Made for Monday | Called to Give our Best

all right well good morning my name is grant i want to start off on a little bit of a serious note today i know jesus
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said in john chapter 16 in this in this world you will have trouble and sorrow but take heart i've overcome
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the world um i think those words are really important for us in many different phases of our life but we are
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continually reminded that we live in a fallen broken world we all are reminded that on a regular
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basis that we live in a fallen broken world and and if you're new to church you're new to the reading the bible i want to make sure you understand what i
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mean by that like the premise of scripture is built on the fact that this is not the perfect world that god
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created that it is broken and the reason it's broken is because of of the sin nature inside of each and every one of
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us that causes the separation between us and god and because of that sin separation
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that there is brokenness in the world and we are reminded that on a regular basis maybe in your own
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personal life you might be going through something right now where you are just being reminded of the brokenness of the world we live in
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and then sometimes we understand or see that brokenness all together and one and this past week we saw the the shooting
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in evaldi texas and it was just a reminder again that we live in a a broken
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world a world that is that is not everything that god intends it to be
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and a lot of times we go running to answers and and solutions and and today i just want to encourage you
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before we do any of that i think it's important that we look to to the one we look to god who has all of the answers
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and put our faith and trust i've seen a lot of shade thrown at prayer over the last week we need to do more than pray
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and actually in scripture that's the thing that we are called to do more than anything and and if we really believe
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that god is on his throne and that he is real and that he sent his son jesus to this earth to die to redeem this broken
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world that's the place we should be going the most so i just wanted to start today by
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simply praying would you pray with me father god i pray
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i pray for the families i pray for the people that are close to this situation i pray that you would be close to them
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close to them through your holy spirit spirit god i pray that you would send people who
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who are your followers who are who are full of truth and love i pray that they'd be close i pray for anybody
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all over the country including people that are here today god i pray that anybody that is
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has anxiety or fear because of this lord that they would be comforted by you that they would be led to look beyond this
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world for solutions that they would be looking to you and putting your faith and trust in you god i know that every hurt that
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we experience in this world god that we need to turn into trust in you and i pray that you
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would do that in our hearts today and i pray that in christ's name amen
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today we are in week two of a three week series called made for monday which is ironic because most of us have monday
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off tomorrow uh but we are we are talking about your job what you do for a
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living and what that how that works and fits in to your life last week tony told a story
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of his first job i thought i would start by sharing my first job i was nine years
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old i know that sounds like such a ron swanson thing to say i was a steel mill worker but um
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i grew up on a farm and i you know when i was a kid i used to like when i was younger than nine i used to like all the time take uh chores and mow the lawn and
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that kind of stuff but i hadn't done like the real man work you know and and that was basically operating the
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machinery well one time i got the opportunity when i was nine and the entry-level job for that is the
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manure spreader so i got the opportunity to clean out the hog pins and i had this little skid steer and i had to shovel it in there
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and it was hard work but i would load up this big wagon that was hooked to a big john deere tractor and then i would get
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it all loaded up a lot of work and then the fun part was i would get on the tractor drive it out into the field and
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i would rev the engine all the way up right so there's a big billow of diesel smokes
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coming out of the stack and i turn on the pto right and and it would move this thing you've probably seen these and
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then there was a spreader at the end that would just shoot this this manure everywhere right and still to this day
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the smell of diesel fuel and hog crap that's home right there
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and uh and then i would just throw it into gear and i would drive over the field just shooting this stuff everywhere and then i'd go back and and
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do it all again and i loved it it was amazing i would come home reeking of hogmanur and i'd come into
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the house tired loving it and i remember loving so much about like
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work like good work like all of us have experienced that feeling and satisfaction of doing work that's good
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but the older i got the more i realized that this was not the same experience my dad was having as the the owner of a
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farm and and he actually got hailed out in 1982 wiped out the entire crop and so
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every time a storm would come up he would just stand there and look at this storm like an ulcer in his stomach
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willing it off of his property right and i realized that it was difficult for him because there would be years where
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we'd put in just as much work as previous years and then we would break even or maybe we would lose money
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and i realized how difficult it was and how annoying his his job his career path
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was to the point where he actually got out of farming and he just quit and one day he decided we're out of farming and
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i'm going to become a social worker just not a normal transition for a lot
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of farmers but anyway that's that's what he did but anyway that might be your experience with work there's something about it
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that is rich and it's satisfying and maybe you're at a job you love but there's parts of it that you hate and maybe you're at a job that you hate but
