: hey, pre-ordering books is weird. So I'm giving everybody an incentive to pre-order it before February 3rd. If you do, you can enter to win this epic trip we're giving away for you and a friend to go to France for a week. You're going to have a one-on-one trip with people to Europe, just a random person who enters? Yeah, we're going to pick a random person. They're going to go with their friend for a week. And then I'm going to meet them for dinner. Dirt, why don't we think of these ideas? What a great idea. Our next book, we're just going to say, you know, put your order number and you can come and like, we'll slam a beer, whoever drinks it fast or something like that. I'm not taking people to France, but that's, that's pretty impressive. We can go camp. No, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna commit to camp with somebody. Are you kidding me? Oh, you can have the beer. With the wrong person, that'd be horrible. I could slug a beer with anybody, like camping with somebody's sacred for me. Welcome to the Aggressive Life. You know, a recent study said that 42% of podcasters listen on their commute to and from work. That might be you right now. Get to work, get to work. What are you doing? Get to work. My gosh, chop chop. Some of you go into an office building, some of you are going to a factory, some going to a construction site, a retail store, restaurant, school, whatever it is. You might be dreading it, you might be excited. You might be counting down the days to the next vacation, the next weekend, but Dirt and I are here to save the day. Aren't we Dirt? Us and Jordan. Us and Jordan, right. You can't leak the podcast. I guess they already know that because the word is on the thing. It is in the title. It is on the title. You and I actually are podcasting and working. Same time. I know, we've gotten all the way to the top of the food chain. It's pretty impressive. I'm pretty impressive. Work is a huge part of life. Most of us are gonna spend. One third, I was going to say half, some of us might be half, would not be a very good life, but at least a third of our lives there, something to the tune of 90,000 hours or so. Our guest today, Jordan Rayner, thinks your work matters, perhaps way, way more than you think it does. We've had Jordan on before, he's an author, podcaster, one of the leading voices at the Faith at Work movement. His work has helped millions of people around the world. connect their faith to their work life, especially for people who work in, quote unquote, secular job settings, people who are believers, and they're wondering, how do I mesh my faith with my job, which might be standing at a drill press or hitting quarterly quotas? His newest work, The Sacredness of Secular Work, has the power to change the way you think about your nine to five or your eight to six. even if you aren't a pastor or especially because you want one, please don't become one. It's an awful job for a lot of people. Yeah, that's probably an interesting podcast in and of itself. No matter what your line of work is, we're going to try to give you some value today. We're going to ask him to unpack his ideas. And so let's get to him right now. He's the chairman, executive chairman of He previously ran as CEO. He's been selected twice as Google Fellow, served the George W. Bush White House, and he's an Aggressive Life alum. I know it's the most important thing in his entire resume. Welcome back to the Aggressive Life, Jordan Raynor. Peel and aggressive, thrilled to be here. Are you feeling the testosterone coursing through your veins right now? I love it. In a household full of women, this is a welcome retreat here. So you got all girls in your house, your wife and your daughters? All girls. My wife, three daughters, nine, seven, and four. Lots of estrogen. Let me tell you a little secret. Let me tell you a little secret. I don't know if you're like most guys, but a lot of guys really want to have at least a son. pass on the family. Oh, I have no interest in learning to parent another gender, hard pass. Well, OK, well, I was going to say this. I was going to even go another step. Aside from parenting other gender, I, when I got married to Lib, I migrated to her family for family functions and all that stuff. And that's generally what happens. You never lose your girls. You just add your family because they get married to somebody, hopefully. And your family gets bigger. Where your boys, you have a great time with them. I have a great time with my son, love him dearly. But you know, I'm not going to lie. boys, they detach more than the girls do. And so you are a blessed man to have three daughters. I am indeed. Yeah. So people don't normally think of words like sacred and secular fitting together. It's on the cover of your book. Just give us your little stump speech on sacred and secular, what they are and why they work together. Yeah, I love that you asked this because Definitions of words matter. We throw around all these churchy words and never define them. And that thwarts a lot of our understanding and hope. That word secular literally means without God. And for years, I believed that my work as a tech entrepreneur was secular. But we Christians believe that God is with us literally wherever we go through the power of the Holy Spirit. So the only thing you need to do to instantly make your quote unquote secular workplace sacred. is walk through the front door or log on to zoom. That's it. Right now. Clearly some work is off limits for Christ followers, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that our listeners are not peddling pornography or exploiting the poor, right? Something that overtly contradicts God's words. And if that's true and you're doing your best to live unto God, then in the words of Charles Spurgeon, nothing is secular and everything is sacred. There's no question. about the sacredness of your seemingly secular work believer, I think the more interesting question is, and the most life changing question is, all right, how exactly does that sacred work matter beyond the present? How does the zoom meeting I lead the Uber I drive the diaper I change matter for eternity? And that's the question I'm helping readers answer in this book. That's I like that. What a great, great understanding for us. Whenever we enter the room, those of us who are followers of Christ and have the Holy Spirit, which is a core tenement of Christianity versus other religions. We're not going someplace to encounter the Spirit. We're not going someplace to have the Spirit be with us. You actually possess the Holy Spirit, which gives you superhuman abilities. They're not necessarily gonna be in a Marvel comic movie, but you're going to have abilities you don't have. What a great reminder. When you enter the room, God enters the room. Amen. Wow. Amen. That's it. It's that simple. It's not that simple, right? We can go a lot of layers deeper, but at the most fundamental level, that's what makes the work of the Christ follower sacred. I like that. It's a tie to the kind of faith that I think attracts our listeners here to the aggressive life. First, a lot of people just