Full-time service to Christ is not simply being a pastor or missionary. Whether you’re a baker or car mechanic, a delivery man or investment banker, a dairy farmer or a mom tending her children at home—all the work you do should be done heartily unto the Lord.  

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Scott Aniol, explain that the doctrine of work encompasses every lawful vocation and is based in God himself.  God worked in bringing about creation, and we as His image-bearers are called to work also. Significantly, the calling to work came in a perfect Garden that Adam and Eve were to tend. Though labor is now more difficult due to sin’s curse, it is inherent to the created order. Whatever work Christians put their hands to do should thus be pursued with joyful purpose, excellence, and integrity—and for God’s ultimate glory. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, And today we want to talk about the doctrine of work, of vocation, what does the Bible say about work? And it's really a blessing. Jason, we've got Scott Anial here with us to talk about work. Scott Anial is a dear friend, and he is the Executive Vice President at G3 Ministries.

So glad for the work that those guys are doing. So it's just always a real joy to have Scott with us, as we have many times on this podcast. Hey, so why are we doing this? Well, we're doing this because both of you guys at our national conference talked about this. You, Scott, talked about this in our pre-conference kind of burnings in the soul session, and I was so taken by it.

And then I'd asked Jason to give a full blown message at the conference on glorifying God in your work. I was so thrilled with the stuff that you brought. I thought we have, In fact, I think at Birdings in the Salt, I said we gotta do a podcast or something like that. Yeah, he stole all my thunder and said more in 10 minutes than I said in 45. Thanks, Scott, we really appreciate that.

Thanks a lot, yeah. This happens to us all the time, Scott, I'm sorry. We're used to it, we're used to it. So, you know, it's a great subject because, you know, what, 98, 99% of the people on the planet are doing regular old work, regular old meaningless, pounding houses together, they're gonna get burned up, building widgets, they're gonna go into the landfill. Isn't life meaningless?

And then it doesn't help when you have people, actually people that we love very much, we understand what they mean, but when they say the greatest work a man can ever do is to be a preacher. Well, we think that's, hey, we do think it's a great work, but God doesn't give that work to everybody. So let's talk about vocation. I'm going to just throw it out there. What are your thoughts about the doctrine of vocation?

Well, I think this is such an important subject. I mean, that's why it was burning in my soul. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, you know, for the reasons that you mentioned. Like, We want more men called to pastoral ministry. Amen.

We want men, you know, going into going to missions. God calls people to that, but he doesn't call everybody to that. And like you just mentioned, he doesn't call majority of his people to those vocations. And I think we've lost a biblical doctrine of vocation to recognize the significant value and the significant way that we absolutely can and should serve Christ in whatever vocation God has called us to. I think that's an important biblical doctrine to recover.

Hey, we want to be an encouragement to guys and women who are doing things that they think are meaningful. Menial, we want to say, do you see what God has done to give you work, to appreciate their work more, not to think that it's meaningless anymore, things like that. So it's not meaningless. It felt meaningless. I spent 19 years in electronic manufacturing.

A lot of those days felt meaningless, but the Bible actually teaches us that that's not right. Our sense of that is wrong, that it actually is meaningful. You have this wonderful phrase in Philippians 1 where Paul begins his letter to the Philippians thanking God for them, and thanking God for this wonderful phrase, fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now. How were they in partnership with Paul in the Gospel? Well, he continued on from Philippi to other cities, and they kept helping him, sending him resources so that he could focus on the work that God had given him to do.

And they were doing this out of resources that God put into their hands through the work that they were given to do. It's actually a partnership in the Gospel. We see exactly the same thing in Ezra chapter 1, when Cyrus, the king of an empire, sends back the first wave, returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. And you were either to send or to go, meaning all the Lord's people had the role either to take of their resources and help to send them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, rebuild culture there in the promised land, to do it directly or to help with resources to do this. So this is one of the things that makes our work meaningful is it's God putting resources into our hands that—and they're kingdom resources.

We can have a fellowship in the Gospel. Yeah, and Paul tells the church, he says, look, make money, make more than you need so that you can give some away. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really good.

