Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Leveraging your career

September 2 2012

*Don't know what your career is?
*What God wants to say

1. What is work?
Full time job-mom, dad, student
*God has a plan for each of us

2. It doesn't define who you are
*Work is going to change
*Identity of yourself is found in Christ alone
*Galatians 4:6-7: Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

*Only sons are heirs in the past
*But now sons and daughters can be heirs
*We are going to fail if we put work in front of God

3. God created us to work
*God has an identity for us
*Genesis 2:15: The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
*This was before the fall of man
*We have the responsibility to work

4. It is important to find something we like and do it well
*2 Thessalonians 3:10-12: For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
11 We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.

*It is not a choice to be lazy

5. Work can be difficult
*It can be discouraging going through difficult times
*We all like success but we have no choice but to have struggles along the way too
*Genesis 3:17-18: To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.

*God IS PATIENT
"We are a microwave generation serving a crack-pot God" - Jentezen Franklin-
*If only we'd be patient to wait for his plan for us

6. Work with others can be difficult
1st- home
2nd-work
love- command, not necessary like
*We are called to show grace to the ungrace and lovable to the unlovable
*Philippians 2:5-6: In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

*It may not be in the workplace
*Maybe tonight we should let our grudge and anger go because His grace is sufficient for us
*We should just let God take charge

7. Work can be rewarding
*Find something we like doing
*John 10:10:  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

*There are times we do not have a life because we hate our work
*We should like what we do- tie it to the kingdom of God
*We should share a abit of our faith in our workplace

8. Work can be eternity-changing
*It should not be something we do from monday to friday and shut off

How can we be missionaries at our workplace?
*We should be challenged to be Christlike at our workplace
*Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

There is something out there for each of us
Who is it in my life that I have to work my relationship with or just let grace reveal through me?   

**Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path**

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