5/14/25 - 2094: Resurrecting Your Work

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place, where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Does your work leave you tired, exhausted, feeling dead inside? Purposeless? A waste of your time? So many Jesus followers like us work really hard in order to make money so we can support the ministers who do the real ministry. It makes our work feel like a JOB.

But was that what God had in mind? I don't think so. If you go back to the garden, you can see that God gave us work before sin entered the world. If work was supposed to be a gift from God, why does it seem like it sucks the life out of us? Resurrecting our work and our purpose. It's why we exist - to work and glorify God. Our work can be [00:01:00] life giving. All we need to do is allow it to be brought back to life.

Martha, it does at times seem like our work sucks the life out of us. Why?

Martha: I think often it's because we are the ones pushing our work and Jim, you and I find ourselves in that predicament a lot where we push ourselves.

Jim: Over committed.

Martha: Well, over commit, but from a fleshly perspective, that not always leaning into what is it that God wants us to be doing, but what do I think I need to accomplish? And I think in our own flesh, we're going to get tired. We're going to get worn out and or have it suck the life out of us, as you said.

Jim: Psalm 46:10 comes to mind. " Be still and know that I am God." We need to learn to work from a place of peace instead of a place of urgency and a place of obligation, that we need to work at the service of the king. And [00:02:00] it's that perspective change that I think is so important. And let's talk about where work came from.

I got a chance to preach at our local church here recently, and we talked about where work came from. God placed Adam in the garden and he said, here, work. Till and cultivate this garden. And then he gave him his first specific job. What was that?

Martha: To name the animals.

Jim: So God says, Adam, I want you to name all the animals and here's how I'm gonna do it. You go out and find 'em all, and you can name 'em all and we'll get back to you. Nope, no, God said, I want you to name all the animals and I'll bring them to you and you can name them. God wants to be involved in our work. And we need to understand that all happened before sin entered the world. So work is not a result of sin. Work was a gift from God to keep us out of trouble, people! And to be a blessing to other people.

Martha: Do you think that is the purpose of why God gave us work? Is to keep us outta trouble?

Jim: Otherwise idle hands cause trouble.

Martha: Every wise [00:03:00] grandma ever said.

Jim: Yeah, but they might have said idle hands make... what did they used to say? There was that saying,

Martha: I don't know. I wanna say light work, but that's not it 'cause that's many hands make light work.

Jim: Many hands, light work. Idle hands just cause trouble. Idle hands get in trouble 'cause they're bored. Yes. Do I think God gave us work - I think God gave us work to fulfill us and because when, okay, so God told us to cultivate the earth and then he reiterated that after Eve was created and Adam and Eve did sin, he said go and fill the earth with your descendants and cultivate the earth and bring about flourishing. He wanted to bring about flourishing. And if you understand the Hebrew words for all that stuff, which I don't, but other learned people do, this cultivation is about flourishing.

It's take what I've given you already built into the earth, which we're still discovering new things today, which is amazing. 7,000 years later, there's still new stuff to be found. This lithium thing. Nobody was doing anything with lithium till a hundred years ago and they thought it was a medicine. [00:04:00] Now we're powering cars and airplanes and helicopters and trains and trucks with it. It is pretty amazing.

But flourishing.

Martha: So let's talk about the word flourishing for a minute, because there's not many words that when I think of them, I only think positive. Like the word flourishing for me automatically makes me think of my flowers coming to life in the spring, which we've just really been enjoying lately, right? We look out the window and we see color and there's nothing but flourishing happening. Okay, there are some weeds...

Jim: but some of them are colorful, like the cute little yellow flowers we have in our yard. Some people begrudge the cute little yellow flowers. God gave us dandelions too.

Martha: He did. Okay. But when you think of flourishing, you think of growth and life and abundance. And that can come out in many different ways. So I just, I love that word because I think, to me, you can't help but have a good word picture to go with it.

Jim: Purpose. It's so important that we understand the purpose in our work, and I'm [00:05:00] gonna talk about that. We're gonna keep talking about that. But first I want to talk about purpose for a second. We love learning. Martha and I love learning about companies whose purpose is clear and they do it with excellence.

That's a kingdom company. A kingdom company's a company that brings a solution that benefits everybody that they come in contact with, whether they believe in Jesus or not. That's flourishing and that's why we love and use SaferNet. If you're online, your computer needs protection. Oh yeah, that's all of you listening. You all need protection.

