Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenge. Today is Thursday, we’ve been exploring a topic all week and today, we are going to try to apply it to our lives. This week we’ve been talking about how Jesus resets every area of our lives including how we see work. We’ve talked a few times this week about how work can take on a life of it’s own. Work can consume us. Work can drive us. Work can become our idol. It can become something we worship, something we elevate above all other things and that drives all other things in our lives. Work can become our god. Whenever we take something good in this world, we make it our ultimate good. It becomes our ultimately bad for us. That’s a definition of sin.

Back in our series that we did this past summer on work and rest, we explored what it looks like to work well as a follower of Jesus and we saw four ways to approach work as a follower of Jesus today. Way to apply what we learned from Colossians on Tuesday about work and working continuously, working for God, working well and try to apply that in the early practical way of life today.

Sometimes our work can be redeemed. Sometimes we have been doing work maybe for ourselves, maybe just for the money but you know what, it’s good work consistent with God’s kingdom and we can continue to do it well and now we can offer it up to God. I told the story in that series about an animator who had been animating for work and now she had the opportunity to animate scripture for a church I had started. That was the way for her to offer her work to God. That was great.

Sometimes our work needs to be challenged. Sometimes we have been engaged in work selfishly that simply cannot be done by somebody in God’s kingdom. Say you have been working in the porn industry. You become a follower of Jesus, that needs to get reset. You can’t continue working in that industry, but you can challenge it. Your role in God’s kingdom maybe to challenge that industry. To speak out against it. To let people know what it’s really like the dangers of it -how it’s actually a form of modern slavery. I could go on but you can see how some kinds of work can’t be offered or redeemed for God, they have to be challenged.

Finally some work can be subverted. There are times when our work is something that we have been doing for all the wrong reasons. It’s not directly supporting God’s kingdom to do that work but it’s also not something that needs to be completely confronted and challenged and what we can do is we can be there as a follower of Jesus and subvert what’s happening there that is selfish, that is sinful, that is broken. We can undermine people’s belief in the idol of work and money and power and show them a different way  by being there.

Followers of Jesus can’t withdraw from every industry. We can’t withdraw from finance and art and culture. We can’t withdraw from transportation, from supply chain management. We can’t withdraw from consumer products. We can’t withdraw from construction. I could go on and list all these industries. We can’t withdraw completely from the world. Christians need to be there and sometimes that looks like challenging and sometimes it looks like redeeming and offering it and sometimes it looks like subverting it and I highlight this one because that’s really what Colossians was talking about.

Paul was talking to slaves who happen to have become followers of Jesus. They are stuck in a system of slavery. It is the status quo where they live and what he wants them to do is undermine it. He wants them to subvert. He wants them to continue working for their owners but he wants them to know they are not truly owned by them. He wants them to be free, even though the world thinks they are slaves.

Now most of us have more freedom than the slaves that Paul is talking to but sometimes circumstances or responsibilities give us no choice. Sometimes we find ourselves in the kind of work where our only choice is to subvert. We have to stay there. We have no other choice to leave that work, we have to stay and subvert it. To undermine work’s ability to control us, to own us.

Really no matter what work we do, we can find ourselves feeling owned by that work. We can’t find ourselves handing over the entirety of our lives, our entire identity, our entire sense of security and confidence in life to our jobs. We can use our job titles to describe all of who we are. When we are doing that, we are selling out to work, we are selling ourselves to slavery, willingly. That is the system in our world. That is the system of slavery in our Western world. We willingly sell ourselves to work and if that’s happening in your life, then please subvert it. Undermine its power over you and continue to show others while you work alongside them, what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus in your industry.

Keep working. Work well at it. Show them what it’s really like to be an artist who does art for the Kingdom of God. Show them what is like to build for the Kingdom of God, to create for the Kingdom of God. To organize for the Kingdom of God. To lead for the Kingdom of God. Whatever kind of work you do, show people what that work looks like when it is done well and done for God and so doing it will subvert works power over yourself and over others.

Work may think it owns you, it may act like it owns you. The world may think that your work owns you, but you can undermine its power over you. Break yourself free from the chains of slavery and the only way you can do that is by turning to Jesus Christ as your soul source of self worth, of security and identity in this world. When you turn to him, as that soul ultimate source of meaning in life, you will find that things like work and money and so on, all comeback to the place they were always meant to hold in your life. Not the center or ultimate place, but on the periphery.