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there's parts of it that you love and and we all have that experience of there's this there's this good and then
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there's this bad and last week tony started off the series by just talking about the
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theology behind work why is it that we even do it and he said this was such a
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great point your work is worship like god created work and it and
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we are designed to work and if we're designed to do something then it is an act of worship and glorifying god
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genesis chapter 2 kind of gives us the theology behind work it says in 2 15 the lord god after he had created man
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and woman lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to work it and to take care of it
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in other words we are supposed to we are designed for mondays we were created
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to do this and the question i want to ask you today is how do i live my faith where i make
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my living i want you to be thinking about that how do i live my faith where i make my
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living because the truth is we like to create a separation it's not so much different than the creation the separation that
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happens with a high schooler who comes to youth group and is one way at home but then they go to high school and they're
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different why because they're around it's a whole different environment they're around different people and so there's there's often two different
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people that you have we're not very different like a lot of us are literally
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different people we hang around with our family we hang around with our friends we go to church and then we go to work
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we're in a different environment there's different influences there's a different culture there and a lot of times we end
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up being very different people so we create this wall this separation between
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my life and my work life in fact i think it becomes really important to
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know this you most of us in here will spend the majority of our life we spend more
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time on our waking hours at work than we do at home
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and so i guess the question is if we can't live out our faith at work
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then where are we living it out if not here then where i would say it is our
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greatest opportunity to live out our faith anywhere and let me kind of land
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that a little bit harder i want to i want to say it this way if you can't live out your faith at work
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maybe you have to ask the question if you really are a believer
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because if you don't see the expression of your faith happening at work that might be a sign that the holy spirit's
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not actually in you and working through you and on top of that it is so incredibly
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necessary we have all kinds of strategies as a church as does every church in every community all over
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michigan but none of it is going to be as effective
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as you let me show you a map these are our seven different campuses and we came up
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with an estimate that there's 489 000 people in those areas my guess is that that number is really low i don't know
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how we came up with the number i would put it in the millions i think there's people all over our communities
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that we are never going to reach that
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you work with and so here's what i want to do this is my objective today i want to convince
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you of this if you're a follower of christ here today i want to convince you of this that you're a pastor
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where you work and i don't mean that as just kind of acute saying i actually mean that like
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you are a pastor where you work you were called to where you work there are people at your work that are in your
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care sometimes when we think about our job we're just like well do i make enough money is it fulfilling right we have
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this this criteria for whether or not we want to be in our job but if you're a follower of christ in here today i just
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want to put this crazy thought in your head that maybe god put you where you are for a reason
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that maybe proverbs chapter 3 verse 4 actually is is being lived out in your life it says trust in the lord with all
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your heart lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your
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path the promise being if we trust in god he'll put us right where he wants us maybe he's actually doing that
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maybe you come home every day complaining about your job or maybe you come home every day excited about your
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job but maybe god has put you there regardless of that
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i genuinely believe that you are a pastor where you work
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and sometimes again we we think of that as like a cute thing but i mean that's real
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i think sometimes we put way too much emphasis on ordination like the ordination like some people come up to
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me like i'm i'm an ordained pastor and i'm like okay well whatever that's really uh a government thing
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that's a tax thing it's not really a biblical thing i'll take it i get a tax deduction because of it but anyway like
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and so you might be sitting out there going yeah well i'm not i'm not really a pastor and i'm like no no you really are
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in fact today i just want to go ahead and ordain you okay so if anybody feels like or being ordained like if you want
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to be ordained pastor at your work go ahead and raise your hand up for me this is going to work tax benefits
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everything you're going to be ordained right here go ahead and raise your hand high in the air if you have a job and you want to be a pastor where you work
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you ready okay
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there it is you are ordained you should go into your place of work
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and you should think i am a pastor sorry for spitting on those of you in the front row
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but as a pastor here's what you need to do this is your new mindset um where you
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work is not nearly as important as who you work with from the time like we tell this to our
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kids we're so concerned that they're we man you got to go get a good job you got to have a career path you got there's