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Trust SaferNet with your cybersecurity so you can focus on the purpose of your work and the focus [00:06:00] when you're at home on not getting in trouble and going places you just shouldn't go. SaferNet.com.

Martha: Jim, I just heard on the radio today, they were talking about security on our computers and how hackers have gotten so good at only needing a little bit of your information. And so it just made me think about SaferNet and all that they do to protect us because I have, I learned very early on, and I'm grateful for this, not to do all those crazy quizzes that are on social media, because that's one of the ways that bad guys get information about you.

They can figure out passwords, 'cause they like, what's your favorite pet's name? What's your first place you went to elementary school? But they do it in such a way that you think it's a game and they're really getting information.

Jim: It's a game. It's a gamble with your livelihood.

Martha: So anyway, I thought that was interesting and I'm grateful we have SaferNet in place to help protect all the things.

Jim: All the things. All the things. All [00:07:00] the things. SaferNet.com. All right. Is the solution to our dead feeling at work or just this deadness of our work, the purposelessness of our work just to quit our job and go work in a ministry or church?

Martha: Or even somewhere else.

Jim: Or is it a deeper problem? I think it's a deeper problem, Martha.

Martha: Yeah. How many people have you worked with over the years where you've, they've had a work history that's always been negative?

Jim: Everywhere they go, there's always the problem with all the people that work with em.

Martha: It's all the other people, but it's okay, they've consistently had these problems. I think of even Jim, as an example, when we were talking about moving as young adults with young business, young family to Florida, and our friends very wisely said moving doesn't solve any problems. You just take your problems with you.

Jim: You actually pack 'em in a box and pay U-Haul to move em.

Martha: You do. You do.

Jim: That's right.

Martha: So I think it's the same way with our work when we don't resolve whatever this feeling is inside of [00:08:00] us that we're struggling with at work as far as dread or wrong perspective where we just think work is just so terrible. If I just can just make it through every day, then I'm gonna... having that kind of attitude. That's gonna go with you everywhere, no matter what the job is, unless you can change your perspective. So I think it is a deeper problem than just where I'm at currently is bad and I need to go somewhere else.

Jim: But the solution is easy.

Martha: What is that? 'cause we wanna hear that.

Jim: The solution is super easy. It's a paradigm shift. You need to start looking at work like it was a gift from God.

You need to start looking at your work as you're working for God, your heavenly Father who loves you dearly. The kinda love that he extended towards the prodigal son in the parable of the prodigal son. He didn't say, I can't believe he did that to me. I can't believe you ran away with all my money. I can't believe he squandered it all. He never asked a single question. He just welcomed him back, surrounded him with love, Ran to him and welcomed him back.

Here's how you resurrect your work. You need to recognize where it came from. You need to recognize the purpose of work. [00:09:00] The purpose of work is not just to give you a paycheck, for crying out loud. If Jesus followers just understand your work is not just for a paycheck. 'cause if all you're doing is getting a paycheck out of it, you're missing the point. Your work is a gift from God to bring about flourishing in you and your customers, your vendors, the employees around you. We are filled with the Holy Spirit of the Almighty God who created the universe.

And by the way, it's the secret to the dark matter of the universe. Guess where the dark matter came from? God. That's what keeps all the planets in place. Have you ever thought about the fact that all these scientists are trying to figure out how come stuff doesn't move in random places? That it operates in all these organized patterns and it's this dark matter. There's something about the dark matter. Guess what? It's God. It's our Heavenly Father, and he wants you to experience work the way he intended it. He wants to work with you.

Martha: Okay. I'm just sitting here being entertained by you and I hope everybody else is too, but I hope you [00:10:00] hear the passion behind, or the words behind Jim's passion, of what he is really saying, because I think a lot of us - let me just address a couple things you said, Jim, just to clarify. Because you said we don't work to get a paycheck or that's not the purpose of work, however getting the paycheck helps your own family to flourish. So, it's not that I disagree with you, but I think we, again, it's our perspective and looking at it and saying, okay, God gives me the ability to do this work that I get paid to do, so that I can take care of my family. I can give to other people when they're in need.

I can be generous. I can put a roof over my family's head, give them food to eat, help them to be clothed. All of that in perspective of our own flourishing, but not excessive, and not for the purpose of extravagance. I will tell you, I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning. So I'm driving around running errands, and he was [00:11:00] talking about how we need to have a better grip on what our needs actually are versus our wants, and we live in a world full of wants.

And so we want to flourish, but we need to flourish. If you just think about, we need to do it for the sake of the kingdom, and I think that's powerful. I think if we look at, but we don't have a lot of needs that the world tells us we have. So marketing geniuses out there are corrupting our vision of, God-given vision of what is actually a need versus a want.

