Michael Kelley's Blog, page 25

4 Reasons That Job You Hate Might Be the Best Thing for Your Soul

Everyone works.

Whether you work for a church, a corporation, independently, or in the home, you still work. It’s part of being an adult, and work is actually a good thing. If you look back to the very beginning of creation, you’ll see that one of the first things God did when he planted Adam in the garden was to give him a job to do:

“The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it” (Genesis 2:15).

Work is in our DNA. It’s part of who we are as humans to do work, to contribute, and in so doing, to be an extension of God’s common grace into the world. In a perfect world – in the Eden world – that work would be hard, but joyful and satisfying. But work, like everything else, has been corrupted by the fall. And now we don’t just work – we toil. What was meant to be satisfying and fulfilling is now drudgery. And we feel it, don’t we?

Get a group of people for very long, and chances are at some point the conversation will turn to work, and rarely will that conversation will be positive. It will instead focus on the terrible monotony of doing the same thing every day; that boss who doesn’t appreciate you; the thankless tasks you do that no one notices; how you should be compensated more. And in the end, for more people than now, the fact that you spend the bulk of your days doing something you never imagined you would be doing.

If that’s the case for you, then you can of course quit your job, pursue your dream, launch out into the great unknown – all that stuff. Maybe that’s the right thing for you to do. But before you write that letter of resignation you can’t take back, would you consider for a moment that this job you hate so much might actually be the best thing in the world for your soul?

Now before we get to the specific reasons why that’s true, it’s important that we understand something about the nature of discipleship. Namely, that discipleship doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it’s not an intellectual exercise. Instead, real discipleship is about real life. All of life. Every circumstance in our lives is a tool in the skilled hands of our God, who is committed to fashioning us into the image of Jesus. That means discipleship doesn’t just happen in a church building; it happens in all arenas of life as God uses those circumstances to mold and make us. Now onto the specific issue of work, there are 4 reasons why it might indeed be the case that your terrible job is good for your soul.

1. You are forced to define yourself by Jesus.

Think about the way people typically introduce themselves to other people. It starts with a name, but where do you go from there? Usually to vocation. That ought to tell us that the tendency in our culture is to define each other, and ourselves, by what we do to earn money and make a living. That’s a great thing if you get to answer the question, “Well, as a matter of fact, I do the very and exact thing that I love the most in the entire world, and I get paid real money for it.”

When you can’t answer the question like that, though, it’s not only an awkward pause in the conversation; it makes you deeply consider just what in the universe gives you significance and worth. Surely it can’t be this job that you never thought you would end up doing. And when our focus is (sometimes painfully) removed from our vocation, we are forced back to the fundamental truth that we belong to Jesus. That job you hate so much can be a moment by moment reminder of the fact that ultimately, your self-worth, validation, and identity are found in the Son of God and His love for you.

2. You are forced to confront the idol of self.

If we despise the job we are in, it might just be a pretty strong hint that we are still worshiping the idol of self. Perhaps we think we are too good to do this job; that we are entitled to something more or better. Or maybe we think our talents are being wasted. Or perhaps we are talented in another area, and yet we find ourselves doing this job instead of having a career in that field. Whatever the case, one of the questions at the bottom of it all is this: What is life really about?

Most of us, at least at some level, still think that life is about getting what we want. That it’s about fulfilling our own desires, pleasures, and ambitions. And if the job we are in is one we hate, then we are daily coming face to face with our own idolatry of self. The answer in this case is not a new job; it’s repentance. It’s turning from our ultimate commitment to ourselves and instead embracing the very tangible avenue in front of us to die to ourselves every single day.

3. You grow the discipline of thanksgiving.

Sometimes it’s easy to give thanks. When there’s plenty of money in the bank account, everyone is healthy, and the weather is 70 degrees and sunny. Those are the days when we really feel the thanksgiving. But what happens when you’re spending 8-10 hours a day in circumstances that are hard for you?

Those circumstances don’t negate the biblical command to give thanks. In fact, those circumstances actually cultivate our capacity to give thanks. It’s during times like that when you come to understand the discipline that is thanksgiving, and not just the feeling that is thanksgiving. This is good for our souls, for it reminds us that as pithy as it might sound, there is indeed always reason to praise the Lord. But we won’t grow in that discipline until we are forced to do so, sometimes by a job that we don’t like very much.