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all this stress and pressure like where are you going to work where are you going to work you're going to go to college you're going to get this career we put a lot of pressure on them because
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that's the way our human minds think and really as parents it's just us selfishly wanting to get them out of the house and
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make sure they don't come back right but that's kind of where our mindset at and god's going
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where you work is nothing compared to who
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you work with my wife has been a stay-at-home mom for 23 years because that's old our oldest
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is and and so she's had a hodgepodge of jobs a little bit over the years but none of them are jobs that you would think are
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like elite jobs right they're not jobs that we look at and go wow you're really changing the world like i'm just trying
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to say she doesn't work at nasa okay so the first job we had when we got
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married she was a daycare worker and when she was there again that's not a job anybody would look at and be like
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yeah that is one of the most life-changing jobs in the world all jobs have dignity this is a job with dignity
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she's working this job and she's uh it's one of those daycares that like it's not like a montessori where it's like people
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are really concerned about their kids it's more like just make sure they don't kill each other while i'm at work type of daycare but anyway
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she's working at this job and the kids are all playing around and she's talking with somebody she works with now this lady that she's talking to does not go
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to church when invited to church she's like no i'm not really interested
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that's most of the people on that map most of the people you've talked to maybe you've even invited them to church
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i'm all for inviting people to church but maybe you invited somebody to church and they didn't want to and you're like
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well did what i could i mean when you think about what it's like to invite people to church in a
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post-christian america it's a pretty steep bar that's like inviting a vegan to texas
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roadhouse and they're like i don't i'm not really into that and i'm like oh my goodness
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the rib eye though it's so good it's so good and they're like yeah but i don't eat meat and you're like oh you
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should though like it it's it doesn't really work we shouldn't
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think that that's going to be very successful especially in post-christian america but again my wife is working
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with this late she's not interested in coming to church but she forms a relationship she has a conversation with her six months in no interest in going
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to church eight months in no interest in going to church after working with her and talking with her on a daily basis
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after nine months about scripture and about who jesus is and the actual gospel my wife was able
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to baptize her and then she went to church i'm telling you in a post-christian
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america that is the story that's going to happen more and more i mean it when i say you are a pastor where you work
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this whole thing christianity the church none of that works unless you as a follower of christ
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accept that calling so today what i want to do is i want to jump into colossians
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chapter 3 he gives us some some guidelines some things that i think will be extremely helpful for you as a pastor
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at your vocational calling at your job the apostle paul is writing this to kind
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of clarify some things to the church he's he's writing this uh to to instruct people on how to live the christian life
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and in colossians 3 this is what he says he says and whatever you do
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anything whether in word or deed does that cover about every aspect in
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your life do it all in the name of the lord jesus giving
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thanks to god the father through him this is an important thing he's saying
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everything is being brought to under the lordship of jesus christ everything in your life
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should be brought under the lordship of jesus christ and that's what it means to believe in jesus if you were to make the decision today
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to believe in jesus what i would be telling you that decision is is that i'm going to take every aspect of my life it
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doesn't mean that i can be perfect but i'm going to take every aspect of my life and i'm going to surrender it to
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god i'm going to take my will my desires my in this life my will what i want out
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of this life and i am going to surrender that to the lord jesus of jesus christ to believe in jesus means you're going
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to take every aspect you're going to take your marriage you're going to take your family you're going to take your
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sexual preference you're going to take your finances you're going to take everything and you're going to surrender it
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to the lordship of jesus christ you're not coming to him as a coach going jesus what can you do
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for me or how can you make my life better you're coming and saying no you're kind of a big deal you're the
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lord so i surrender everything to you and i got to tell you it doesn't really work if it doesn't work like that
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so that's what it means to believe in jesus so why wouldn't we take our jobs
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our careers where we spend the majority of our waking time and surrender every aspect of that to
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the lord so he says to do that and then he continues on colossians 3
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and he talks about that very specifically he gets really practical paul is extremely practical he says for
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those of you who are married husbands you ought to take your marriage and put that under the lordship of jesus christ
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and love your wives wives you want to take your marriage and put it on the lordship of jesus christ
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and love your husbands fathers you should take this and you should put
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it under the lordship of jesus christ and love and instruct your kids so he does that in colossians chapter 3
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and then he comes back to the workplace this is where he gives us the most
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practical guidance i think that you and i can have for the workplace it's going to sound a little bit different in its
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context this is what he says slaves anybody feel like that in their job
