00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 742 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Welcome to episode 699 of the inspired stewardship podcast. We like to categorize and cart part mentalize things. We like to have our Sunday morning self and ourself that goes through the rest of the week. But the truth is we're told that we're supposed to be all of those people all of the time.
00:00:33 We're supposed to have an integrated self. And if we separate that, if we categorize ourselves from welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast, if you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true column. In the inspired stewardship podcast,
00:00:58 you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. Today's spiritual foundation episode about investing in others. I talk with you about why all work is sacred. I share why the secular versus the sacred is the wrong question. And I talk with you about why this needs to play out in your daily life.
00:01:31 One of the things that comes up time and time again, is about work, being sacred about how work sets us apart in a way, you know, first Peter chapter four verse 10 says, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. And there are lots of other passages that reflect on the idea that we need to work on what we do as Holy work.
00:01:59 And here's the interesting thing all too often. I think people say I have my calling and then they look towards things like mission work or the volunteer work they do. And they say that that's where they serve out the sacred work, but in their day to day career, whether it's working at McDonald's or whether it's flying an airplane, or whether it's just working in a cubicle in an office,
00:02:22 or whether it's running your own business, they see that as secular something that isn't set aside as Holy often, people only look at people who work in the church as having a Holy calling, but I would argue that all work is sacred in part, just because of the amount of time that we have to put into it. I don't think that we'd be asked to do something that takes hundreds of hours across weeks and months and years,
00:02:55 and not be able to do it in a way that is something that is more than just what we do. And it becomes something that we set aside as worship because we're called to worship all of the time we're called to do everything we do in a worshipful way. I mean, way back in Genesis, it says, God placed man in the garden of Eden to cultivate and guard it in other words to do work.
00:03:27 So this work is set aside as something that we do. And if you think about it, cultivate and guard, the garden is not work. That sounds particularly Holy, but it was set aside as sacred. In this case, we're always supposed to be exercising our ability to grow what we do and to do work. And we're always supposed to be setting aside energy for creativity.
00:03:55 God is a creative God. And we're asked to do that as well. We're all set aside are asked to set aside work that does good for society. I actually think that's one of the reasons that sometimes we went into a conflict. If we, if we can't see how our work is connected to doing good for others, we began to lose track of that being a part of our worship,
00:04:20 a part of our Holy task. So it is something that we have to ask ourselves, what is the connection? But you know, the idea that anything we do can have a connection to helping and serving others in most cases, as long as you're doing things that are ethical, that are moral, that are in others' best interests that are not simply taking advantage of others and preying upon others and taking advantage of their weakness or their ignorance or their lack of skills or something else,
00:04:51 then that work can be Holy. You know, the, the question that comes up is, is there a difference between secular and sacred? And there are definitely things that in the Bible and are set aside to be looked at as sacred sacred spaces, you know, the Holy of Holies, the inside of the temple, but the truth is, you know,
00:05:13 when Moses sees the burning Bush, he's told, take off your sandals, this is sacred ground. And what made it sacred was the presence of God. And I would argue that God can be anywhere. We often look at things like music or other things, and we talk about secular versus sacred. But the truth is that all things fall under God's authority.
00:05:41 All things are able to be sacred. It's less about what it is and more about how we treat it. It's our relationship with work that makes it sacred, not the work itself we like to categorize and carp part mentalize things. We like to have our Sunday morning self and our self that goes through the rest of the week. But the truth is we're told that we're supposed to be all of those people all of the time.
00:06:13 We're supposed to have an integrated self. And if we separate that, if we categorize ourselves from our day-to-day work, being separate from what we do on Sunday, if we look at the, the Holy as separate from the rest of it, then by definition, we've begun to set up these barriers that keep us from being integrated. That keep us from being whole,
00:06:37 that keep us from having as much joy and success and worshipful experience. If instead, we recognize that whatever we do, if we treat it with the right attitude and the white respect and the right energy, it can become Holy. Then we recognize that the sacred and the secular are not as separate as we make them out to be. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast,
00:07:11 as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there until next time,
00:07:51 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and Impact the world.