aggressive. What does that have to do with having a good life or even a faith filled life? But it's because I'm trying to combat this idea of faith being passive, faith being your beliefs, faith being your morality. And a lot of folks who have that thought are in this real defensive posture against the quote unquote world or the darkness or the second world. Oh no, oh no, this stuff might happen. Hey, here's an idea. You and I, if you're a person of faith, are supposed to be people of light. A candle always wins. My Bic lighter always beats the dark. We need to be in a more offensive, forward leaning position as believers, those of us who are recognizing we've got goods that other people don't have and they need to have, we want them to have it and to not be afraid of certain situations. I love that. The problem though is for the last 300 years, for the first time in church history, we've begun preaching in a bridged version of the gospel. That's all about what Jesus has saved us from and says nothing about what he has saved us for. Right? The way we preach the gospel in our churches today is Jesus came to save me from my sins. That's gloriously But it's only partially true. The unabridged gospel that starts in Genesis 1 and goes all the way to Revelation 22 says that God created you to rule with him, to fill the earth and have dominion over it. See Genesis 1 and understanding that, now I can better understand the cult of the aggressive life, if you will. What Paul means in Ephesians 2 10 when he says that, okay, hey, we haven't been saved by our works. but we have been created to do the good works God prepared in advance for us to do. We're not sitting here waiting for heaven to drop from the sky. The good news of the gospel is not that I get to go to heaven when I die, but that I get to cultivate heaven on earth until I die through the power of the Holy Spirit in my life, in my home, in my job, everywhere I go, because everywhere I step is sacred ground under the Lordship of King Jesus. All right, now you're... Now you're educating the podcast host. This is really great. What a great line. Saved from, yes, but saved for. What is the point? What do we save for? I love that. That is going to preach. And I'm glad I just had this original thought on my own. Sometimes just original thoughts come to me. And it just came out of the sky and man, people are going to know how brilliant I am when I tell them that. That was great. Inspired. Hey, you're in your bio, you're a Gordon, or excuse me, a Google fellow. I assume that means that they ask you to come speak to their employees and do one of those workshops for them, right? Actually, it's not. They just give me a bunch of money to go play around with their products and do innovative stuff with. I want to be a Google fellow. What do I got to be? I want to be. All right. Because I was going to say, if you had a speaking gig with Google, I was going to ask you how the rank and file Googlers are in terms of reacting to faith concepts these days. Well, I can answer that. I actually have done Q&A's with Christians at Google, and met at Amazon. Man, and these are some of the Christians I'm most excited about encouraging in the world, because so many Christians today. are isolating from the world, trying to figure out how to withdraw and either get a job in quote unquote full-time ministry or get a job at a business led by a Christian, a place that better quote unquote shares their values. Listen, God might be calling you to do that, but probably not. based on the balance that we see in scripture, Christ in the garden of Gethsemane prayed that the Father would send his followers into the world as he had entered into our darkness, right? We are called to be salt and light, and light doesn't shine in an already lit room, right? And so I find that believers in these places of work, especially big corporations, are fully engaged there because they understand, number one, the first commission we see Genesis 1 to fill the earth and make it more useful for other human beings, benefit and enjoyment. And number two, the call to darkness, to shine our light in dark places, not places that are already filled with light, which tragically so many Christians are doing today. I spent a few days at Google a few years ago. It was myself and some other senior leaders of very large churches. We got to kind of hobnob with. Google brass and they let us do some workshops. I was really surprised by the believers, and this is the rank and file folks, the guy who set us up, a good friend of mine, Kirk Perry, who ran 98% of all of Google's profit. They poached him from P&G and then he ran basically their web advertisement, their search advertising, getting companies, he made all their money for them. So, and he's a great, great faithful guy. And we went and interacted with those folks. I was really surprised, one, how faithful they were, the rank and files who were there with the given presentations and helping walk us through exercise. And then two, I was really fascinated by how un-innovative they are in relationship to their faith and their church life. Like they were all about pushing the edge of the envelope as it related to their job and the internet and technology. But when it came to matters of church, they were like small and low tech, don't understand why you do anything different. It was interesting. That's fascinating. I know I pushed on them a bit and they never had an answer. I just found it fascinating that in their situation, they had different modes of operation of faith. and I say they, I'm talking about three people, right? They had different modes of operation of faith for how their faith participates in the work situation, the church situation. I found that interesting and actually, quite frankly, depressing. Why depressing? Because the way I interpret it was, you're bringing your best to your job, you're innovating and trying to push things in your job, but when it comes to the job of God, you expect God to be in the 1800s. You expect like, you just expect like no innovation, no drive. Let's just get together and sing Kumbaya. Yeah, I was surprised by it. Thank God for people like my friend Neil Alston at Abide who are innovating here. He's an ex Googler left to create this app called Abide, which is crushing it now and really taking off to innovate the way that we engage with God's word. So yeah, I'm thankful for people like Neil. Yeah, and the truth is, you know, Google, a lot of people think, oh, okay, these tech companies are just godless place. They're not. God's light is all over the place. You just got to know how to look for it. So let's say, let's say I am going to my tech company or I'm going to the drill press, is there a little pep talk I should be giving myself in the morning as I go reframing for myself, what it is I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Yeah, no doubt. Let me get theological, then we'll get practical here. We've got to make this leap, as I said a few minutes ago, from this abridged gospel that's become so dominant in our churches to the unabridged gospel. The dominant version of the gospel we hear in our church