a YouTube channel, or they've written these books. I've had this conversation with my wife where there's this pressure to be not just a mom anymore.

You need to be side hustling. You've got to have your own business. You've got to have your own Etsy page. Then that will be extra money that you can be the

Proverbs 31 woman who's bringing in this extra cash to help the homeless. Or, hey, if you've got three kids and you're not adopting all these kids who don't have parents, then you're not doing your part.

It's like, whoa, whoa, stop. Just stop. Nowhere in Scripture do you see the apostle

Paul calling the church to live that kind of life. He calls us to this ordinary.

I love Michael Horton's book, Ordinary, because how does God advance his kingdom? It's through ordinary people doing ordinary things for the glory of God, loving and caring for each other, where you are supporting those children.

You are influencing them. You are forming and shaping them every single day.

That mundane job is absolutely important because it's what God has called you to, and you don't know what

God's going to use that person for, but you do know that God is in charge, and this is where God has you, and you can take full comfort in knowing this is where God has me right now, and I'm going to do my job, and I'm going to love him and love

God. Yeah, that's right. Actually, I think in a way, in kind of a twisted way, when we have this mindset that everybody must be out there on the street corner evangelizing, we actually undermine gospel ministry.

I think we can undermine gospel ministry because in a way, it's kind of like looking at the pastors and the pioneer ministries or pioneer missionaries who do give their lives to these things, and it's saying, well, we can all do that, and so we don't really need to pay you to do that because we can all just do it, right?

I think in a twisted way, we can undermine. We have a guy in our church who is a pioneer missionary.

He is doing some very difficult work, and I want to be so careful to just kind of say, well, we're all doing our thing, and your thing isn't that important, and we've all got our own important ministries, and to some degree, that is true, but man,

I want to look at him and just say, man, you're doing a very difficult, hard work, and we love you, and we support you, and we realize that God has uniquely gifted you to do this work, and so we as a church want to come around you and support you in that way.

So I have a question for you, John, because we could be blowing up somebody's world right now.

I hope so, setting them free. That's right, and so I can hear the person kind of sitting across the table from us right now, and they're asking this question.

Okay, what in the world, then, does it mean to be a mature

Christian, right? Because here's the thing. We exist in our churches, right?

We exist as churches. I think all three of us have very similar kind of sayings.

I think you say where everyone is an equal need of grace. Justin says imperfect people, perfect Savior.

We say ordinary people, extraordinary grace. We have all these things and all these sayings, but at the end of the day, the mission of our church is very, very, very, very simple, and that's to proclaim the gospel to sinners and help them mature and grow in their faith.

Now, it's that middle word right there where I can hear somebody say, okay, well, then what does that mean?

What does it look like for me to be a member of Grace Reformed Church, or Christ Community Church, or Covenant Baptist Church, or insert your church name here, and be a mature

Christian? Because you guys are throwing out all these categories right now, and now I'm just confused.

So, John, what does it look like? What does it look like to be a mature? What would you tell somebody at Grace Reformed Church? Hey, I want to be a mature

Christian. How do I do that? Well, I'd say that's a great desire. That's wonderful. Paul rebukes some of the church for being babies in the word, milk of the word.

We often think maturity, I know where you're going with this, we often think maturity has to do with action. Mature Christians are the ones who are on the front line, who are the ones holding up the pickets, and they're evangelizing, and they're running

Bible studies. I just don't see Paul describing maturity in that way. Now, he does say that the mature women of the church should mentor and love and care for the younger women.

The same thing with the men. In the faith, I think that is. Just because you have gray hair doesn't mean you're wise.

I know a lot of people with gray hair, and I was like, man, you don't know anything. When it comes to the

Bible, you've been a Christian your whole life, you don't know anything. Paul's the one rebuking you. Maturity, I think, has to do with what he's going after is that the person who has been seasoned in their faith and where they are resting.

I want to go to where Paul says in 2 Corinthians, where he says, in my weakness, he's talking about the thorn in the flesh.