4. You grow in your capacity for perseverance.

Endurance matters:

“If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He will also deny us…” (2 Timothy 2:12).

But how do we develop endurance? It’s through challenging circumstances. We should not neglect the fact that a job we don’t wake up every morning excited to get to can help us develop this core characteristic that will help us continue to move forward in faith. The truth is that our jobs are neither the best or the worst things that will happen to us in this life. Even so, they can be used in the hand of God to create in us the resolve to live by faith. To keep going. To define ourselves by Jesus. To die to self. To give thanks in all circumstances. And in the end, to just flat out keep going.

So, friends, it might be that today is the day you need to chase your dream. Quit your job. Pursue your ambition. But before you do, you might ask yourself if by doing so you are actually neglecting the work God might be doing in your soul by staying fast.

What the Garden of Eden Has to Do With Your Calendar

Most everyone knows the story, even if they don’t believe the story. In the beginning, there was only God. Nothing else. And then God spoke, and “nothing” became “everything”, including human beings.

Everything was good. Very good, in fact. All creation existed in perfect harmony, and at the center piece of everything was the crown jewel of creation. The man and the woman lived in perfect fellowship with God, walking without guilt, shame, or any other hindrance with Him. God gave His creation the twin gifts of freedom and constraint, all summarized in this simple statement:

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen. 2:16-17).

The first people did not trust the Lord and His Word and chose their own way, and with that choice everything that was good and right and harmonious was corrupted. It is, of course, a well known story. Maybe the best known story. And at least for the Christian, it’s not only well known but essential because it is through this story that we find the answer to the question of what is really wrong with the world.

Yes, there are all kinds of answers to that question, depending on the person you ask and the particular issue at the forefront of a person’s mind, but those are all downstream answers. The upstream answer – the one at the source of the trouble – is sin. That’s what’s wrong with the world. And this moment in the garden is when it all started.

Knowing this story, then, is an essential part of knowing who we are and what is wrong with us. That’s true in an ultimate sense – the main thing wrong with us is that we are sinners and that we need reconciliation with God. But this story, when you zoom out a little bit, also helps us see what is going wrong with us every day. Here’s what I mean:

At a high level, here is what we see happening in the Garden of Eden:

God loved His children and knew what was best for them.In His love, He gave them limits.Their rebellion was a refusal to honor those limits.

This same scenario plays itself out in a hundred ways each day in our lives. It plays itself out every time we fail to trust that God loves us and therefore His commands are not only right, but they are for our good. So we refuse those to honor those limits. It plays itself out when:

We do not honor the sexual limitations God has given us.We do not honor the financial limitations God has given us.We do not honor relational limitations God has given us.

And here’s one more – when we do not honor the time limitations God has given us. That’s what the Garden of Eden has to do with our calendar. It’s that when we find ourselves constantly overextended, unable to close the laptop or put down the phone, incapable of saying “no” or “enough,” we are living out that same pattern of the garden.

God still loves His children and knows what is best for them. In His love, He has given us limitations. Limitations like our need for sleep. Or like the fact that the sun comes up and goes down in a regular cycle signaling the time for rest. Or that He explicitly set aside one day a week when no work was to be done, and even went so far as taking a day off Himself even though He was not tired so that we would do as He did. But in our rebellion, we refuse to honor those limits and justify our unwillingness to do so.

You and I will both have the opportunity to rest this week, and most of us will, at least at some level, find a reason to NOT do it. We will justify it with a deadline or a task list or just an inflated sense of our own importance. But we will not likely see our refusal to take control of our calendars as an expression of rebellion. But it is.

God loves us. Because He loves us, He gives us limits. It is for us to decide whether we trust His love or not, and one of the clearest places we see the evidence of that trust is our calendars. 

The Lord Shut Us In

There are all kinds of questions that come about when you read the story of Noah in Genesis 6 and 7. Most of the answers are left to the imagination. For example:

Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah (Gen. 7:8-9).

They came to Noah? What was that like? Was it orderly? Were the animals friendly to one another? Lots of questions, but ones that the Bible is not particularly concerned with answering. The overall point seems to be that God told Noah it would happen, just as He did with the flood, and so it was.

Here is another moment in the same chapter that might cause us to wonder:

The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in (Gen. 7:16).