I, one of the most striking passages for me on this, on this issue is in Colossians chapter three, where Paul is addressing all different sorts of vocations, stations and lives, you know, wives, husbands, parents, children, and then he addresses bond servants, which is like, if you wanna pick a vocation that nobody wants, that's kind of the bottom of the barrel vocation, it's a bond servant, and he spends some time talking to bond servants and how they should act, And then he says, you are serving the Lord Christ. And so here is Paul choosing sort of the most extreme example of vocations, bottom of the barrel, and he's saying that you as a Christian serve the Lord Christ in and through what you are doing as a bondservant. And I think that's an important emphasis that we need to recover. You know, you mentioned even women. I think sometimes, you know, women who are at home, rearing their kids, they might feel like they're not doing something grand missions, sort of ministry, but in and through rearing kids, In and through keeping the house clean and cooking food and wiping runny noses, you are serving the Lord Christ in that work.

That work has value for the Lord and for His glory in ways that I think sometimes we don't really recognize. It sounds a little a bit like full-time Christian service. You've got these eternal souls called children in your house. You don't get more significant than that. That idea of full-time Christian service, I think we need we need to broaden that, right?

We tend to say that's just limited for the pastor or for the missionary. But for a Christian, everything that we do ought to be full-time Christian service. And that's at home, that's in our vocations, everything is serving Christ. Scott And Scott, when I was getting ready to teach on work at the conference, I was sharing with my co-elder. I'm planning to start in Genesis chapter 2, God putting Adam and Eve in the garden to tend and keep the garden.

And he said, oh, don't start in Genesis chapter 2, start in Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Our work is grounded in the fact that we bear the image of God. He made mankind as image bearers. And as image bearers, he works and we work.

And that sent me to John chapter five, Jesus saying, My Father has been working until now, and I have been working. So really, this thought of us being given work to do is grounded in bearing the image of God. God is a worker. And so, as image bearers, we are workers. Is there work in heaven?

I think so, absolutely. I think for all, you know, it's not heaven, our future is not just this ethereal, sitting in clouds playing harps. It's going to be the new heavens and the new earth. God put Adam and Eve in the garden, even before the fall, to tend to that garden, to be in that garden communing with him, and to find joy in that work. And I think that's what we're going to continue to do for all eternity.

Revelation says we serve him for all eternity. I don't know exactly what that service looks like, but that's an active role, not a passive one. You know, I just finished up a preaching series on the book of Revelation and in 21 and 22 they're just beautiful pictures of heaven. I spent I preached 20 sermons on those two chapters because I wanted our people to understand that heaven is not all that different. The things that you see in heaven, you've already seen them on our earth, And there is work to do.

It's not like you use the word ethereal. It's not some ethereal, bodiless place. There's actual activity. There's things that you're singing and eating and doing, and we don't know everything about it, but it's a physical place. So yeah, there is work in heaven.

Let's talk about Martin Luther. Martin Luther had some really remarkable things to say about work. He did, yeah. If you think about it, during the Middle Ages is where a lot of wrong teaching impacted the doctrine of vocation. So men like Luther and the Reformers are trying to break from that.

And I love he just brilliantly addresses this and he's arguing for the fact that every vocation, every legitimate vocation can be used for God's service. He quotes Psalm 147, 13 that talks about all sorts of ways that God works to bless us. For example, it says, God strengthens the bars of your gates. And Luther says, well, how does God do that? He does it through city planners and architects and politicians.

And the Psalm continues, God blesses your children within you. God makes peace in your borders. God fills you with the finest of wheat. And Luther says, well, God does all that. It's ultimately his blessing, but he does it through the doctors and pediatricians and lawyers and policemen and farmers and factory workers.

He is blessing us. It is God's work, but he does that through human vocations. And so Luther says, it's like, these are like God's masks. God is the one who is working in blessing, but he puts on these masks of human vocation and works through those human vocations in order to bless his people. It's a beautiful way to find meaning in what we are doing in our vocations.

You know, while you're talking, I'm looking at your glasses. Somebody made those glasses. Look at those clothes. What a great color sport coat you have on. You know all those books somebody had to manufacture those books where did that light come from you know I mean everything that we're doing right now was manufactured by some worker somewhere in the world.

And all of, you know, all of that work, somebody might say, well, it's meaningless, But it actually fits into bigger things. In Exodus 31 and Exodus 35, we have kind of parallel accounts of two men, Ahalayab and Bezalel. They're men that God raised up. They were gifted by the Spirit of God, not to preach but to work with materials, to create things, to order things, to bring about an increase by the work of their hands. It actually says that they were gifted to teach, so there was an army of artisans actually that they led and taught and helped to develop their gifts in order to create the tabernacle and the things that God called for in his worship.

Up until that point in their lives, God had given them gifts, and they were developing their gifts and making things. Mm. Amen. Other scriptures. Other scriptures that really help us.