is that Jesus came to save you and me from our sins. It's good news for our souls and the spiritual realm, but the rest of creation be damned. If that's the full extent of the gospel, which, your work, there's no pep talk that's going to motivate you to go to work today because your work only matters when you leverage it to the instrumental end of saving souls. And frankly, if that's true, most of us are wasting the vast majority of our time. I quote this one theologian in the sacredness of secular work who says that the value of secular work depends upon the value of creation, which makes sense because the secular world we're dealing with the material world integration. and the value of creation depends on what God will save in the end. And the story of scripture is that this earth is eternal. Yes, Jesus came to seek and save the lost souls. See Luke 19 10, but he didn't just come to seek and save lost souls. Colossians 1 20 tells us that Christ came to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. In other words, The gospel is not just good news for our souls. It is good news for the cosmos, for the entire world, for all of creation. And if that's true, then the work you do with the quote unquote spiritual realm, saving souls, writing, check to your church, whatever, and the material world that Christ's blood redeemed, typing on MacBooks made from the aluminum of this earth, planting a garden, hunting a bear, whatever, must matter deeply to God because Jesus's blood and sacrifice paid to redeem all of it. We as Christians have to value most highly what God most values as determined by what the resurrection won back, right? And the story of scripture is he won back all Jesus's Lord over every square inch of creation. His blessings have come to make God's blessings flow far as the curse is found. And so our work with the material world matters greatly to God. What contribution to the conversation around work were you looking to make that hasn't been made already? There's been some books, not a lot actually, not a lot, but there's some, Tim Keller wrote one a few years ago, there's some others. What's the unique kind of thumbprint do you think that you're bringing to this conversation? Yeah, I think the argument that I'm elevating that, listen, there's nothing to under the sun, right? But the argument that I'm elevating that's been buried in other books like Tim's Great One, like John Mark Comber's Great One. is this Christians are at a place where we understand that our work matters for eternity because we can leverage it to the instrumental end of sharing the gospel. Right. But if that's it, then most of us are wasting 99.9% of our time. And I think this is rooted in this very new lie in the church that says that the great commission to save souls is the totality of Christian mission. That's a lie and a really dangerous one for a whole lot of reasons. Number one, Jesus didn't say that the call to make disciples was the only call of our life. In fact, he said, make disciples and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you to do. Number two, ironically, it makes us less effective at the Great Commission when we treat it as the only commission, which we could get into if you want. And then finally, number three, it blocks us from seeing how our work matters for eternity. I quote this one pastor I'm not going to mention by name because I agree with him on a lot of other things. But I mentioned him in the book. He says, hey, the consequences of your job will not matter. the consequences of your mission. And here he's talking about the great commission will. That's a lie, right? The truth we see in scripture is our work has instrumental value of carrying out the great commission and intrinsic value because it's what God created us to do pre-sin. See Genesis one, it's what he redeemed us to do after Christ came to earth, see Ephesians two. And oh, by the way, spoiler alert, what we're going to be doing for eternity on the new earth, see Isaiah 65. Amen. Okay, so why aren't you sharing that name? Because that's probably going to go right into my next question. Why wouldn't you share it? They wrote in the book. Yeah, who is it? I'll do it. So this is Rick Warren. This is Straight From Purpose Driven Life. One of the best-selling books of all time. He says that the gospel, the whole reason, quote unquote, Christ came to earth was to save you and me. No, it's not. And by the way, if it is, then Jesus is only a partial winner because... In the beginning, God called all things good, spiritual and material. Satan broke all things in Genesis 3. And so, if the Redeemer that God promised doesn't truly crush Satan's head and win back everything that was broken at the fall, then God has failed. And that's what we're accusing him of when we say that the whole reason Christ came to earth was to save you and me, or my favorite that I hear from pastors all the time, the only two things that last for eternity are God's word and people. That's a lie. this earth is material, why that matters? I'll give you two reasons. Number one, it makes more the resurrection. It says that, no, we believe that Christ's victory on the cross was sufficient to redeem everything in this world. And number two, our work with that material world matters, going back to what we said a few minutes ago, right? That's why this matters so much that we get this right. And so, but Rick Warren's argument, listen, it's following his logic. It makes sense. He says, Hey, Jesus only came to save you and me, and so the consequences of your job will not last. Those two things together make sense. But if the good news of the gospel is Jesus came to make all things new, then my work with all things matters to God. My work matters 100% of the time to God, not just the 1% of my time I spend walking somebody through the Romans road. Yeah, we could and probably should go down the rabbit hole right now. We talked about this a little bit when we had John Burke on, we had him on twice, the near-death experience guru. I think we've done a really huge disservice in painting heaven in an inaccurate way, and even painting heaven as the destination. People, there was an old song, This World Is Not My Home, and I hate to break it to you, it is. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, it is. It is. Not only are you living here right now at your home, but it was created to be your home. God created the earth and put Adam and Eve on it. And a theology of the new heavens and new earth means that Jesus is redeeming and restoring all things, including all physical things that are with us. So there's a big outage here. And this is my way to tell you, dude, we really need your voice here. I'm glad you wrote this book. In fact, the folks you just mentioned, I know them all personally, or at least knew them. Tim is gone now. I probably knew him least of the other two. But... They are not qualified to write this book. Why do you say that? Because they're not practitioners? Because they haven't had the kind of job that other people have had to be able to connect the dots. It's, you know, Tim just wanted to read books all day and he did and we needed him to do that was part of his work actually. and he did amazing things and it's a massive, massive blow to us for having him gone. We need more of him. He was a gift, but that's not the kind of job that people are going to lay to. John Mark, he's a monk. He wants to be a monk. That's where he is. God bless him. Love him. He's a friend of mine. Love him. You know? And Rick was just nonstop, build the church, do... purpose-driven life and building the church, that's kind of my job. There is business-like elements to it, but it's just not the same as someone like you who've had to give yourself a pep talk when you've gone into me to quarterly sales earnings and you've had to go in and sell investors on a thing. That's just a kind of work that people who write books from a Christian perspective just have never done. So it's all theory. So I'm really excited you building into people with a work experience that's more relatable to the average person. I appreciate you saying that. And I'm thrilled that early readers say that comes through in the practicality of this book. So we've been talking really theological. This book has 24 practices in it. I don't want the book to just be interesting and like, oh my gosh, I never thought of that before. That's great. What do we do with that? Once we understand that 100% of our time at work has the potential to matter for eternity, How do we make our current job matter more in the grand scheme of eternity? How do we store up, as Jesus said, through our work, more treasures in heaven and eternal rewards? How do we leverage our job to make more disciples in a post-Christian context without leaving tracks in the break room? That's where the rubber hits the road, and that's what I'm excited to unpack in the book. Yeah. So let's go back to something you said earlier. Give us a treatise. on why our work does matter right now and why it will endure the work of our hands right now, how and why it can endure. Yeah, it's a great question. So the subtitle of this book is four ways your job matters for eternity, even when you're not sharing the gospel. So let me give a high level overview of those. And then I'm going to dig deep into how does the literal work of our hands last for eternity, because that's one of my favorite topics. So number one, your work matters for eternity because it's a vehicle for bringing God eternal pleasure. Psalm 37 23 says that the Lord directs the steps of the godly and delights in every detail of their lives. God does not just delight in watching you give money to Crossroads. Right. He doesn't just delight. He delights in that greatly. Oh, it's one of his greatest delights. You can make God smile right now. Don't you want to do that? Come on. The affiliate link below. No, listen, he delights in every zoom meeting we lead, every email we type, every tree that we root out of the ground, anything we do with excellence and love and in a godly way. is an ingredient to God's eternal pleasure. That's the first way your work matters for eternity. Number two, your work matters for eternity because through it, you can scratch off the thin veil between heaven and earth, reviewing a glimpse of the kingdom of God in the present. That's very mysterious. We can unpack that more if you want. Number three, your work matters for eternity because it is largely through your work that you earn eternal rewards, which we never talk about in the church. And this is not to earn our salvation, right? But we earn rewards that Jesus was constantly talking about treasures in heaven, increased job responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. And then finally- Incentivizing us, incentivizing us by telling us about that, yes. Let's come back to this a minute. And then finally, fourthly, you work matters for eternity because yes, you can leverage it to the instrumental end of sharing the gospel with those you work with. And in my experience, the people who are most effective at making disciples at work, are the people who understand that their time at work matters to God, even when they're not sharing the gospel. Because those people who understand that 100% of it is seen by God are fully alive image bearers. And that's who attracts the lost like honey attracts bees. So at a high level, those are four, and not a comprehensive list, right? But four of the ways our work matters for eternity, we can go deeper wherever you want to there, Brian. Yeah, well, let's go into the more tactical thing. Yeah. But maybe most practical. Do you believe it's possible for someone to be in construction and the house they've just built is going to actually be in the next life? I, I don't think it's just possible. I think it is probable if that house was constructed with excellence and love in accordance with God's commands. How can I say that? So first of all, there's so much bad theology we got to unpack here. First of all, we hit on heaven. Heaven, nobody is going to spend eternity in heaven. Not one person will spend eternity in heaven. We are going to spend eternity on the new earth when Christ fully and permanently rips the veil between God's dimension of heaven where the souls of the redeemed are with God right now in our dimension of earth and renews all things, okay? And on that earth, this is not merely a return to Eden. God could have described our eternal dwelling place as just a return to the Garden of Eden. That's not what he did. Isaiah chapter 60, Isaiah has this prophetic vision and he's looking at the New Jerusalem and he sees the kings of the world coming into the New Jerusalem, but they're not coming empty handed. In their hands, they are bringing with them what Isaiah 60 calls the wealth of the nations. In a parallel vision of Revelation 21, John calls these the glory of the nations. What is this? Isaiah lists a few of them. He says that there are ships built by the nation of Tarshish, incense refined by some nation called Sheba, refined silver and gold. These are works of human hands. And Isaiah and John are watching Jesus welcome these cultural goods into the new Jerusalem. The implication, of course, that these prophetic visions suggest is that some of the works of our hands, a house we're building, a book we're writing, a truck we're repairing, whatever, has the chance of literally and physically lasting onto the new earth as an offering of worship to Christ. Who was it? It was Stephen. That's excellent. Thank you. Who's that? That, uh, oh, Stephen Covey way, way back when seven habits of a highly effective people. One of his start with the end in mind. Yes. And I think this is really important for us because what is our end? We could say my end is when I die, my end is whenever it is. And a lot of Christians, their end in mind is I go to heaven. This is really important because if we're gonna start with the end of mind, what we have as that end is critical. And we're already touching on some of these fallacies right now. You said we don't live in heaven forever. When I say we live in heaven forever, I'm defining because heaven is here on this earth. We're living here forever. But you know, we have these things like, okay, if my