Description
CORPORATE MAKEOVER SERMON SERIES
MUTUAL FUN
Finding Fulfillment in the Marketplace
Ed Young
August 9, 1998
The adrenaline was pumping and our hearts were pounding as we paddled down the Snake River with long, deep strokes. Our guide, Dave, barked out orders to us as we negotiated the rapids. “Paddle left. Paddle right.” he would say, as we prepared to take some serious white water. Most of us had a white knuckle grip on the paddles. We couldn’t believe what was happening before us. Then after we made it through a rapid, Dave would turn to us and say, “Now, relax.” Then we would face another rapid and he would say, “Hey, we are dialed in now. We are paddling right. We are going big.” We would take that rapid and he would say, “Relax.” I looked at Dave and I could tell that he, the river guide was experiencing vocational fulfillment. I asked him, “Dave, how do you like your work.” He answered, “I absolutely love it.”
A few days later I met a woman in her forties named Dana who worked for a wellness clinic. Dana pretty much performs the same tasks 8 to 10 hours a day, week after week, month after month and so on. I asked Dana the same question. “How do you like your work?” She said, “I love it. I really love my job.” I watched a man who runs a car detailing company for a couple of minutes. He was working in triple degree heat finishing up a car. I said. “Excuse me. How do you enjoy your labor?” And with perspiration dripping off his nose he said, “I am really into it. I enjoy it.” He also said, “If anyone will work, they will experience the rewards of it.”
I listened to a real estate investor wheel and deal on his cell phone. He negotiated for the right lot, for the right house, for the right price. As I looked at his countenance, I didn’t even have to ask him about his job. I could tell that he loved his work. A white water river guide, a wellness center technician, a car detailer and a real estate investor; what do they have in common? I will tell you. Mutual fun. They are all finding fulfillment in their various fields of labor.
I have got to ask you a question. Are you experiencing mutual fun? Remember, as I said last week, God being God could have made labor as some benign, boring activity, void of any productivity. But He didn’t. He gave us work as a gift. And He wants us to find fun and fulfillment in our various fields of labor. I have called this message Mutual Fun because on the one hand it is fun for God. It fires God up. It makes God’s heart beat faster to see those people that He made in His image, those men and women and boys and girls who are wired up to work, being fulfilled and having fun. So you have mutual fun. God having it and human beings having it.
Yet, in a crowd this size, I know that the statistics would indicate that a lot of you are not experiencing job satisfaction. A lot of you are not experiencing the great rewards of work. I want to touch on several aspects of finding fulfillment at work. Now I could give you a long list, dozens and dozens of aspects, but I want to limit myself to just a few which I feel are the most important. This is not an exhaustive list. So if you want to have fun, if you want to have joy, if you want to reap the benefits and rewards of work, put these things into practice.
Ecclesiastes 5:19 says, “Go ahead and enjoy working hard.” This is God’s gift to you. The first aspect of finding fulfillment at work is, we have got to develop a passion-based profession. Scripture says that we all are uniquely geared and gifted. You have talents that I don’t have. I have talents that you don’t have. And these talents express and expose themselves at surprisingly young ages. Wise parents recognize this. Moms and dads who understand this give their children rope. They give them freedom to express themselves and to maneuver themselves within the context of discipline. So those children through the encouragement and support of the parents can discover how they are wired up. And one day, they can develop and have a passion-based profession. God wants our profession to be a natural expression of how we are wired up.
A couple of weeks ago I took our family to the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was a sight. The three rings. Many things going on simultaneously. I watched a family of trapeze artists as they encouraged one another and supported one another and gave one another rope, so that they could use their unique high-flying abilities to woo the crowd. Another word to moms and dads, we are supposed to give our children rope, to allow them to maneuver and to show their high flying abilities. Parents, we cannot force our children into a passion and ultimately a profession. We have got to see their bent and applaud them and encourage them and give them opportunities to fail and to succeed. They need to test and see where their skill set lies.
