Does Your Job Matter to God? | Theocast

The Everydayness of Christian Life and the Doctrine of Vocation

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.

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 do, 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, they, 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 the 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, 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. Yeah, you're right. You're, you're not lying. And their salsa is, is their salsa is a joke. It's like, that's not salsa. That's like ground up tomatoes. That's disgusting.

It's a 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. Yeah. I don't like Qdoba either.

Okay. I don't, I like Qdoba more than I like Chipotle. Yeah. But I don't like either. I don't, I don't go to like when someone's like, Hey, 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 pack 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. You 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.

Yeah, I hear you. I mean, I don't mind.

You have one of those locally in your, in your town. I ate there with the, 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, but yeah, I, I, I agree with you. Chipotle is, is fine. It's okay. I do like Qdoba better. And the reason being that queso is not an added fee.

Queso, you can just get queso for free. And their queso is actually good. Yeah, their queso is good. I don't like, 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, not to, I don't want to bet, you know, bad mouth 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, uh, they faithfully serve in their, in their vocations and calling. They do vocation. There you go. There's your transition. Jimmy, what are we talking about today?

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 pose 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, here's the thing.

When we, 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 Theocasts 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 everyday-ness 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?

God Uses Ordinary Work to Provide Daily Bread

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 shepherding 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 as 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, Jamie, 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.

I mean, again, referencing what I said earlier, we often create this false dichotomy. And now 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 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 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 spiritual hierarchy sense where 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 work to serve us in the church, so to speak, because 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, 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, 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 don't feel very spiritual in what I do every single day.

How would you encourage that person?

Faithful Work Is Spiritual Service

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 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 that the world will know that I have come. Like 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 don't hear me say. Let the listener understand. Right. 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 is 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 the diaper is the same as the pastor preaching the gospel. But it is. According to scripture, it actually is.

Yeah. So 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 mean, I appreciate the sentiment. But here in lies the rub that your workplace cannot be your mission field if you are a bad employee. That's right. I'm just going to say that flat out. Like 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.

Like I don't think that that's how God has designed it to be. That's right. Now, again, I'm being a little bit dramatic here. So John, you're bivocational. I myself, I 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.

Like that, I don't understand how that's either honoring to the Lord or honoring to the people that are sitting in front of me. 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.

That's right. Yeah, and 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. No. You know, sometimes I don't, like if I'm dying, right, I want to know some treatments, you know.

Yes, please share the gospel with me, but also point me to some medications that I could use that could take away this pain, you know, so 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 doctrinal vocation, that when you go to work, do your job well.

That's right. You know, do your job, like fill out those reports and fill them out correctly the first time, you know, rather than creating crisis for everybody around you to pick up, so to speak.

Right, and even, you know, some people think about choosing their careers and it's just, you know, 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. Like 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's so many things that need to occur in order for that to take place. So, I mean, for example, you know, 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, right? And so it's like, I have very specific people in mind at our church that often they struggle with what it is they do. Is it important? You know, how does me, you know, raising this crop or how does me, you know, doing this job or selling this product, what does this have to do with, you know, 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.

Maturity Looks Ordinary, Not Radical

I couldn't agree with you more. One of the things that we forget is that we don't live in the church building. This is, you know, 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, I don't know. 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. You can do that by joining our Total Access membership.

That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years. Or simply by donating to our ministry. And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Young Moms, Monotony, and the Pressure to Be “Radical”

Yeah. And so 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.

So I just want to encourage you. There's a lot of criticism and hardly any thanking.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. It's like young moms in pastoral ministry, right? So that was a joke. That was a joke, people. Calm down. Calm down. So, 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's right. 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 and I just want to say to them, like, hey, take good courage and faith and rest that the Lord Jesus Christ understands your situation.

He very much gets it. You know, 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? It's just like, 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 like 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 and he goes, and then they send you home with a human being and they're like, here you go.

Yeah. No instructions included.

That's right, exactly. Man, your first kid, it rocks you. And I just remember feeling so tired and quote unquote spiritually lethargic and I was talking to another pastor and he just put his hands on my shoulders.

He says, Jimmy, you don't think that the Lord Jesus Christ understands that? Like you don't think that he gets it? Like oftentimes we think, and I'm just, 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. Like it is hard. And that's why I made him cute. So you wouldn't kill him. Right. You know, so it is so difficult. And so I just want to encourage the young moms that, you know, 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.

That when you change diapers and you help your kids to be nourished and to be fed and to be disciplined, like you're doing the Lord's work in your home and that's okay and take rest and comfort and joy and peace and faith and that this is what God has provided for you to do in this time of your life and praise be to his name.

The Pressure of Revivalism and the Radical Movement

Well, the pressure that most people feel, it has come from the revivalism, the missions movement, which the revivalist movement and the missions movement did produce some good. I mean, there is definitely some good, but it also created some really bad influences on Christianity.

And 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 and 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.

And 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. And in six months, they were living in Haiti and they had a little nine-month-old who's starting to crawl and she's always carrying them around.

And she felt guilty that she wanted to buy this $40 mat because in Haiti, everything is just filthy. And she wanted just so her kid could have somewhere to play on the ground and not get dirty. And 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. And 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.

I mean, 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. And 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, where 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. And 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 got to have your own business.

You got to have your own Etsy page. And 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 too.

And 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.

And 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.

The Body of Christ, Ephesians 4, and the Limits of Radical Individualism

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and 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?

And so I think in a twisted way, we can undermine, like we have a guy in our church who is, he's 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. You know, 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. You know, we say ordinary people, extraordinary grace. You know, 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?

Christian Maturity Is Weakness Resting in Grace

Well, I'd say that's a great desire. You know, that's wonderful. Paul rebukes some of the church for being babies in the word, milk of the word. And 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. Same thing with the men in the faith. I think that 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, and 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, and when I am weak, therefore, I am strong. And what does he say?