end is some immaterial existence, Jesus got resurrected from the dead, modeling, just as Romans says, just as the same spirit gave life to his mortal body, resurrected from the dead will give life to your mortal body as well. We're resurrected physically. So there has to be some place for us to go physically. it's here in this planet. So that's one thing. If our end in mind is some ethereal, milky existence in the clouds, that's going to tell us here that Pound and Nails is of nothing. And then the other... Yeah, by the way, Brian, sorry, before we move on, because you brought up the resurrected Christ as a template for what we can expect for eternity, right? Not only does that show physical continuity But in the resurrected Christ, there's also physical continuity of the work of human hands. Think about this. Right. Those nail scars in Jesus' hands that we're going to see for eternity, that were a part of the resurrection, that was an act of obscenity, of evil, of the work of human hands. But even that work has been redeemed and is physically present for all eternity with us. Yes. Well, and this is touched on another thing, the end in mind that's wrong. We've, we hear people say, well, I hope you like worshiping, because if you don't like worshiping, you're going to have an awful time in heaven. That's all we're going to do is sing to sing to Jesus along with all the angels. And of course, the problem there is nowhere in the Bible do angels sing. They don't sing. They, when they come at Christmas, they say, they say things. They say things. Secondly, this afterworld, like if all I'm talking about is endless worship service, jeesh, jeesh. We can worship for eternity and connect with God for eternity by singing. That can happen, but also by subduing, ruling, building, all the things that you and I may love to do physically. Who says those things end? Not God. I'll tell you that for free. Listen, Most of us spend more time planning a one week vacation than we do thinking about eternity. Right. What happens is we settle for these wishy washy half truths peddled by culture about heaven. Then we do the whole truth found in scripture. And one of those half truths, as you pointed out, that I talk about in the sacredness of secular work, is that we will worship for all eternity. And that's not true. The whole truth is that we will worship by singing sure and also working with our hands. Let me just give you one biblical passage of many as evidence. Isaiah 65, God says, see, I will create a new heavens and a new earth. My people will build houses and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands and they will not labor in vain. God's word doesn't say that we will sing Lord, I lift your name on high forever and ever or recline in a hammock forever and ever. We will reign with Christ and for Christ forever and ever. And that means in part that we will work with him forever. And if you love your job, oh my word, that promise should make you ecstatic about the new earth. And oh, by the way, if you hate your job, that promise should give you great hope because there is coming a day when every one of God's chosen people will long enjoy the work of their hands. And this is work as it was meant to be pre-sin. Without the thorns and thistles of the curse, it is work that is challenging but satisfying, difficult but fruitful, all honey and no bees. Right. The curse was fruitless labor, not labor. Correct. Right now I'm doing some things with my hands that I think regularly. I may be doing this forever. I'm restoring a 1978 Jeep CJ-7. It's great. And I'm thinking, you know what? I might be restoring old muscle cars in heaven. That could be really fun. I'm planning on building a barn on my property. A little side, not a huge, massive thing, but just something with wood siding kind of fun. And I really geek out over that process. It's one of the reasons why I've never thought about, or I've never really seriously considered buying a second house. isn't just because I don't have the money to buy a second house, but it's also because I would love the building of it. And then once it's built, I don't know that I'd actually use it. Cause I like the process of, of forming things, building things. That's, that's a sacred thing. And I don't, I don't think that stops in heaven. It doesn't stop in heaven. I'll give you one more reason not to buy the second house. This is tied to what we've been talking about. It's eternal rewards, right? I, the whole concept of a bucket list. I Listen, I got no inherent problem with the bucket list. I do have a problem with the underlying thought process of it. The whole idea assumes that the only chance we have to enjoy the best places, the best experiences like a second home this world has to offer is when we die and kick the bucket. That's a lie that the devil is peddling in this day and age. And once we replace these half truths about heaven peddled by culture with the whole truth of the scripture, we see that we're going to have the only time to do it to experience these things. But As you mentioned a few minutes ago, Brian, scripture also makes it clear that while our entrance into the kingdom of heaven is by grace through faith, the rewards we receive will vary widely based on how we steward this life. And so for that reason, man, I think more Christians need to be building anti bucket lists, catalogs of things we will strive not to do on this side of eternity so that we can accumulate as many eternal rewards as possible. For me. I got the money to buy a second, third home. I haven't done that. And I'm not saying that's wrong for you. I'm just convicted that's wrong for me. I'm choosing to sacrifice that pleasure so that I can store up more eternal rewards. And will God reward me with a second, third home in the new earth? I don't know, but I do know that whatever that reward is will be far easily worth it compared to what I sacrificed in this life. But if you have that money, you're not sacrificing it, you're saving it. Well. I'm spending it for you. I'm investing it for eternity. OK. And money's not in my bank account. I'm investing it. All right. And investing in your brokerage account or investing in ministries? I'm investing it in things that I think will last for eternity. And yes, that includes a lot of ministries. Savings is another one to press up on. We're blurring the lines between our topic here. I'm in a, I've started coaching other senior pastors. So I've got a zoom call with them once a month and I follow up with them and I'm just sharing some things with them. And, and one of the things that we've really bumped into is philosophy of money and everyone wants to know how Crossroads has grown as fast as we have and as, as large as we are and you know, everyone wants to know, but no one wants to do the things that we've done. So I tell people, yeah, we've got right now we have three weeks cash on hand. And they're like, wait, what? But then you got like your brokerage. No, no, three, three weeks. Is this unusual for you? I said, I said, so this unusual, I said, no, we've been sometimes 10 days. I think the most we ever had is two months. And I said. What