Talk to anybody and, if they tell you they are fulfilled in their job, I guarantee you that they are doing and using the same gifts that they expressed early in life. There is no question about it. God just hammered me with this point a year ago. He did it in a unique way. A friend that I grew up with, Bruce Nealy, was in town for business. I had not seen him for 25 years. He came to one of our services. After the service, he walked up to me and said. “Ed, do you remember me?” He had a goatee, but I did. We embraced and talked and relived some of the old times. He said, “I haven’t hung out with you for 25 years. But you know, you are pretty much doing the same thing you did as a kid. You are telling stories. Now, though, you are doing it in front of a lot of people.” I was kind of funny, and I kind of smiled. But God used that to confirm, again, my calling. It is surprising to see how those things take place in our lives if we are developing a passion-based profession.
Now some of you are saying, “I am not in a passion-based profession. In fact, I don’t know what my gifts are. Skill set. What is that? Surely, I’m not that gifted. I don’t have any special abilities.” Yes, you do. Then the next question would be. How do I discover what I am good at?
Two suggestions. First, I want you to look back over your life at the successes, at the things that you have done really, really well. Then try to lift out of those successes, the gifts that you use to make those things happen. Maybe it was the gift of organization. Maybe it was the gift of administration, the gift of leadership, the gift of service, the gift of music, the gift of poetry. I don’t know what it is, but think about those gifts. Then you may be able to say, “Ah ha, now I see where my passion might lie.” The second suggestion. Talk to a trusted friend about your life. Talk to someone who loves you for who you are and say, “Tell me what I am good at. What are my strengths, what are my weaknesses? Show me.” Often, others have a much better view of you than you do. Try that, I truly believe that God will honor it.
I want to say a word here to those who manage people. If you have anyone reporting to you in the marketplace, listen to my words carefully. When was the last time you sat down with those people that are under your authority, under your chain of command, and asked them to write their ultimate job description? “If you could write the ultimate job description, about what you would like to do, what would it be?” And they will begin to write and verbalize things. They will usually talk about their passion. And you can help them to develop a passion-based profession. You will have workers who are more fulfilled, workers who are having a greater degree of fun and a God-thing will be happening in the marketplace.
I Corinthians 12:4 & 6. “There are different kinds of gifts, different kinds of service, but the same God works all of them in men.” May sure that your labor matches your love, your passion correlates with your profession and take those steps, managers and others to live these principles out.
Thursday, I was talking to a good friend of mine about his work. I was asking him some things about the message and he was telling me that he has job fulfillment. I asked him about his childhood and, sure enough, it kind of correlated with what he is doing now. He said something, though, that kind of took me back. “You know, I have great friends at my work. I have rewarding relationships with a lot of people. What I do is important, but the relationships are really a huge part of my job.” And that is the second aspect of what I want to talk about. He highlighted one of the major points I want to make. If you want to have fun and fulfillment in the marketplace, whether you are a mother with a couple of preschoolers, whether you are a construction worker in the suburbs, whether your are an executive in some kind of board room, you have got to have the relationship thing happening. You have got to cultivate community-based relationships.
Let me kind of demonstrate what I am talking about. Is this you? Monday morning do you sing? “Hi, ho, hi ho, it’s off to the office I go….hi, ho, hi ho.” That is true for many people here because your passion matches your profession and you are cultivating community-based relationships. You have got it going. But for others here maybe your song would be this. “Oh no, oh no, it’s off to the office I go, to put up with the jerks, and all of their quirks, oh no, oh no.” Now for some of you who are going through the oh no thing, you are in a passion-based profession and have a job that matches how God wired you up but there is a problem. There is a relational barrier. There is a problem with the boss, a problem with the co-worker. You will not believe the polls on job satisfaction that I have been studying lately. Yes, gifts are important. Yes, following your love is important. But right up next to that has to be, and is, satisfying, gratifying community-based relationships.
Now can you imagine doing something about 40 hours a week, 2,000 hours a year and 90,000 hours over a lifetime, with people that you dislike? Yet people say, “I have worked with that ego-maniac, tyrant, self-supporting so and so for 15 years and I have hated every day I was there.” People have said that to me. I heard someone say the other day, “You know I’ve worked in that environment for 8 years and every time she walked by my office space, I just cringed.” Life is too short to go through a career like that. God wants you and He wants me to cultivate community-based relationships. He has put me in my sphere to influence and impact and inspire others for His kingdom and His glory and His purposes. And in a couple of weeks, we are going to spend an entire session on how to have influence in the marketplace.