He says, when I'm going through suffering, persecution. He even says the word calamity, which the way

I describe calamity is a deer jumps in front of my car and totals my car. It wasn't my fault.

It wasn't the deer's fault. It's just a bad thing that happened. He says, in all of these, what's being exposed is my weakness.

When I am weak, therefore, I am strong. What does he say? Jesus tells me that God's grace is sufficient to get me through.

A mature person understands that they live in the grace of God and that they are very weak.

Without the grace of God, they cannot accomplish anything at all. They can't accomplish being a parent.

They can't accomplish being an employee. They can't accomplish being a citizen of their country. Without the grace of God.

I think mature Christians live every single day in the weakness of their flesh, in the weakness of their spirituality, trusting in Christ.

Where we mature is, is a greater and greater and greater trust in the mercy of God to get us through our everyday lives.

Immaturity, what I see, is people who equate their spirituality and their maturity on their personal actions.

If I'm doing this, I'm a good person. If I'm reading, if I'm evangelizing, if I'm giving, if I'm praying, all of these actions equate maturity.

Well, Paul talks about the attitude of the mature. The attitude of the mature are patient, kind, merciful, long -suffering, giving.

That's how he describes a mature Christian. We describe mature Christians as the ones who are on the front line radically doing something.

And I just don't see that. That's right. Again, I think we create a category that doesn't exist when we say a true mature

Christian is the one who voraciously works through their Bible reading plan and systematically has a guided prayer life.

Which, hear us when we say, I know we go at this all the time and it makes people so uncomfortable.

I still see it. I still see it on Twitter, like people be hating. But that's fine. Keep hating. Haters gonna hate.

It's blocking out the haters. But hear us when we say that reading the

Bible is a good thing. And certainly prayer is a great and wonderful thing.

But when somebody comes to Christ Community Church and they say, hey, we want to be a member. What is it like to be a mature member at this church?

I think, man, what I would tell them is just, hey, we would love for you to trust

Christ, to walk in repentance over your sin, to faithfully love and serve this body, and to live out your everyday life and your vocation and responsibilities for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor.

Just really simple things. I'm not going to hand you a Bible reading plan and a prayer list because I don't want to add things to you.

What I want you to see is, hey, it's our job as a church to point you to Christ and to confront you in your sin and to help you to walk in repentance and to come around you as a body.

It's your responsibility as a member of this church to live out your everyday responsibilities and do your job and be faithful in those things.

I think often maturity, we're going to use this word again and again, I think often maturity in the

Christian life looks so ordinary. It looks so ordinary. As you said, you love those around you.

You take care of your family. You serve the body. You participate in the life of the church through word and sacrament, if you will.

You go to work, and you don't cut corners, and you honor your boss, and you exist for the good of your company.

It's okay to be very normal and average and ordinary because that's maturity. This just goes back to Ephesians 4.

He says, When the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love. You know what's interesting in that context?

He says there are all these body members, and then there are gifts for the church.

These are the teachers, preachers, evangelists. He says God uses these to instruct, build up the church.

You have people who have been gifted in the word. They come in, and they administer grace to these people, and then those who are part of the body, they then use their gifts.

We've been all gifted with grace and mercy and kindness and benevolence. There are people in our church who are gifted with evangelism, but when we're all using it, the mature

Christian understands my role is to love and care for my congregation. When I play my role as the hand, the foot, the eye, the mouth, the ear, whatever it is

God has me doing, I am advancing His kingdom. Unfortunately, we have just created this world that's individualized, where we individualize our role as a

Christian, that mature Christians are these radical Christians who have this self -motivation. There are all kinds of things that are going on there.

I look at Paul in the New Testament, and it seems like he just flattens everything out.

He says, not the pastor, not the radical missionary.

He says when the body functions properly, that's when the work of God is accomplished. It's incredible.

It's not on the weight of... Jimmy and I don't feel the pressure that our churches will succeed if we succeed.

We understand our church will succeed as Christ comes in and He empowers every single body member to do their part.