Well, you know, another scripture that Luther points out, you know, he says, in the Lord's Prayer, we pray, Lord, give us this day our daily bread. And we believe that God answers that prayer. But then again, Luther says, well, how does he do that? How does he answer our prayer and give us our daily bread. He does it through farmers.

He does it through, you know, people who deliver the wheat, who make the bread, the grocer who sells the bread, the person who prepares our meal. And so again, any passage of scripture that talks about the ways in which God is working in the world providentially to bless us, you have to ask the question, well, we believe God providentially does that, but how does He do that? He uses means, and a lot of those means are what we would otherwise consider everyday, normal, run-of-the-mill human vocations. And so I think we need to sort of, we need to view all of scripture in that way, anywhere in scripture that talks about God's blessing, or anytime we experience God's blessings in tangible physical ways, We need to learn to see that through new lenses and say, that's God at work. And he's doing so through that human vocation.

And so praise the Lord for that. So we want to encourage people not to say, well, I'm just a delivery driver. You know, I'm working on this machine in this factory. You know, I'm just doing sheet rock, it's meaningless. Because That's all part of a way that God, God himself has ordained, he structured the world to be a blessing to mankind.

You think about the things that we have today because somebody was a worker. They're a huge blessing. Filtration plants, houses, all just, it's amazing what God has done. For 19 years, I filled the world with electronic assemblies. I filled the world with circuit boards.

So I was working for money. And you know, that sounds mercenary, but it doesn't have to be mercenary at all. I was actually angling for and happy when I got pay increases. You know, That's not dirty. The question is, when God puts resources in your hands, what are the resources for?

And the work that I was doing was actually funding the things that really brought the satisfaction. So I think It can be a trap, especially for men to look for life satisfaction from their work. All things being equal, it's better if you get a measure of that from your work. But if you're looking for your work to give you things that actually probably other categories of life ought to be giving you, like your relationship with the Lord, like your family relationship, like your investment in the local church. You're going to be disappointed and sort of flit from job to job like a beeflet's from flower to flower.

That's not good. It's good to work for money because it's God putting resources in your hand to fund the family life that you believe that God has called you to. To be a providing husband, a providing father, and to be able to throw your life into the local church wholeheartedly. Hey, let's expand on that a little bit about enjoying your work. Does a person have to enjoy their work?

What's that all about? Yeah, I mean I think, you know, no matter what we do, there's gonna be aspects of it that are painful, that are hard work, that we might not enjoy the aspect themselves. I mean, let's be honest, That's even true for pastoral ministry. There are certain things We have to do administrative tasks and other things. This is like well, I wouldn't rather be doing this I'd rather be doing something else, but it's a necessity.

We might not find joy in that particular thing But again if we step back and recognize the big picture that all of these component parts are working together, whether it's, you know, pastoral ministry or whether it's another vocation, all of these component parts are working together to make us people who serve the Lord Christ in and through our work, then I think we ought to find joy in the broad picture of what God has called us to do, even though we might not necessarily find joy in a particular aspect of what we're doing. Well, yeah, okay, so just hang on here for a second. We've both tried to write, you know, a couple books, you know. It is a pain in the neck to write a book. Oh, do you just enjoy coming and writing?

Almost nobody who writes enjoys it because it's hard yeah so right I think we have to ask what does it mean to enjoy work you said the broad picture I like that yeah because in the broad picture It does a lot of other things. It actually does change you, even though it's hard. Preaching a sermon is hard. It's exasperating, okay? In some ways, preaching is torture.

On the other hand, It's the sweetest thing you ever do. But the process is not the sweetest thing in the world. Not for me. It's hard work. Didn't the Apostle Paul call it laboring in the Word?

In Genesis chapter 2, God puts Adam and Eve in the garden to tend and keep the garden. In chapter three, you get headwinds. What is that? Sin comes into the world and the curse. And we're still living under the curse in this world.

We're not living under the curse in that Jesus Christ has paid for the sins of his people. But the words in Genesis chapter three are thorns, thistles, toil, sweat of your brow. And you're not free from those things until we get to heaven. You're not in heaven until heaven. And In the meantime, thorns and thistles, toil, sweat of your brow, are going to be a part of work.

So I think we do have a reasonable expectation that as we're serving the Lord in our work, there are things that are a pleasure. But if you're looking for all those headwinds to Be gone, not this side of heaven. Yeah. I think people have this idea that their work should just be the most enjoyable thing they ever did. I mean, I think that, I don't know how to even explain this.