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slaves in the roman world 60 of the population were slaves so he's writing to the majority of his
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audience here there was no there was no middle class right and some slaves were treated well and
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some were treated poorly but he addresses them and he says slaves obey your earthly masters in everything
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and do it not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor but with sincerity of heart and reverence
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for the lord he's saying don't just don't just go to your place of work and
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do what you have to do because you're trying to get a promotion because the boss is watching
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because you're trying to get ahead in life or climb the ladder or get a raise you should walk into your place of work
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and you should do everything you do where you work as if you were doing it
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to serve jesus himself which which changes your perspective
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it changes the way you approach it all together and all of a sudden you're going to begin to to stop phoning it in
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you're going to you're going to stop working for the wrong reasons you're going to go in there honoring god with your work you're going to take your
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faith to the place where you work so you have to envision your boss as
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jesus does anybody find that challenging he says earthly masters right i just
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want to show you a picture of my earthly master um this is tony i have to envision that this is
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jesus which is challenging i gotta tell you i'm i'm only showing this picture because
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last week he showed this picture of me and i just well yeah it was there for a second
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he showed this several times and i was like i just want to clear my name i do not do shots of ranch dressing like
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that's not what's happening in that in that photo anyway that's garlic based it's a whole
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different thing and yes i do do shots of garlic face
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um that we have to view our our our bosses as if we were working
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for the lord and i tell you what it'll probably surprise most of them he continues on in the next verse he
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says whatever you do work at it with all your heart as working for the lord not for
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human masters how would that change your life i think that your work
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is worship when jesus is your boss what if you viewed yourself as
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completely self-employed you're a contract hire however you have to view it you you go into your place of
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employment yes and you complete your job but you're not there for anybody you are there to bring honor and glory to god
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and your boss is different and he continues this isn't just an analogy i think he
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means this because he even talks about our retirement package here's our retirement package in the
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next verse he says since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the lord as a reward
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man we work hard for that 401k we work hard for that paycheck and he's like man
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what if you work hard for something way bigger and better than that
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it is the lord christ you are serving today i want you to imagine
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that every moment of every day when you are at work you have so much higher calling
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than what you're getting done i mean it when i say you're a pastor
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where you work and i i gotta tell you i'm a little envious of the job you have i know some people would look at a
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pastor and go boy that must be a pretty sweet gig right you know you work one day a week and uh like whatever that it
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looks like for you and i was like i being a pastor is is challenging
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and sometimes i look at the jobs that y'all have and i think i'm envious of that
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i was looking for a job for my son who lives in lansing i was on indeed and i was looking for different jobs and all
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of a sudden a warehouse manager and an aldi popped up in my area 75 000 a year i was looking at i was
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like that sounds pretty sweet and in my head i was thinking because
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man i would be around people who god created who have no interest in
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church i love to be around people who have no interest in church i love to
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be around people who don't go to church and i love to have conversations with them and start conversations with them
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and there's something that's hugely appealing to me you have an opportunity to do
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to do what god has called us all to do in significant ways and in fact if i could give you a reason
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to consider changing your job i don't know if you feel like you don't get paid enough i don't know if you feel
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like you haven't climbed the ladder it's not fulfilling enough i don't really care about any of that here's the one reason i could tell you like you might
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consider changing your job is if you don't work with people if you're a truck driver that doesn't
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ever see anybody or if you're if you stay at home like you're working remotely from home and you literally
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don't have any encounter with other people even even over zoom right if you're that person
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i would honestly start praying and considering that god would give you an appointment he would give you a position
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where you work around people so that you can be a pastor on duty so
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i'm going to give you some really practical stuff on how to be a pastor in the place that you work and let's start
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really simple for those of you don't know where to start pick up trash
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i maybe it's not trash but i promise like if you go into your work tomorrow there are all kinds of opportunities
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everywhere to be a servant to shine as a light by simply being a servant it's probably cleaning
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out the microwave in the break room right nobody else is going to do it we don't
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even know who does it sometimes like the the break room and the microwave in the break room we just throw it away
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eventually because it's beyond cleaning anyway like whatever that looks like there is
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opportunities to model the servant heart of jesus and if you go in there working for an
