THE GREAT BEYOND (Part 2), June 12, 2015

THE GREAT BEYOND (PART 2)

Last week we looked at how we can know what God's plan is for our lives and how we can make big, potentially life-changing decisions in confidence. This week, our last CATALYST night until the fall, our topic was "WHEN YOU'RE NOT LIVING THE DREAM".

While we would all love to have a job or career that we find fulfilling, that's not always the case. With the average person working 15-20 jobs in their lifetime, in most of those cases it means that you'll likely be working at least a few jobs that might be just for the paycheque. Tonight we talked about how even those less-than-desirable jobs (fast food restaurants, coffee shops, cleaning toilets) can be important and valuable and be places where God can use us.

1. They can be a learning and growing experience.

Any job we have offers us an opportunity to learn. We can learn important skills that can benefit us in the future (for example, computer skills, customer relations skills). Those less-than-desirable jobs we have can also help build our character and develop us more into the people that God wants us to be. I shared with the teens how, in my first few years of working, I learned the importance of having a strong work ethic (having the reputation as someone who works hard), I learned how to be patient, to be kind to people I didn't like, to be honest and trustworthy, and I also learned how to follow God and make right choices even though none of my co-workers understood my choices, sometimes even mocking them.

If you don't really appreciate the job that you have, or think that it's a waste of time, ask yourself, "What can I learn or what am I learning from this job? What's something that this job can make me better at? What skills can I learn from this job that'll look great on my resume?"

2. They can fund what you love to do (and what God wants you to do).

We discover in the Bible that Paul, one of the early church leaders who was a pastor and missionary who also wrote a good chunk of the New Testament, was someone who held a regular (ahem...boring) job. Acts 18:3 says, "Paul lived and worked with them, for they were tentmakers just as he was". Paul had leather-making skills and made tents to help provide a living, better enabling him to travel around, planting churches and sharing his faith with others. I shared my story of working as a part-time church custodian (not a very glamorous job) so that I could do what I really wanted to do-- to work as a youth pastor, encouraging teens in their faith. Whether you're working a summer job, or working full-time at something that doesn't fulfill you, that job is still valuable. It can help fund hobbies, it can pay for further education, and it can also enable you to serve in your church or community! Many of our own youth leaders work full-time jobs, but invest hours of their free time every week so that we can run great programs for kids and youth!

Ask yourself, "How can this job enable me to do something I enjoy in my spare time? Is this job enabling me to use the skills and interests that God has wired into me to support the work of the church?"

3. They can be a place where God uses you.

I shared with the teens that in one of the less-than-desirable jobs that I had (where I simply pushed a button or weighed boxes for 12 hours straight), I had a lot of conversations with co-workers. When they discovered that I used to be a youth pastor, it led to a lot of questions. While I didn't see anyone accept Jesus while I was working there, I had one lady tell me that I had given her a better impression of pastors and the church simply due to the fact that she got to know me and saw the way I lived and talked. Every day on your job, you have a chance to be open and honest about your faith. Your very presence as a Christian matters! You might just find that God has placed you there so that you could be in the right place at the right time to make a difference in somebody else's life! In the Bible, a girl named Esther entered a beauty contest and won! The prize, much like The Bachelor, was she got to marry the King of Persia! When her uncle discovered a plot to exterminate all of the Jewish people, he pleaded with Esther to appeal to the King and save their people saying, "Who knows whether or not you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this." (Esther 4:14) This was no accident or coincidence, God had placed her here, in the right place at the right time, to save thousands of people from being murdered!


Every day, before work, pray and ask that God would open an opportunity for you to be a positive influence on somebody else's life. Pray for opportunities to share your faith and to have the guts to be open and honest about what you believe.

Discussion Questions:

If your teen is working one of those less-than-desirable jobs and they don't seem to appreciate it, ask them a few questions:

1. What are you learning from the job? What skills are you acquiring?

2. How can this job enable you to do the things you really want to do (hobbies) or enable you to serve or support the work of the church?

3. Are you working with people who don't know Jesus? Do they notice a difference in the way you live and speak? Do you pray that God would open up opportunities for you to say or do something in the right place at the right time to point them one step closer to the God who loves them?

Encourage your teen that any job they work is valuable and that, if they love and follow Jesus, they will be exactly where God wants them to be in life. When you work through the above questions, you'll appreciate your job a lot more and get a better sense of just how valuable it is.