I'm really glad for what I do I'm really glad and there's there's there's there's good fruit and results from it some of the time most of the time but I can't say that you know every single piece of the process of the mechanics of my work is the greatest joy. I'm doing it for some greater joy. I'm doing it actually for a greater joy, and I'm glad I can do it. It's just hard for me to explain the matter of enjoyment for work. Yeah.

Yeah, but I think you know, this is what God has called us to write that in of self as a believer ought to give us joy. Even like you said, the process is painful. If we know that in the Providence of God, we believe in his sovereignty, and we believe in his goodness, we believe that he works all things for the good, the sanctifying good of those who love him, then no matter what he's called us to, no matter what situation we find ourselves in, we ought to rejoice in all circumstances because we recognize God has called us to those circumstances. And this is another area I think we need to adjust our language, even in that language of calling, which vocation is just the Latin rendering of that idea of calling. But if you look at 1 Corinthians 717, for example, Paul says there, let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned him and to which God has called him.

And again, we might expect in our modern day of talking about calling that he's going to talk about calling the pastoral ministry, but he doesn't. He's talking about a Christian wife who maybe came to faith and her husband is still an unbelieving husband. He talks about people who are bond servants, people who are betrothed, unmarried, married, all sorts of just life situations, some of which are joyful, some of which are somewhat painful, and God says, that's what the Lord has assigned you, that is the life to which God has called you. Therefore, serve Christ through it, rejoice in it, knowing that God is good and God is sovereign. And so we ought to rejoice, even if, again, the particular circumstances might be a bit painful.

And it's not disingenuous to say, where God has me today is where God has called me to. Because we believe that God is ordering all things, does that mean you shouldn't desire – you might not have a drawing towards other work and you might make a migration path and migrate to another part, it doesn't mean that at all. That's quite possible that you can end up somewhere else that the thing you're called to today isn't your forever calling. But we can say with confidence that the place that God has us today is where he called us to. How do we know that?

Because that's where we are, and he's sovereign and brings these things together. Okay. I'm going to give each of you just kind of a final shot to encourage your brethren and your cistern who are out there working. Well, the whole point of my message at the conference was if we're made to glorify and enjoy God and if the work that God has given us to do is our biggest block of time, that it must be true, that it's possible to glorify and enjoy God in our work. And so that's a challenge, but it must be possible if God has called us to glorify and enjoy Him.

It is our biggest block of time. We should give ourselves to learning how to do it. Amen. Scott? That's good.

And then it's also a wonderful thing that the Scriptures tell us, right, how we can do this. And I think that's Paul addresses this in Colossians 3. You know, how do we serve Christ in our vocation? Do it heartily for him. Don't do it with mediocrity.

Do it for the Lord and not for men. Work ultimately for the inheritance of Christ, not for earthly gain. And so I would just say to anyone listening or watching whatever your vocation, you know, Christian bakers should bake the best bread possible. Christian bankers should invest their clients money with the highest integrity. Christian auto mechanics should fix cars to the best of their ability.

Why? Because we are doing it for the Lord. So God has made each one of us for the purpose of serving him. He's gifted us with specific abilities to accomplish that purpose in unique ways. And so as Christians, we ought to pursue God's calling in our lives such that in everything we do we are serving the Lord Christ.

Amen. I think he's ready to preach. He's right. He was preaching. Okay, I want to close it out with this.

I was sitting in our men's Bible study early this morning. And we are at the end of 2 Peter 3, where Peter's saying, be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he said something that so struck me, and I thought it really has to do with what we're talking about now. In verse 14, in 2 Peter 3, he says, "'Be diligent to be found by Him, "'in peace, without spot, and blameless.'" And I looked up the definition of that Greek word found, and it's actually a word about getting surprised. Like, you know, you're just stopped in the middle of what you're already doing, And you are found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless.

And that's not, you want to be, you want the Lord to find you doing meaningful work. What's meaningful work? It's being found in peace, without spot, and blameless, and growing in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And guess what, you can do that anywhere. You can do that in any job that's on the planet today.

So we just wanna encourage our brothers and sisters to work hard, work beautifully, enjoy the fruits of what you're doing and the big picture of what's happening through your work. Have a vision for work for the glory of God, because he glorifies himself in all kinds of work. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah, amen. Amen, thanks, thanks guys.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next time. Hope to see you also at our conference at the end of October, Build, Dwell, Plant in St. Louis. We've got a couple of marriage conferences that we're doing this year, one in Texas and one in Virginia.

I'd love to see you there. We really want to focus in on young families, particularly young couples who are just getting off the line in marriage. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.