I like what management guru, Peter Drucker, says. He says, “When you have a couple of objects close together and they are rubbing up against each other, there’s always going to be conflict. So plan on it.” Take a quick panoramic view of the people you work with and work for. Do you have any frosty feelings? Are you harboring any hurt? Are you saying, “Oh, that ego-maniac, tyrant….” “Well, she makes me sick when she walks by my work space….” I challenge you to obey the radical words of Christ, to say, “Hey, Lord, I want to have community-based relationships. I want to cultivate them.”
I guess you are asking how? First of all, you have to live by the sunset principle. Do you know what the Bible says? “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Texas has some of the most picturesque sunsets in the world. And when you see the sunset, may it remind you to settle accounts quickly with those you work with and for. If there is a problem, the Bible says to go in a spirit of prayer and reconcile with that person. Then listen and find the common ground and deal with the issue that day. Do not let it fester. Do not sweep it under the rug. Do not download it on your mind, in your conscience. Deal with it.
Secondly, make your relationships a prayer priority. Pray for that ego-maniac tyrant. Pray for that person who makes you cringe when she walks by your workspace. Pray that God will give you the opportunity to express and give some sound bites of the savior to these people. When you begin to pray for these so-called jerks, God will begin to soften your heart and He will do some wonderful and mighty things.
Titus 3:10 is a sobering verse for church leaders. “Warn a divisive person once. Then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.” Paul says that church leaders should do this in love. If someone is causing disharmony or disunity, if someone is consistently talking behind people’s backs, we are to warn them a couple of times and then ask, in love, to disassociate with the particular local church. Why is this so strong? Because, God knows the damage of one person who can relationally sabotage an entire church or an entire team or an entire company or an entire corporation. So we must deal with these issues. We must deal with them lovingly and Biblically. We must cultivate community-based relationships. I have got to ask you one more time. How are your relationships at the office? If they are not great, clean and clear and pure, you need to do something about them. You really, really do.
Let me now touch on the third aspect of finding fulfillment in the marketplace. We have to recognize worship-based work. Galatians 3:23-24. “Whatever you do, (whether is it changing diapers, whether it is filling out reports, whether it is selling policies, whether it is coaching JV football, whether it is grading papers) work at it will all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” It is the Lord Christ that I am serving.
This past Wednesday night we had our first Wednesday service, a service we have on the first Wednesday of every month. About 1,000 of us came together. We knelt by the altar. We took communion. We prayed. We lifted our hands in worship. We cried. We baptized. And a lot of people came up to me and others after the service, their eyes still wet with tears, and said, “I loved this worship experience.” And I said that I did too. I needed it and so do you. Now, let me do a little sidebar here. Do not miss the first Wednesday service. It is a great and wonderful and mighty service here at the Fellowship Church. Just check it out.
But as I thought about the comments made about the worship service, my mind kind of raced to work. Worship is not compartmentalized in some 60 or 70 minute venue. Worship should infiltrate every aspect of our lives, especially our work. Thus, when I work, no matter what I do as long as it is a legitimate profession, it should be an act of worship. When the act of worship is a true act of worship, then every activity I engage in in the marketplace, becomes an expression of my gratitude and love to an Almighty God. I firmly believe that Christians are the ones that should be cranking out tapes, seminars and books on excellence. Ultimately, we are not working for this person or that person. We are working for God. So whatever I do, whatever you do, we should do it to the glory and honor and praise of God. Have you ever recognized your work as worship-based? It will change the course of your career. It will change how you feel about that person. It will change your drive. It will change your motivation. It will help you with endurance and discipline.
So how about it? Develop a passion-based profession. Cultivate community-based relationships. Recognize worship-based work. Because the net effect will be mutual fun. Mutual fun. It is fun on God’s side of the equation. Is it fun and fulfilling on yours?