are you saving your money for? All savings is delayed spending. That's all it is. You're saving it because you're weighing to have enough to spend it on something. And then someone will invariably say, hey, but yeah, but you know, there was Joseph who had to save for seven years to have six years for the famine and all that stuff. And I say, well, okay, first of all, first of all, one. God told him that in no uncertain term. He told him. Exactly. Right, and two, he did spend it all that was meant to be spent. And three, I've been, I'm gonna cross this for 28 years now. I've been through four famine cycles and we've never had a famine. And I say to these guys, anybody else, I said, saving it for what? For a rainy day? It's raining. It's raining right now. Do you not see what's happening in the world? Do you not see the border crisis? Do you not see the poverty situation? Do you not see church attendance going down, down? Suicide going up, up? Do you not see if there's not enough credible witnesses of who Jesus is? Save for rain? It's raining. I can't imagine a scenario where it's more rainy than it is right now. And I think the reason why we've globbed on these things and held on to these things is we really don't believe in heaven and we really do not believe. and reward in heaven. We like the sermon, we like the philosophy, but it's called the aggressive life. 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And we also have bought this ridiculous false piety that says that we shouldn't be motivated by eternal rewards, that, oh, I should be motivated enough by God's glory. Listen, Jesus told us to be motivated by rewards and over and over and over and over. I think I say 25 passages in my book of this. Dr. Randy Alcorn says, yes, well, it may sound selfish to chase after eternal rewards. It is Christ command to us. So we should equally obey it. If we maintain that it's wrong to be motivated by rewards, we bring a serious accusation against Christ. End quote, Mike To Jesus Christ, when we do not chase after eternal rewards, everybody's chasing after reward. The question is, are you chasing after the reward of man's favor and approval in the present or God's favor and rewards, very concrete rewards for eternity? Right. Yeah. And the Bible says, you reap what you sow because it's trying to incentivize us to change our behavior so that we get more. more of what matters. Yeah, if we could, gosh, we would all have such a gift if we could probably all have wiped out of our brains anything we've been taught about Jesus and the Bible and just read the Bible with fresh eyes and without our biases, something might happen. It might be really cool. I love it. Okay, so here, let's talk about something else here. And I'll give you two of my frustrations. I'm gonna give you a lobby up with a softball and I'd like you to just hit these things. I'm frustrated with younger people and I'm frustrated with older people. Me too. Who do you want me to vent my frustrations about first? Young people. Okay, young people. I am frustrated how many young people expect to find work that actualizes them, expect that all they should do is follow their passion. expect that they should have some meaningful work, meaningful as defined by something that's humanitarian, something that plays well in social media, and aren't embracing things like welding, pouring concrete, or just, it's called a job, it's called work. I'm frustrated how many people buying into this, follow your passion, defined by, my work is gonna make me feel good and actualize. That's just not the kind of work I see in people's lives who I admire and in the Bible. agree, disagree. I both. So I do think we can find a lot of joy and meaning in work in, in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, Hey, there's nothing better than to eat, drink, enjoy the labor God has given you because that's a gift from God. The problem is a lot of young people are looking for work to bring them ultimate and cosmic joy. It's that old advice I used to get of Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. That's garbage advice, right? You know how I know? Genesis 3 says, curse is the ground. Work will be painful toil until the day I die, right? And so we got to accept that work is, even if you find a job you love. I love my work, right? But there are days where it feels like a J-O-B job, right? And it's always going to be that way until the new earth when we will long enjoy the work of our hands. Yeah, that's a good point. I think the people who are talking about, find a job you love, you never work a day in your life, those are generally wealthier, older people who've really arrived, and we forget about what it was like in the 20s. We forget that. You do earn a right to a kind of work that you can really enjoy much more than when you first start out. I just think old-fashioned work ethic is... just hard to find. There was a senior person here on staff at Crossroads. Crossroads, what do we have, Derek? We have too many staff. What is it, 350? I think it's 350. 350, I was devin. And a senior staff member told me that they had a younger staff member come to them and say, hey, how do I start making more of a contribution around here? Have my voice heard? Have a say in things? And he said to them, he said, loyalty. you show that you're loyal over the long haul. And that is not what this young staff person wanted to hear. They just thought if they had smart things to say, that they could influence an organization. Yeah, you do after years and years and years and years and years of hitting the same nail and being shown that you're faithful, not thoughtful, actually faithful. And I think that it's characteristic that we all need to be reminded of. Yeah, no doubt. And passion follows mastery, not the other way around. in my experience, you get to love what you do by getting really, really good at. Why? Because we are made in the image of the one who came to serve and not be served. The passion hypothesis is all about what a job can give me. I want instantaneous cosmic satisfaction from my job. Hey, you'll find, big joy, job that you love when you get freaking great at it. in service of other people. There's actually a really good study out of Yale. This is going back on seven, eight years ago now by this doctor. I don't believe she's a believer. Her name's Amy Resnetsky and she, she's studied over, she spent her whole career. She is. I led her to Christ last week. Actually she's, she's a believer. Oh my gosh. Praise God. She spent her whole career studying what leads people to describe their work as a calling as opposed to a job or a career. She Number one predictor, not whether or not I was passionate about the work when I started it. The number one predictor describing your work as a calling is the number of years you have spent practicing your craft. Why? Passion follows mastery, not the other way around. What a great line. Passion follows mastery. Great. OK. So enough for the younger folks. Here's my older folk rant. I am tired. And by older, it could just be someone who's 40, right? I am just tired. of talking to people who have careers that are