Am I making you think?

Jim: Oh, I'm just I'm just trying to analyze it because I have a definite need. It's a new Honda Odyssey, actually, just slightly used Honda Odyssey. 'Cause I really love them as a minivan. If anybody's got one, they're trying to get rid of 'it and they'd like to donate it to iWork4Him, go to iWork4Him.com/donate.

I'd like a white elite one with that really cool feature, that air conditioned seats. And you're right, that's I want. It's not a [00:12:00] need. We need a car with four wheels that travels across the country. The point is, as a Jesus follower, everything about us should be changing. If you're stagnant and nothing is really changing in your life, and God isn't using adversity to shape you from who you are to who he can use more effectively, then you're stuck in the mud. You're not progressing, you're digressing.

And so as a Jesus follower, everything about us should be changing, and everyone around us should be benefiting from our faith, whether they believe in Jesus or not. That's the kingdom. The Holy Spirit of God living inside of us causes us to vibrate with the power of Almighty God. In our workplace, we should be a blessing to everybody in our workplace. And when we're not, we need to say, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Can we be friends? Can we talk through this? 'cause sometimes we just screw up. Biblical examples of people who are thriving in their work.

Martha: Yeah, I love it when you give biblical examples, Jim, because you see historically the truth about quite a few people. [00:13:00] Obviously God put 'em in the scriptures for us to learn from. So who are some of those biblical examples?

Jim: Daniel. Daniel was a captive, a Jewish captive hauled off to Babylon as a teenager. He was taken into the King's inner core as a smart guy, was castrated, and then chosen to be as an advisor to the king. And it's important to understand that he gave up everything, okay? And he served the king who didn't know God. He served the king, and he served faithfully.

Now, eventually Cyrus of Persia releases the Jews, but Daniel still stayed behind to serve Cyrus and his sons. So it's important that we understand that Daniel thrived and he never got off his knees. He was on his knees before the Lord all the time, but he was thriving.

Martha: Something about Daniel that I just, I'm sure we've talked about this before, but I just thought about it. A lot of people say if I could just work for a Christian company or a Christian [00:14:00]organization, then everything would be easy, and that's where God wants me. And maybe that's the case, but I really ask you to pray about it and seek the Lord on it. Daniel was not in a Christian organization. God was using him in a very adverse experience, to use his skills and talents.

Jim: I'm gonna argue with you right now, but there's no such thing as Christian organizations. Organizations can't be saved. And in fact, organizations who say they're Christian organizations are some of the worst organizations in the world to work for because everybody is supposedly a believer and they let down their guard and they're backbiting. I've talked to people that have worked in all kinds of those organizations. Go work for some Pagan who doesn't know Jesus and love them.

Martha: That's what Daniel did. That's what I was trying to say.

Jim: That's the point. So don't work in a Christian organization. They got plenty of those. And what kind of impact are they making? Let's bring Jesus to places where Jesus isn't.

Martha: Oh, speaking of Jesus...

Jim: Jesus is another one who flourished in His work We don't know much about Jesus before he was 30 years old. [00:15:00] But we do know he had a reputation as a carpenter, not a bad carpenter.

Martha: And must have been a good reputation because otherwise, like you said before, Jim, everybody would've brought up his terrible work ethic. That's right.

Jim: All right. So Jesus, and he loved doing what he did. Didn't mean it didn't exhaust him. As an itinerant preacher and the son of God, as he walked the planet earth, he was exhausted at the end of his days, but he never said, yeah, I don't wanna do that again. No. He got up early the next day, spent time with his heavenly Father, and then went off and did it again.

He was thriving in it. He was thriving in it all the way up to the week where he was murdered for our sins. He was having a party with Lazarus, he'd raised from the dead. Jesus was a flourishing person. When people were around, they couldn't wait to be near Jesus. If people can't wait to be near you, then you know you're doing something right.

Bazelel is another one, the guy who had all the talents built into him to help design the ark of the covenant and all of the different interior pieces to the temple. Have you seen the ark? No, [00:16:00]nobody has 'cause it's in a box inside some government warehouse. But before that, Bazelel designed it to be incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Martha: Yeah. That's a great scripture to read because it talks about the gifts, the talents, the abilities that he had, and God saw purpose for. So a lot of times artistic people struggle. They're like what? Why did God create me this way? What could I possibly do for the kingdom? There's a lot that you can do for the kingdom. Putting the beauty in things and pointing them to God as the creator of it all is an amazing ability, one we wish we had.