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earthly master if you go in there working for a boss just another human and maybe you don't feel like you've
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been paid enough or even if you haven't been paid enough maybe you don't feel like you're valued enough or whatever that is what do you end up doing
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you end up phoning it in you end up missing opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to just be
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your best but if you walk in there thinking no i'm here for jesus
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i'm working for the lord i'm gonna bring him honor through everything then all of a sudden there are opportunities that
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pop up everywhere to just be the servant nature of jesus
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another one on here is honor people this is such
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a huge opportunity that we have every day i'm not honestly i'm not talking about
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putting tracks in bathrooms or walking up to people and being like in the name of jesus like don't be weird like i'm
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not talking about that there's an opportunity to just honor
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people and i'll tell you what there are people that we work with that that is challenging that is difficult to do
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when i was in college i worked for a diesel mechanic basically international dealership and i was the parts delivery
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person and uh so i worked around with a lot of diesel mechanics who can be kind of a
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rough crowd i don't know if you know that and then and then there was this lady that they hired it was the parts counter
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she like worked the counter and everybody got to know her and pretty much took you about a week to realize that this woman and i mean this in an
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honoring way she was hard to talk to she she annoyed everybody at work she was one of those people that would like tell
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you like this run-on sentence and there wasn't any way for you to get in in the conversation right so she'd be like
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i'd be like hey how was your weekend or like oh good i just all i pretty much did is i went to walmart man the walmart on 7th street is really rough did i ever
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tell you that my uncle odd at a walmart like it's it's just like this story that just like well and it doesn't come up
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for air for like 30 minutes and so it was like challenging to like talk
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to her but i remember thinking man i think probably the thing i can do is to
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honor her because everybody else all the mechanics they really did not like her
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they didn't want to spend any time with her they begin after she'd only been there for a couple weeks they were extremely rude to her and it isn't like
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i didn't understand why but they were really rude to her and i just thought man
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if nothing else maybe i can honor her so i would spend time and i would i would do the unthinkable i would
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actually ask her questions like talk more that's what i want you to do
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and i would have her talk more and she began to tell me about her life and her marriages and her kids and everything
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that she'd experienced and i had so much more sympathy and compassion because she had had a rough
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life that didn't make her more pleasant to be around but i just had more empathy
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and the guys were watching well one day she showed she didn't come i think she was sick and one of the other guys
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was basically telling me he was so glad she wasn't there today and all i did was say oh yeah
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and he was like hey man i just noticed like that you really seemed to
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care about her like you you actually stand there and talk to her and i was like yeah i was like well man
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man she's had a rough life i just like you probably got the idea and i started and
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that stuck out to him and that opened up a conversation between me and him
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and i just think by simply honoring people we have a huge opportunity for people to see around us who we are and
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there is such a great opportunity because i i know where you work i know the places where you work and when
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you're coming into work and somebody's not doing their job well or or somebody's kind of arrogant or whatever it is it's so easy to just
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talk about them with other people behind their backs
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but if we honored people man that would stick out it's almost like we would shine like a light
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jesus said in matthew 5 you are the light of the world he's talking about you if you're a
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follower of christ and that you are the light of the world where's the world at for most of you it's where you work
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a town built on a hill cannot be hidden neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl instead they put it on
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its stand and gives light to everyone in the house listen to jesus's point in the next verse he says
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in the same way let your light shine before others in other words don't do it for show but
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like you should let other people see the good works that you do whether it's picking up trash or honoring people
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that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven i can't think of anything better than the job
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you have to be the light of the world i'll give you one more
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a couple more what's the next one just give me the next one don't miss big moments
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don't big moments what i mean by that is there are times where there are people are contemplating
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the world this the shooting in uvalde this is a big moment we literally had people here on staff
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that were that were crying as we talked about it you're going to have moments like that
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and when you go somewhere dumb with it
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you miss an opportunity when you get really small and you talk
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about it at the same level that everybody else in the country is talking about it you miss an opportunity
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i think i think when when jesus came to this earth you guys just got to think about if jesus was hanging around in the
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water cooler if jesus was leaning on his shovel and somebody brought this up what would he say
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would he get political with it no i think jesus would go outside of
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this world he'd start talking about a kingdom that's not of this earth i think he'd go somewhere unique and different
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and bigger than just this side or that side or this is what we need to do