going really well or they're making big jack and having big influence in their sector who think that the next step is working at a nonprofit. I don't understand the fantasy with getting out of the secular into the sacred. I don't understand the fantasy of getting out of. making money to begging people to give money to support your nonprofit. Invariably, there's not been a person I've met who I've seen and talked to that through, invariably, there's not a single person who I haven't said to them, that is a stupid goal. You need to stay where you are, influence the industry you're in, make great things, and give a larger percentage of your income to the nonprofit, because they're spending a lot more of their time than you think thinking about how to get people like you to give them money. That's the only way they survive. But for that believer, and this is real, if the Great Commission is the only commission, is there implicitly and explicitly told every single week for the pulpit, it makes all the sense of the world to leave. I don't want you to just wanna get, the Great Commission ain't the only commission. The first commission of Genesis 1 to make culture does not negate or cancel out the call to make disciples. Never once. In scripture, does God retract this first commission? And by the way, you know this, Brian, Matthew 28, go and make disciples. Go is not the command in the original Greek. A better translation is, as you are going, make disciples. The going is assumed. Actually, I did not know that. I did not know that. OK, all right, let's go. Give me a sermon. Go ahead. So the Greek word that we translate to go and go and make disciples, get real nerdy for a second, is what's called an aorist tense. passive participle. It's past tense. A far better translation according to New Testament scholars, you see this in the literal translation of the Bible, is as you are going, make disciples. The going was assumed. Jesus had assumed that they had already gone from that place and were already in the process of making disciples. And that changes everything for you and me. Everything. The Great Commission is not something you do only when you go on a short-term missions trip. or go and leave your job be a quote unquote full-time missionary. The Great Commission is something we are to be doing every day as we are going about the thing we are already doing, i.e. the first commission to make this world more useful for other human beings, benefit and enjoyment. I like that. So are there other commissions that we might not be seeing at the first commission, which is there in Genesis, you got the quote unquote, Great Commission. in the end of Matthew. Also, I'm going to have to look at the beginning of Acts to see if that participle is still there. That's really good because certainly though, they still did go. They still got on ships and went to places. But we still need people to literally go. Are there other commissions we should have our minds on? Listen, Jesus gave us 50 unique commandments, right? So there's lots of commands we are called to obey. I would argue these are the two big commissions that everything else falls under. Right. The first commission, to make this earth more useful for other human beings, benefit, enjoyment, and serve as God's rightful representatives in this world, i.e. be holy as I am holy, right? And this new great commission to make disciples as we go about that work. Yeah. This thing of work is just so rich and unmind. I'm so thankful that you've unmind that, again, as a person who's done some grunt work, maybe not physical grunt work, but just It's not just difficult, stressful, unspiritual work. I just, I think this is just great. One of the ways that Jesus came alive to me was when I realized that he wasn't a carpenter. You know, the Bible uses a word there, it's technon, which we've translated as carpenter. but it really means somebody who's just really technically supreme and really, really good in the trades. And most scholars now believe that it's most likely that he was a builder and probably used stone. We know that because his metaphors were all stone, stone metaphors, a lot of building metaphors, not a lot of wood, just one about taking the log out of your own eye. And also Nazareth is a stone quarry place. And here's where it really comes alive for me. When you take a look at stuff like how he fed the 5,000, he divides them up like he's doing a worksite, you know? Put the people here, put the people just like a foreman does in the worksite. Jesus becomes much more rich to me when I see him not as a carpenter who is by himself in his shop making a table for somebody, though he may have done that and he could have done that, but he comes out to me when I see like that he... dealt with the stress of hitting payroll. He dealt with the strategic logistics of how high to make my bid. He dealt with how to have a problem employee. And he always had problem employees. Even his 12 disciples, Judas was a problem. You know, he just, he becomes more rich with me. And I realized that, gosh, he went through work stresses. Yes. Yeah, no doubt. And this truth, has become too familiar to us, I think. You know, given the trajectory of Jesus' life, redeeming all things, the fact that he spent what most scholars estimate to be 80% of his adult life doing what you just described, Brian, should stop us in our tracks because God could have chosen for Jesus to grow up in the home of a priest like John the Baptist, where he would spend all of his days doing the spiritual work of prayer. He could have chosen for him to grow up in the home of a Pharisee like Paul, where he would spend all day long doing the spiritual work of studying Torah. Instead, he chose in his sovereignty for Jesus to grow up in the home of a small business owner named Joseph, where he would spend the vast majority of his time negotiating and making things with his hands. And if that doesn't give you, believer, intrinsic value to the work you do to make this world more useful for others today, I don't know. Jordan, how old are you? 37. When did you come into relationship with Christ? By God's grace, seven, but seriously when I was probably about 20. Okay. What's your reading habits, study habits, all that stuff? What I'm trying to get at, I'm trying to get people inspired. You have a real good grasp on the Word of God and history. You're a normal schmo, you're not normal, but you're a working stiff that's done. I'm not pastoring a church. Right, right. I'm running a tech startup. Yes, so I'm talking to you, I'm going, man, this guy can play at the highest levels in terms of spiritual wisdom and knowledge and all that stuff. So all of us can operate in your spiritual wealth. So what's your basic disciplines? How have you gotten to where you are right now? All right. So I spend, I try to spend an hour on the word every day. That's hard in some seasons, especially when I'm traveling, but that's the goal. I also read a ton of books and I'll give you like a really practical tip. The most valuable app I pay for on a monthly basis is an app called readwise. I only read on Kindle because my Kindle syncs with readwise and takes all of my highlights and notes and automatically uploads them to Evernote for me. And you can upload these to whatever app But that's been a game changer for me because this book, The Sacredness of Secular Work, I've been using highlights and notes that I took 10 years ago on books, right? So I've been just collecting and collecting and collecting all these ideas in a repository where I can actually make something of those notes and those highlights. And if you look at, if you look at this book, I think a third of this book are end notes. I think there's 400 end notes in this book. And I credit ReadWise for helping me keep track of it all over these years. I would say it's 25% of the book is Endnotes, but still it's pretty significant. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, it's fantastic. Okay, I didn't, Endnotes, you're saying there's an app, because I'm all Kindle all the time too. So you're saying there's an app that syncs with my Kindle account and will capture everything I've dog-eared and highlighted? ever in the past and in the future automatically. Why did you not tell me this to begin with? We would have ended this interview immediately. I wouldn't even need you. I said, I got what I need. I'm done. Dirt, are you on this? Got it. You're not a Kindle guy, are you? I'm not. I'm an old school paper guy. This app has converted more people to Kindle than the native. Okay, give it to me again. I'm sorry. Spell it out. Read. read wise, R-E-A-D-W-I-S-E. I think I spend $6 a month for this. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, Dirt's not gonna do Kindle with me. The only reason he reads books is so he has one thing that might be rubbing up against his hands that's clean and might be making them clean. That's his thing. It's like his daily wash and he'll turn pages. That's fair. Dude, this has been great. Is there anything you wanna talk about that I haven't asked you about? And I think you've hit on a lot of it. I would just, I would just leave listeners with Psalm 37 23. Once again, the Lord directs the steps of the godly and delights in every detail of their lives. And if you believe that will transform how you see your purpose at work, not just the spiritual stuff God delights in. anything you do with excellence and love and in a godly way is an ingredient to God's eternal pleasure. And so, lean into the Great Commission, yes, but also the First Commission, knowing that filling this earth and subduing it is the very thing God created you to do, redeemed you to do, and what you're going to be doing for eternity. All right, last question. Yep. Because we've spent all of our time trying to give people value to see their current job with value and to stay. in their current job. At least that's been my motivation. So last question, how do you know when you should leave your job? How do you know when you should look for something else? Is there any telltale signs? Man, that's such a good question. I talked to Russell Moore about this recently on my podcast when he was thinking about leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. And I love the advice that Tim Keller gave him privately that he shared publicly on my podcast. Says if your natural inclination is to leave somewhere, you should probably stay until it's abundantly clear you should leave. And if your natural inclination is to stay, then you should probably consider leaving sooner rather than later. So I don't know how practical that is for listeners, but I think about that a lot. uh, since Russell told that to me, I would also, I would also say this. If it's becoming abundantly clear in your time in the word, if there are coincidences that you can explain of people asking you to do the same thing that would require you to leave your job. Yeah, that might be the Holy spirit's leading, but absent that stay where you are. Do that job with excellence and love. See Paul's commands in scripture. I think it's first Corinthians seven where new believers are like, what now? And he said, uh, stay where you are, where God called you, when God called you, and just do that job for God's glory and the good of others. Man, give us an advertisement for yourself. Tell us how to find this book and do anything else you want to do. Yeah, so the book's called The Sacredness of Secular Work. You can buy on Amazon or wherever books are sold, but hey, pre-ordering books is weird, so I'm giving everybody an incentive to pre-order it before February 3rd. If you do, and go to jordanraynor.com and enter your order number, You can enter to win this epic trip we're giving away for you and a friend to go to France for a week to rehearse your eternal vocation of ruling and working with King Jesus on the new earth. You're gonna go to the most epic castle you've ever seen to rehearse Revelation 22.5 of reigning with Christ forever and ever. You're gonna go to a vineyard where we're gonna practice planting vineyards and eating their fruits, see Isaiah 65 and a whole bunch of other cool stuff that you can find at jordanrayner.com. You're going to have a one-on-one trip with people to Europe, just a random person who enters. Yeah, we're going to pick a random person. They're going to go with their friend for a week, and then I'm going to meet them for dinner to encourage them about the sacredness of their work. Yeah, because you could have a draining person for a whole week to hang out with. Oh, that'd be terrible. Nobody wants to spend a week with Jordan Rander, trust me. Dirt, why don't we think of these ideas? What a great idea. Our next book, we're just going to say, you know... put your order number and you can come and like, we'll slam a beer, whoever drinks it fast or something like that. I'm not taking people to France, but that's, that's pretty impressive. We can go camp. No, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna commit to camp with somebody. Are you kidding me? Oh, you can give them a beer. With the wrong person, that'd be horrible. I could slug a beer with anybody, like camping with somebody's sacred for me. Gosh, all right. All right, folks. You just got a master class on understanding some things you might not have understood before and even some thoughts that, Jordan or I might have dropped on you that are maybe beyond what you might have been thinking spiritually. That's okay. We're not here just to give you new thoughts. So I think you got a bunch of them. You're here to give yourself something to get moving. Take a step. Take an aggressive step. Aggressive step could be you lose your job, leave your job. Probably not. Aggressive steps. Probably going to be, you're going to go to your boss and tell them how thankful you are for your job and ask for more responsibility. Probably a more aggressive move is going to just Push back your retirement day whenever you thought that was going to be because you're going to value work, whatever it is, put this into place. Let's work about it. We'll see you next time on the aggressive life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and live events over at bryantome.com. My new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.