A Thief is Not Loyal
Somehow we’ve separated our jobs from God’s rules. Is your workplace behaviour determined by what works, or by what’s right?
You invest more than one-third of your life at work. Punch the clock, turn on the computer, start your engines at 8 a.m., rest a few minutes at noon, but keep your mind and body in gear till the sun has set. Then tomorrow—repeat. Sound familiar?
So how can your relationship with God grow in all this? The easy temptation is to separate your life into two parts: career—public; faith—private.
But considering how much of your life you spend engaged in your career, perhaps that is the ideal place to grow in your relationship with Christ.
Somehow we’ve separated our jobs from God’s rules. Is your workplace behaviour determined by what works, or by what’s right?
We think of promotions as a positive thing and they usually are, but promotions can also bring devastation to your integrity. Remember when you’re promoted it came by God’s sovereign grace.
We live in a success-obsessed society. The traits of fortune, fame, power, and pleasure are vaulted as the signs of success but none of this will give you satisfaction.
According to the theory of aerodynamics the bumblebee cannot fly. However, the bee doesn’t know that. The same can be true for us—who told you your best years have passed? Who said you’re too young to achieve your dreams? Stay open to what the Lord has in store for you. You never know what’s just around the corner!
We all have special gifts and abilities from God. While it's good to venture out of our comfort zones, here's a humorous illustration of why we shouldn’t force people to go too far outside the area of their gifting.
Never discount anything of your past. God can pick it up and use it in the most incredible ways. If you have skills or talents you've put on the back burner, don't be surprised if one day you find yourself in a position where God gives you an opportunity to use them again. He draws from your life experiences at just the right time and in just the right place.
Can you be a person of integrity and a successful business person at the same time? A Christian should be. Christians are to demonstrate how God would negotiate a deal, try a case, diagnose an illness, teach a class, or build a building. Joseph is a perfect example—he demonstrated integrity in every aspect of his life. And by observing his business life, we’ll learn how to order our priorities and test our motives.
By the end of this message, we want you to discover why it’s important to have a personal mission, decide what types of things need to be part of your personal mission, and then take some time to prayerfully write a first draft of your own mission statement.
The terms wise and wisdom appear more than 30 times in the last six chapters of Ecclesiastes, and the concept is interwoven through most of the paragraphs…sometimes in a subtle manner, other times boldly. We’ll see these benefits personified in the life of “the wise man,” portrayed by Solomon in Ecclesiastes 8:1–9.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-18 is a section of Scripture that invites you to pull out of the rat race and take an honest, studied look at life.