Overwork or underwork violates that nature [Sabbath rhythm of work and rest] and leads to breakdown. To rest is actually a way to enjoy and honour the goodness of God's creation and our own. To violate the rhythm of work and rest (in either direction) leads to chaos in our life and in the world around us. Sabbath is therefore a celebration of our design.
When God's gracious love becomes not an abstract doctrine but a living reality, it means our heart is less controlled by anxiety and pride, two powerful forces that constantly lead us to unwisely over- or under-react to situations.
Without an understanding of common grace, Christians will have trouble understanding why non-Christians so often exceed Christians morally and in wisdom. Properly understood, the doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means that unbelievers are never as messed up as their false worldview should make them.
Nietzsche was mainly looking at modern cultures, but he observed that all cultures - even self-styled 'secular' ones - promote moral absolutes and transcendent values to which (they said) all people must conform if they are to have worth or meaning. These cultural ideals are truly idols in the biblical sense; they are not commended as simply good ideas. Rather, they are treated as holy and unassailable, and promoted with religious fervour and passion. They are said to bestow happiness and fulfilment (earthly forms of salvation). All people are obliged to serve these ideals, and those who despise them are themselves to be rejected. So while ancient cultures ostracised anyone who disbelieved in the gods, modern culture castigates anyone who is thought guilty of bigotry or appears to be an enemy of equality and individual freedom.
...Christians seeking to work faithfully and well must discern the shape of the idols functioning in their professions and industries so as to both affirm the beneficial aspects and offset the excesses ad distortions.
Ray Bakke...points out that God shows the diversity of people he uses by giving us three different books in the Bible describing how he restores the nation of Israel back to its homeland. First, the book of Ezra is about a minister, a teacher of the word. The Jews needed to be a reacquainted with the Bible so their lives could be shaped by what God said. Second, the book of Nehemiah is about an urban planner and developer who used his management skills to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and reinstate stability so that economic and civic life could begin to flourish again. Last, the book of Esther is about a woman with power in the civil government working against racial injustice. Here you have male and female, lay and clergy. You have people working for spiritual maturity, economic flourishing, and better public policy, in cultures that defined and valued these ideas differently from the Jews. And God is using them all.
Many of those students seem to have a blinkered view of their options. There's crass but affluent investment banking. There's the poor but noble nonprofit world. And then there is the world of high-tech start-ups, which magically provides money and coolness simultaneously. But there was little interest in or awareness of the ministry, the military, the academy, government service or the zillion other sectors. Furthermore, few students showed any interest in working for a company that actually makes products...
[C]ommunity service has become a patch for morality. Many people today have not been given vocabularies to talk about what virtue is, what character consists of, and in what way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service...In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence...Furthermore...[a]round what ultimate purpose should your life revolve? Are you capable of heroic self-sacrifice or is life just a series of achievement hoops? ... You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and shmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job.
My 5-year-old son is a space buff. Consequently, we have done a lot of reading with him about the U.S. space program. His favorite mission is Apollo 11, the first to land on the moon. My husband recently found himself wishing he could have been on that incredible mission. Then he realized how little he would have actually enjoyed it, because of the sheer terror of not knowing whether he'd get back to earth safely. He imagined it—being confined inside a tiny metal box, hundreds of thousands of miles away from his home planet, while any one of a million things could have gone wrong and killed him instantly—and concluded that his fear would have overshadowed any real appreciation of the adventure. The story of Apollo 11 seems nothing but glorious now, but that is only because we know how it ended. I suspect that Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and the late Neil Armstrong would have given anything to relive their mission with the knowledge that they would come home safely.Jesus wants us to know the ending of our story. Otherwise, the terror of the unknown would distract us from living life to the fullest. Because we are united to Christ, when we look at him, we see the end of our story. We do get to come home safely. That changes our experience of this "mission" that is our lives. We can live them joyfully, as adventure stories and not tragedies in the making.May we rest in the security of our union with Christ. We are tethered—to a strong character, to a settled plot—and will not disappear into deep space. Let us embrace our unpredictable seasons of life as those who are confident in the quality of the plot, committed to character development, and enjoying our relationship with the protagonist. Christ in us is "the hope of glory." And hope does not disappoint us (Rom. 5:5).
Just because you cannot realise your highest aspirations in work does not mean you have chosen wrongly, or are not called to your profession, or that you should spend your life looking for the perfect career that is devoid of frustration. That would be a fruitless search for anyone. You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work even though you may be in exactly the right vocation.
[Our] paycheck turns out to buy us the use of far more than we could possibly make for ourselves in the time it takes to earn the check...Work...yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular jobs put in...
This means, ironically, that Christians who understand biblical doctrine ought to be the ones who appreciate the work of non-Christians the most. We know we are saved by grace alone, and therefore we are not better fathers or mothers, better artists and businesspersons, than those who do not believe as we do. Our gospel-trained eyes can see the world ablaze with the glory of God's work through the people he has created and called - in everything from the simplest actions, such as milking a cow, to the most brilliant artistic or hisotric achievements.
Christians should be aware of this revolutionary understanding of the purpose of their work in the world. We are not to choose jobs and conduct our work to fulfil ourselves and accrue power, for to be called by God to do something is empowering enough. We are to work as a way of service to God and our neighbour, and so we should both choose and conduct our work in accordance with that purpose. The question regarding our choice of work is no longer "what will make me the most money and give me the most status?" the question must be "how, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God's will and of human need?"
The current economic era has given us fresh impulses and new ways to stigmatise work such as farming and caring for children - jobs that supposedly are not "knowledge" jobs and therefore do not pay very well. But in Genesis we see God as a gardener, and in the New Testament we see him as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God.
...Pieper argues that leisure is not the mere absence of work, but an attitude of mind or soul in which you are able to contemplate and enjoy things as they are in themselves, without regard to their value or immediate utility.
The goal of discipleship is not education; it is capturing the heart with a deeper love for Jesus and a desire for His glory. Most Christians, if they are well taught, know how to be a disciple. The battle lies with the will and motivation – this is what the Bible calls ‘the heart’. Proverbs 4: 23 advises us, ‘Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.’
Mental attitude is like a lens to adrenaline. Optimism can focus the effects of adrenaline and produce intense energy and power. So...
Adrenaline + Optimism + Action = Courage and Strength
Adrenalin + Pessimism + Inaction = Fear and Lack of Resolve
On a personal or local church level, yes, I see evidence of renewal. Thankfully, there are always pockets of the world in which the Spirit at work. But in terms of an expansive movement where the church is growing at a faster rate than the population, I am unaware of such a movement today, at least in North America or Europe. Years ago, I read a volume of sermons on the New York revival of 1857-59, where 80,000 people joined the church during those years (ten percent of the 800,000 people living in the city). That is an example of gospel renewal. And while we may not observe it at present, we maintain that miracles from the past instill hope for the future, where good seed penetrates hard soil and dry places wait in expectation for a coming deluge.