When we work for the Kingdom of God, living in the Kingdom of God, even well for the Kingdom of this world surrounds us, what we are doing is we are showing, to react to some of the things I said yesterday, that work could go wrong. We are showing people that we are not our own saviors but we are saved by God’s grace.

Our self worth and our self identity are not found in our work but they are found in Jesus Christ and that’s where we see ourselves as workers in God’s creation, advancing God’s kingdom and not as the creator ourselves. We see ourselves for who we truly are, we see other for who they truly are. That’s what Paul is telling bond servants and masters to do it in his letter to the Colossians we explored on Tuesday and that is what we can do in our working lives today.

And my challenge for you today is to think what concrete tools can I use to help me do the three things we’ve really talked about this week. What tools can I use in my workplace to keep working. To keep working there I can be a presence for God, I can either challenge it or subvert it or redeem it. What can I do to work well there? How can I show that this is work for God’s kingdom, for the sake of work being good and finally how can I work for God and doing you are going to bring other people along for the ride too. Map that out today. Think of what concrete tools you can use to actually make this happen. To keep working, work for God and work well.

Well have a great time discussing with your group what that looks like to put that into practice. I’ll see you tomorrow as we take time to pray and reflect. Don’t forget to read the Bible in sync as well. Bye for now.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - May 2, 2014