“The Lord shut them in.” What a wonderfully mysterious and imagination-stirring little sentence that is.

How did He shut them in? What did Noah and his family see, if anything? What did it sound like as the door was closed? We don’t know.

What we do know is that however it happened; whatever it looked like; whatever it sounded like – it was secure. Because the Lord shut them in. Sealed the door. And when the Lord shuts you in, you are in.

In the midst of all the tumultuous activity outside the boat – all the thunder and the rain; all the wind and the waves blowing the boat this way and that; all that noise and shaking as the water rose and rose and rose… surely it was a comfort to those inside to know that it was the Lord who shut the door. And because the Lord shut the door, it was secure.

What a wonderful thing it must have been, in the midst of all the fear and apprehension and anxiety about what was going on around them to know that God had shut them in. It must have been gloriously comforting… and it still is:

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30).

How secure are the sheep? How safe are those who have been claimed by Jesus? We are firmly within His grip. And even if there was some power strong enough to grasp us out of the hand of Jesus, the Father’s hand is closed around His. God has shut us in. Here again:

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13-14).

How secure are those included in Christ? They are sealed – shut in – by the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Feel it today, friend – feel deeply the comfort of knowing that you belong to Jesus. Though all hell might break loose outside, though you might be attacked and assailed on many sides, though you will inevitably face trials of many kinds – you are safe. God has laid claim to us, and we are His.

He has shut us in.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Gospel Mourning

We are mourning in the city of Nashville. And we are praying that we don’t move too quickly passed that mourning, though hope is ever-present.

2. Meet the Resurrected You

Incredible to think about. We will become all that God ever intended for us to be.

3. Midlife, Christ Is

Oh, this was so encouraging to me as someone who is walking through those middle years.

4. Best Closer Entrances of All Time

Fun video here, though I think they have #2 and #1 in the wrong places.

Ask the Question of Trajectory – Not Position

During my undergraduate studies, I took a few statistics classes as a part of my degree plan. And though a lot of that knowledge has come and gone, there are a few terms and exercises I remember. One of those involved the importance of drawing a trendline.

A trendline is different than a line graph. In a line graph, you are connecting points to each other, no matter where those points are on the axis. With a line graph, you might be a steep high and a dramatic low point connected together to where the line is a constant up and down kind of peak and valley look. But the trendline is meant to demonstrate the direction of the change over a period of time. Rather than connecting all the individual points, the trendline is drawn through the middle of all those points to show whether or not there is a pattern.

This kind of line doesn’t answer whether there are high high’s and low low’s; instead, it’s meant to visually show the overall trajectory of the data. In real life, you might use a trendline, for example, to predict stock values. Yes, a stock might be super high on a given day, and be super low on another given day. But given time – what is the price of the stock doing? Is it going up, despite those low’s? Or is it going down, despite those high’s? That’s the trend, and that’s the purpose of the trendline.

It’s not as concerned about a position at a given moment as much as it is concerned about the overall trajectory.

And perhaps there is a good life principle there as well, especially when it comes to thinking about where we are in our own movement toward what God intends for us to be. We do not often do that.

Typically, we look at our spiritual growth as a fixed point on a timeline. We examine our character, or our belief system about current issues, or even our participation in the life of the church with a very narrow lens. And when we do, we can easily consider ourselves as doing a pretty good job. But what if we zoomed out a bit? What if we looked at our trajectory rather than our current position? It might tell a different story.

Let’s say, for example, we read the clear words of Hebrews 13:5:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

We want to take these words seriously, so we look at our current position:

Am I giving to the church?Am I generous in other ways as well?Does it seem like I am making decisions with the primary focus being money?

Positionally, these bullet points are all green lights. But then you decide to step back, and when you do, you discover that in the long term, your behavior has changed. Not suddenly, but slowly. And while positionally you might be fine, you are suddenly able to see the trajectory of your heart and see there is some prayer to be had. Some realigning to be performed. Some reflecting to be processed on where you are.

The same thing might be true about a doctrinal position you have. Though positionally you might feel okay, but when you take a broader look, you are able to detect some movement. Some drift. Something that, if left unchecked, will eventually move you to a position you don’t want to be.