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we miss opportunities all the time when we go small places with things when people ask me about things like
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that i kind of have this like go-to thought-provoking thing that i think is really actually very biblical
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people will talk about it and i'll say yeah like here's what i've been struggling with i think all humans have the same nature
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all of us have the same nature and and as actually when i read in scripture it's like yeah we all have the
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same nature and so if i was
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raised in the same environment as the shooter in texas if i had the same experiences as him if
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i lived his life would i have done the same thing
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i think that puts us in ground zero and maybe we can now contemplate that doesn't mean there shouldn't be
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consequences for the wrong action or whatever but it puts us in a place where we can maybe
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or we can maybe talk about something that actually matters and then i'll give you one more uh point
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start conversations the book of colossians he's telling us servants of the lord colossians chapter
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four he says this be wise in the way you act towards outsiders in other words
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with christians if you're a christian today i don't have to be smart when i talk to you i can
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just say whatever stupid thing comes to my mind i'm just kidding but he he's saying with people that don't have
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a relationship with christ you should really filter you should be smart you should you should choose your priority
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list very carefully he says be wise in the way you act towards outsider make the most of every opportunity let your
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conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so you may know how to answer everyone
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in other words if you just pay attention god will provide an opportunity and you can start a conversation you don't have
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to win an argument you don't have to end the conversation as a pastor in your workplace you should consider it a huge
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win that you just started a conversation
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at the end of the day you're calling your vocation the place where you work
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there is opportunity everywhere if you're using the right lens about a week and a half ago
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uh i was wrestling on the floor with my 16 year old son he's big into ufc and he uses me as a practice dummy sometimes
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but i had him in a chokehold at one point they flipped me around he had me in a chokehold and it was just usually i just kind of tap and be like okay stop i
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can't breathe anymore and that's exactly what happened i was like okay get off of me and i got up and
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i couldn't catch my breath and my family's all downstairs and i was up like hyperventilating upstairs i was
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just like i can't like that's a tariff that's a panicky feeling when you can't catch your breath right i noticed on my watch
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i noticed that my heart rate was like spiking like it was all the way up 150 just sitting there and this is like 30
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minutes after we got done wrestling so finally i turned to my wife and i was like honey i think you're gonna have to drive me to the hospital
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and she was like really are you serious and i'm like don't don't ask that when somebody says drive me to the hospital
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you just drive them to the hospital but anyway we go get in the car and we're driving towards the hospital and
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i'm thinking we're going to get to the parking lot and everything's going to be fine and on the ride like my heart rate was still
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really high wouldn't go down i caught my breath but my heart rate still wouldn't go down so i'm like all right finally i'm going
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to have to start eating salads or whatever so then i go to the emergency room and
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as soon as i get in there right my heart rate immediately goes down my breath goes down like everything's fine
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the doctor like looks at me like why did you even come in i was like i don't know why it came in and uh it was just it was
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just one of those moments right but it's one of those moments where you're contemplating so i'm just laying there in a bed for three hours while they do
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blood work and x-rays and everything i'm just nobody can go back there and i'm just by myself my kids are texting me
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and i start to have one of those moments which you probably had where you contemplate your life on a greater scale
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and you know what never i never occurred to me i never thought about my job
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i never thought oh no what's tony going to do who's going to preach sunday i didn't care
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like who cares i never thought about my department i never thought about what was going to happen there i just didn't
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think about work at all i thought about people i work with even texted a few people that i worked
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with i thought about my kids i thought about i thought about people and if you've ever had one of those experiences before
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you know it's true the thing that you think is so important at your job right now where you are at and the latter
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where what's going to happen whether it's a good career path whether it's making you enough money when you're in those moments all of that completely
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disappears and all you're left with is people because people are the only thing
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that are eternal and if we could walk into our jobs now with that mindset not
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looking back but looking now with that mindset of going these are the only things that actually matter i believe
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god will give us opportunity to share with people
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his love let me pray for you god i pray that we would be
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called god i pray that our eyes would filter the right things i pray that we would see
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i pray that we would see people i pray that we'd be more concerned with who we work with and where we work
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god give us those opportunities help us to to grow in our own faith as
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we begin to talk with others about their faith
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god i just pray for boldness and empowerment and i don't even mean it as a joke god i pray that
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you would ordain the people listening right now to be
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your servants where they work and i pray that in christ's name
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amen