MADE TO WORK

“Made to Build God’s Kingdom”
Greg Wingard – September 18, 2022

“One of the things that we were surprised to find in the research is that about 70% of people say they define their purpose through work. And, actually, millennials, even more so, are likely to see their work as their life calling.” - Naina Dhingra, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

Psalm 139:13-16 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

3 Ways We Build God’s Kingdom Through our Work

1. By RESOURCING the kingdom through the first fruits of our earnings.
   
   Proverbs 3:9 – “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your produce.”
   
   The first fruits of our income are His plan to resource His work through His church (Genesis 14:18-20; Leviticus 23:10; Leviticus 27:30; Numbers 18:12; Malachi 3:8; Deuteronomy 26:1-2; Matthew 23:23; Luke 6:37-28; I Corinthians 16:1-3. 2; Corinthians 9:6-15).
   
   Deuteronomy 8:18 – “And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to produce wealth, that He may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers…”
   
   God waters the world through His Kingdom’s work (Ezekiel 47:1-12).
   

2. By OPTIMIZING our careers through living out our sacred advantage in the secular sphere.
   
   Many believers separate their work life from the rest of their life and feel like they are a bit out of place in the secular sphere. The reality is that your workplace is God’s sphere, and you have “a sacred advantage in the secular sphere.”
   
   Psalm 24:1, 47:7 – ”The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it…. For God is King of all the earth.”
   

   Psalm 50:10 – “For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.”
   
   Genesis 1:20 – He has called us to “bring forth abundantly from the earth.”
   
   Isaiah 48:17 – “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.”
   

3. By INFLUENCING your sphere as a living story of God’s reality.
   
   2 Corinthians 3:2-3 – ”You are our letter...known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God…”
   
   2 Corinthians 5:20 – “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”
   
   Where you go, the gospel goes! And YOU have a story!