This is the way of things, isn’t it? That our hearts are always moving one way or another, and that we often aren’t even able to reflect on which way that is. But thanks be to God who, in His grace, is always ready to receive our confession and is always ready to extend His mercy and bring us back in line with the trajectory He has for us, which is to continually be conformed to the likeness of His Son, Jesus.

The Beauty of Being Expected

I went to college in the same, relatively small town in which I grew up. In fact, both of my parents worked in higher education, and they both had offices on the university campus. It was not uncommon for me to go by mom or dad’s office, sit down, and talk for a while at odd times during the day. Neither was it uncommon for me to just show up at dinner time when I was tired of eating boxed mac and cheese or cafeteria food. For me, those college days were largely days of “pop-ins.”

My parents made it clear to me that I was always welcome; that I did not need to announce my arrival in advance; that I did not require an appointment. Such was – and is – their great hospitality.

And yet something changed when we left that small town and moved halfway across the country for graduate school. The pop-in visits went away, and there was a sadness with that. But they were replaced with the expected visit.

And there is a great beauty in being expected.

When we would go home, it was an event. There were calls along the way to see how far away we were and when we expected to arrive. We were greeted not in the house but in the driveway. And the food! There were special meals prepared, all of which were made to suit us and our liking.

I can see it even more clearly now, as we are on the verge of sending one child off to college and knowing that it will be weeks – or months – between the time he is home. I can see myself pacing the living room. Checking my watch. Anticipating the rumble of an engine coming up the driveway and the familiar walk into the garage. I can feel it, and my heart hurts, but his will be full.

Because it’s a wonderful thing to be expected.

When you are loved. When you are appreciated. When you are valued and treasured. It is indeed a wonderful thing to know that someone is waiting for you, preparing for you, wanting you to be where they are.

And that beauty of being expected is yet only a shadow of what it means to really be expected:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:1-3). 

Can you imagine it?

Of course, it’s wonderful to be expected by a mother and father. It’s great to be expected by siblings and friends. But to be expected by the very Son of God? And to be expected to the degree that preparations have been made?

What a thing. What a thing indeed.

It does our soul good to consider this particular aspect of God’s great love for us – that He desires for us to be with Him where He is, so much so that He is making preparations for us to be there. We are not going to be met one day by a surprised Jesus; we are not going to pop-in to see the Son of God and find that no preparations have been made.

No – we will be coming into a realm in which our arrival has been looked forward to. Even now. We are lovingly, graciously, kindly… expected.

So, Christian, if you look around today and find that you feel lonely or unappreciated; if you find that you don’t seem to fit or can’t get comfortable where you are; if you look around, and find a sense of familiarity but not a sense of home… remember that it’s because you’re not home. At least not yet.

But take heart – you are expected there someday.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. The Old Testament is Christian Scripture

As the author says, the foundation of the Christian faith is Genesis, not Matthew.

2. The Difference Between Laziness and Limitations

This is especially important when it comes to our judgment, and hopefully lack of judgment, of others.

3. The Key to Understanding the Bible

It’s not enough to listen to the Bible; you have to practice it.

4. Why Honey Never Expires

No worries! That jar you’ve had for 7 years is still good.

3 Occasions to Take Every Thought Captive

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night (Ps. 1:1-2).

There is a definite progression in these two verses. The man described here did not intend to keep company with the wrong crowd. At least not at first. At first, it was just a conversation that led to a decision. Just walking along. But then walking turned stationary and the man was a little further along. Until eventually he took up some kind of residence with evil. He walked, then he stood, then he just sat down. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Further, further, further.

Here is the creep of sin. Sin starts small, but it never stays that way. We walk with it, then stand with it, then sit down right in the middle of it. And the most frightening part is that we never really intended to. It just sort of happened. Like an untethered boat in the middle of a lake, we slowly drift into a place we never intended to be.

And that small beginning almost always begins with the mind. With the thoughtlife. With harboring and then dwelling on what begins as the hint of a suggestion until it grows and grows and grows. No wonder, then, that the Bible pays so much attention to our minds and thoughts, because that’s where it all starts. As in this passage:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

There is a wonderful and challenging realism to these verses. Not only are we struck with the reality of the different plane of existence, we are also hit headlong with the reality that we often can’t control what thoughts come into our minds. We can, however, control what happens next. We can control if we harbor those thoughts, feeding and growing them, or if we capture and imprison them and make them obedient to Jesus. Here are three occasions, then, when we will need to take every thought captive:

1. Temptation.

This is the most obvious occasion. We have a tempting thought, and we have the choice about what to do next. We can either let that thought roam free in our minds, and therefore start to materialize more and more, or we can grab it and bring it into submission by the power of the Spirit. And while we generally think about taking our thoughts captive in terms of temptation, there are other occasions that warrant this kind of thought battle as well.