Jim: Yeah. Understand, you creatives out there, celebrate what you have. You don't know how different you think than we do, who are an uncreative. If there's creatives, I'm an uncreative. I am absolutely envious of your ability to see things that I can't see. So do not ever let anybody look down on you because you think differently.

God created all of us in his image. You don't think God's creative? Have you [00:17:00] seen toads? They're pretty interesting. How about the duck bill platypus? Seriously. You wanna think God's great?

Martha: How about your neighbor? (laughter)

Jim: Yeah, really? How about your neighbor? How about your own offspring? He's creative.

All right. But, okay. But the people in the Bible, there's one who had it all. The richest person probably ever to have lived, made George Soros look like a pauper. How about Solomon? He had it all. He had pounds of gold all around him. Thousands and thousands of pounds of gold. Hard to perceive. And what did he realize?

In Ecclesiastes, everything is meaningless except loving God. And that's where we find the purpose in our work. We need to recognize that work is an avenue for us to be Jesus in an environment where Jesus wouldn't necessarily be invited. We need to recognize that when we're at work, we're working around a lot of people that will never darken the doorstep of a church. Why? 'cause they're worried about the lightning effect.

Martha: Yeah. So I really know that one of the [00:18:00] things, as you're showing it today, Jim, just with your passion, when we learn something or we find out about something, it really does energize us. And even this conversation about using examples from the scripture and seeing that God created us a certain way to be used for his glory, to not feel like the work got sucked out of us, but to energize us.

When we learn things, it really does energize us and we can't help but tell other people about it. So especially for you, our wonderful listeners, we want you to know things when we learn about them, and that is why we have curated an amazing list of sponsors, affiliates, and collaborators that we believe want to share their information with our listeners. So you can go to our sponsor section of our website.

Jim: And we trust them to do that.

Martha: We really do. And so iWork4Him.com/sponsors is a place on our website where you can go and see all of the wonderful organizations and companies that, we've tried to [00:19:00] take some of the guesswork out of who they are and share them with you. And one of the most recent people, or organizations we've added there is the US Christian Chamber of Commerce.

And we are very happy to go walk alongside with them and share all of their purpose with all of you. 'Cause it is all for Kingdom. So go to our sponsor page and check out those people that we just love and trust and support, and know that you will want to know.

Jim: All right, so the question is, am I the only one that feels this way? Am I the only one frustrated with my work? And the answer is, heck no. People, there are millions of Christians out there that are going, I just wish my work mattered to God. I'm gonna quit my job and go work in a church. No, in fact, there's 55 million workplace believers and 45 million retired believers approximately -don't go start counting and say, Jim, that was only 99 million, not a hundred - that just wanna know there's purpose.

And for decades they've been going on Sunday morning to find out that their work mattered so that they could [00:20:00] support the church ministry. And that's not it. The other 167 hours you spend outside of church, that's where God happens, out there in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our family places. Sunday's for equipping. Monday through Friday is for impacting the world. How do you change that, Martha? How do you switch from feeling like the life has sucked out of you to recognizing that our work is a place where I am walking alongside God to do what I do today?

How do we do that?

Martha: I think there's a lot of ways to do it. One of the ways that we have learned over the years that God has a great plan for each one of us, and he created you differently than he created me, than he created our listeners, and we all have a purpose and living that out wherever we are is very important.

And I think that iWork4Him nation Pledge has been the way that we've packaged it up to help people walk that out and to [00:21:00] really see their purpose. I dunno, you wanna talk about the iWork4Him Nation?

Jim: Yeah. The iWork4Him Nation is something that the Lord laid on my heart on how to transform every workplace into a mission field. 'Cause it starts with heart changing in you. Oh yeah. It's all about heart changing in you. First you start praying for the people that you work with, alongside of every day. Your regular people you work alongside every day, and then you start to look for ways to serve them over and above what your job requires you to do.

Then you look for ways to befriend them outside of work because those friendships are deep and long lasting. But all along you're looking for ways to pray with people when you notice they're having a rough day. But none of that matters unless the number five point, which is everything you do is defined by excellence. You should be the best, the brightest, the most valuable employee in your position, in your organization.

That's what starts to transform workplaces into mission fields, into places of ministry. Go to iWork4Him.com/jointhenation. Martha, [00:22:00] can we resurrect our work?

Martha: Definitely.

Jim: Start today.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace - it is our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.