Friday - 2014 Status Update - Grace in Lifestyle

Hi, welcome to Redeem The Commute. I'm Ryan, your host to the daily challenges. Normally, we follow a weekly rhythm that helps us explore a different topic and how following Jesus impacts that topic. This week is going to be a little different. We're going to be taking an opportunity to just kind of see where we are as a community. You probably know us as a mobile app and website for busy commuters, but we're also trying to become a church community. As we explore what it means to follow Jesus as individual people engaged in a busy lifestyle, we want to make sure that we're not completely disconnected from one another and that even though we're usually quite scattered as a community, we want to take time to gather as well. As a gathered community, we want to make sure that we are committed to some of the same things in common. That's why through this week, this week alone, it's going to be kind of a special week. We're going to be looking at each of the things our community is committed to one by one and see how we're doing as a community by hearing the stories of individuals who are part of our growing online community or our in-person courses who are seeing their lives changed. We hope they'll inspire you to see some transformation in your own life as well. The 5 things that we're committed to as a community start with being committed to growth in discipleship. We have some common content to learn together. We also want to be committed to God in worship, committed to generosity in our resources, committed to grace in our lifestyles and witness, and, finally, committed to groups in community. We're going to be looking at each of those points one by one this week. Today, being Monday, we're going to start by looking at growth in discipleship. Today, we're going to talk about the last of the 5 things we'll be committed to as Redeem The Commute becomes Redeemer Church. We talked about groups, generosity. We talked about worshiping God. We've talked about growth in discipleship. Finally, today, we're going to talk about how we can be committed to grace in how we live and how we speak, in our lifestyle and in our witness. A few weeks ago, we shared with you the story of April. April was the first person to be baptized as a member of the Redeem The Commute community and Redeemer Church. She came to the Christianity 101 course after getting to know me through her work. When she first came to the course we held at All Saints' Church in Whitby, she was actually quite nervous to come. She didn't know what it would be like to come to a church. She was a little bit afraid to even come to the building. Her life and her encounters with churches in the past couldn't really be described as grace-filled. She'd found people in churches to be kind of judgmental and was afraid that her encounter with church people at this course would be similar. Thankfully, when she came to Christianity 101, she learned all about grace, that grace is a free gift that God gives us. We describe that, GRACE, as God's Riches At Christ's Expense. She learned that we don't earn our place in God's kingdom. We don't earn our love from God through our actions, by being good, by being perfect, by being holy and godly, but rather through a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, by turning our lives over to Him, recognizing Him as our sole source of salvation. Then we have that relationship with God that's built on His unconditional love, His grace, His giving a free gift to us of a relationship with Him. From there, we can then become good and wonderful people through the power of His holy spirit, rather than under our own power. That's, in a nutshell, the amazing gift that Christianity is to the world, that it's not about we need to do for God, but rather about what God has done for us. That was the message that April encountered when she took our Christianity 101 course, and I hope it's the message that you've encountered through our daily challenges, through our courses as well, a faith that is built on grace. Now, we took a video of April describing her encounter with grace as part of her baptism and you can watch that now. So why were you thinking about you and your daughter being baptized? What was going on? April: I'm finding out that it’s a big change and I wanted to embrace being Christian and embracing faith. I wanted to be able to be ... I wanted to be baptized, and I wanted my daughter baptized. I feel that my daughter was meant to be part of my life and part of my baby's life. Even at Christianity 101, church with you, I've learned that God works in different ways and sometimes you don't see it at first. Once you open your eyes and your heart to Him, you'll see that He is there helping guide you. The birth of my daughter, I found she helped me and my sister reconnect. We weren't in a good spot before as I was pregnant. With the birth of my daughter, it helped us reconnect, and I realized through your course, I'd have to go there for the week of grace, when you talked about grace, and it really opened up my eyes. It was a big turning point for me, and I saw that He was there helping guide me and my sister back to each other. Ryan: Now, as part of her baptism service, we read a story from the Bible called the story of the prodigal son. You may know it. We've talked about it before in our challenges. It's a story where a man has two sons. One runs away, does his own thing, wastes all his money, and the other son stays at home and does good. We're preconditioned, usually, to think that he's the good boy, and the other one was the bad boy, and that these brothers are an example of how to follow Jesus and how not to, but in fact, we found that neither son was actually in a very good place with their father. They both seemed to think their father was a man of law. One thought he'd earned his father's love. The other one thought he'd lost it and wasted it when, in fact, their father loved them unconditionally. Through that story, we see how that father wants to have his sons back and will do anything to get them back, even undermining his own dignity. That's what happened in the story, and we told that story because it was such a great illustration of April's life and April's return to God through her relationship with Jesus Christ. God simply wanted her back. See, no matter where she'd been, no matter what she'd done in her past, what mattered most when she came to that Christianity 101 course was where she went from here, how she was going to transform her life from here on in, not what she'd done in the past. That's our message for you, of course, and of course, we want that to be our message for others, as well, in our community, who learn what it means to follow Jesus through this mobile app and community. The first Christians, following Jesus after his death and resurrection, were really a community known for their love and their grace. They could be counted on to care for those that nobody else would care for. The sickest of the sick were being cared for by Christians, and that's what really stood out to people. We want Redeemer Church, forming out of Redeem the Commute's mobile community, to be known for the same kind of grace, through our generosity like we talked about yesterday. We want people to ask questions and say, "What motivates these people? What kind of a story would lead them to be so grace-filled and so generous?" In pursuit of us becoming a community known for grace, we'd love to hear your story of grace. You just heard April's story of grace on our baptism video there. I'd love to hear yours, so your challenge today is simply to tell me your grace story. Tell it to your group first. I hope you're working through our challenges with a group. If you're not, think of who could be part of that group. Share your grace story with them. How has grace changed your life? Maybe you used to be somebody who was highly religious, and you realized one day that wasn't going to save you. Only relying on God's grace. Or maybe you were somebody who tried to be as least religious as possible. You tried to burn all your bridges with God, and you realized that god was still running out to meet you like He ran out to meet his son in the story of the prodigal son. I want you to share your story with us. There's a form to do that attached to today's challenge, where you can tell us your story. Make sure to include grace in it. We'd love to hear your story. Maybe to really step up the challenge, you could tell that story to somebody else, too — somebody in your life, somebody you work with, somebody from the train or bus, not somebody who you're already discussing what it means to follow Jesus with, but somebody who maybe would be hearing that story for the first time. Listen to their story first. Then, tell your story, and eventually, you'll find they're open to hearing God's story. Have a great day trying to figure out where your grace story fits into your life and how you can tell it to me and then to somebody else. Don't forget, we're reading the Bible in sync as one community, and we've got a live parenting course coming up, which would be a great way to connect with some other parents who are trying to parent with grace in mind, as well. It's not easy, so join some other parents in discussing and learning what grace looks like in a family. Have a great discussion. I'll see you next week when we start a brand new series. It's going to be focusing on the book of Acts in the Bible. We're going to be looking at it through the lens of it being a pioneer story, a formative story of how followers of Jesus first organized themselves into what we know as the church today. It's going to be a really interesting series, not only because of the interesting book of the Bible we'll be exploring but because we're looking at it through the lens of pioneers.

Related Topics: Grace, Lifestyle | More Messages from Ryan Sim | Download Audio

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