2. Discontentment.

Here is another occasion when our thoughts must be taken captive. How often we see the state of someone else’s life – their home, their car, their kids’ behavior – and we become discontent with our own station. That discontentment has an allure to it – it’s easy to let it settle in and take root in our hearts. But our discontentment is not merely a longing for more – it’s actually a subtle charge against the manner in which God has chosen to provide for us. For that reason, we must also be on guard to take thoughts of discontent captive for Jesus.

3. Entitlement.

And linking closely with discontentment are thoughts of entitlement. We see the prosperity of another, and we think to ourselves how much more we deserve what is happening to that person than what is happening to us. And again, that kind of self-indulgence feels good. Really good. Good enough to give a little space in our minds to. But as with everything else, that thought will begin to grow and develop into bitterness, ungratefulness, and jealousy, and so must once again be taken captive for Jesus.

Watch your minds, friends. You may not be able to control that initial thought, but you can certainly control, by God’s grace, what happens next.

One Key Principle for Spiritual Growth… or Spiritual Destruction

Living things grow. It’s true for every organic life form, but it’s also true of us spiritually. When we are born again in Christ, we are set on a trajectory of spiritual growth. The Holy Spirit is in us in order to empower this transformational process by which God grows us up into the likeness of His Son, and that growth fleshes itself in all different kinds of ways.

It means that we continually grow in the fruit of the Spirit as our character is developed. It means we continually pursue purity and godliness in our lifestyle. It means we share the gospel more and more freely with others. It means our priorities shift from safety and comfort to the priorities of the kingdom of God. It means we hold more and more loosely to the material things of the world as we pursue the imperishable things of heaven.

Yes, living things grow. And as soon as living things stop growing, they start dying. That’s a pretty thin line when you think about it – that either you are growing spiritually, or you are dying spiritually. Here’s how Jesus articulated the thinness between those things:

““I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:5-6).

Either, because of abiding in Christ, we are bearing fruit, or we are withering away. Growing, or dying. And there is one principle that actually applies to both – to spiritual growth and spiritual death:

You are always, always, always growing an appetite.

To explain a little further, you probably didn’t drink coffee in the mornings as an eight-year-old. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t really start drinking coffee until my early thirties. And when I started, I didn’t like it. At all. But because I felt like I was too old to have a coke at 7 am, I kept drinking it. And as I did, my appetite for it grew.

Lots of things are like that – including spiritual things. Perhaps when you first picked up the Bible, or tried to really have a time of sustained prayer, or memorized Scripture, you found it incredibly difficult. Even distasteful. But you took a disciplined approach – and your appetite grew over time. You desire things that you once did not desire, and you have capacity for things that you did not have capacity for.

Human beings are like rubber bands in this way – when you begin something, it feels very stretching to you. But the more you do it, the more you get stretched out and you find your capacity and your appetite for that thing increases.

But unfortunately, it works that way with sin as well. Right now, today, you might look at someone in your life who has fallen hard and deep into a sinful pattern and think to yourself, I’d never be where that person is. And yet that person did not get there overnight either. Likely, their appetite grew. And grew. And grew. They stretched and stretched and stretched.

It works both ways – for spiritual life and for spiritual death. We are always growing an appetite, either for sin or for godliness, and the means by which that appetite is grown is our everyday choices.

Such a principle ought to make us consider those seemingly harmless choices we make a thousand times a day, because whether we know it or not, those choices are food. They are helping grow our appetites.

So what is your trajectory? What kind of appetite are you feeding?

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Go Back to the Start

If you want to grow as a Christian, keep remembering the foundation of your faith.

2. God Cares for the Odd Sparrow

God not only cares for the birds; he cares for the seemingly “worthless” ones.

3. S.L.O.W.: How to Love Suffering People

This little acronym is really helpful.

4. The Last Letter Added to the Alphabet

Huh. I did not know that.