Then our church will succeed. I couldn't live with that pressure. It's too much. Certainly, I see a distinction in roles.

Allow John and I and our elders to come to you week in and week out on the

Lord's Day and point you to the fact that you are a great sinner, but you have a great Savior. Now go live in light of that reality as you parent and as you work and as you drive and as you provide.

It is our job as pastors and elders of Christ's church to point you to the truth of the gospel, to remind you of God's law and His perfection, that you are indeed a great sinner and there is nothing that you could absolutely do to merit

His love or His favor. Yet, this is why Christ has come, that Christ has lived, Christ has died, and Christ will come again.

He has done so on your behalf. It is our job to point you to that reality. It is your responsibility, and I'm using that term very, very loosely.

It is your responsibility to trust that and live in light of that, to live status forward.

On a weekly basis, God is so good and so gracious and kind, and I get a weekly reminder of that reality.

It's my turn to throw something at you and we'll use it in the members podcast. One of the things that's coming up right now is the

Christians' involvement in government and the transformation of government and in changing government.

We have this, unfortunately in America, and I know we have worldwide listeners, so some people who listen to other countries may not understand what

I'm about to say. Maybe they will, but we have set it up to where a good American is a good

Christian and a good Christian is a good American. We have mixed those two, and now the church is in a weird spot because we're mixing those two.

We have churches who are underneath. There's a lot of bickering and a lot of fighting that's going on. It's almost as if it's the responsibility of the

Christian to save, in our context, to save America. God's not blessing

America because the church isn't doing its job. Now the radical good

Christians are the ones who are moving in this direction. I think in the members podcast it would be good for us to talk about the involvement of government and vocation.

Can Christians, should Christians be involved in politics? What does that look like as it relates to our vocation?

Something like William Wilberforce, who was involved in those things and was a Christian. We'll save that for the members podcast.

I like it. I like where we're going. Thank you for listening. We certainly hope that this podcast has brought you rest and pointed you to the fact that Christ is sufficient even in your day -to -day, every day, vocational life.

What you do matters. It really does. It very much matters. I want to leave you with this small little illustration.

Maybe we can link the video. We have an Ask Theocast video. It's either coming out or will be out by the time this podcast is edited and released, where I answer this question in a five -minute video of what does it look like to be a faithful and mature

Christian. In there, I share an illustration. Every day when our family sits down for a meal, our son, our middle son,

Owen, who loves farming, he will remind us as we eat meat or we eat vegetables or we eat bread that these things were grown and raised by farmers.

He just loves farms and farming. I will say, that's absolutely right, buddy.

These things were grown by farmers. In that moment, my five -year -old understands the doctrine of vocation because he understands that we have a farmer in our church.

Our farmer, he goes to work every day and he raises crops and he raises pigs.

His job is so important. Why? Because he feeds people. He creates and he helps create the whole industry because he's got to sell those hogs and he has to sell those crops and people have to transport it and it has to go to the store and those people need to sell it and then

I have to go to the store and buy it. It ends up on our table. When we pray, and I'm going back to the beginning of this podcast, how does

God answer the prayer? Give us this day our daily bread? He answers it through you. He answers it through fellow sinners who do their jobs and their vocations to the glory of God and the good of their neighbor.

When you go to work tomorrow or when you go to work today, not sure when you're going to be listening, just remember that.

Keep that in mind that when you fill out that report or when you discipline your kid, God is using that, as John said, for the advancement of the gospel and the good of those around you.

We hope that this podcast was helpful for you. We'd ask that you would go and leave us a good review, please, on wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

That certainly helps us a lot. We read them, too. Yeah, we do. We read them. It's so encouraging for us to read how

God is using this ministry and our vocations in this ministry to help people to find rest in Christ.

We're going to head over into our members podcast right now. If you want more information about what that is, you can log on to theocast .org

and look at our Total Access membership where you can come into a little bit more resources and some fun things that we have just for members only.

Thank you for listening. We certainly hope that it helps you find rest in Christ and we look forward to bringing you more podcasts and resources like this in the future.