January 25, 2024 • 65 mins
In this episode, Pastors Brent McQuay and Jason Parks talk about living out our faith at work. We dive into how to be ambassadors for God's Kingdom right in our workplaces. Pastor Jason breaks down why it’s key to drop our egos and embrace our roles as representatives of God's kingdom. We chat about how biblical figures like Daniel can inspire us in our jobs today and get some practical tips on using our spiritual gifts wisely at work. This episode is perfect for anyone looking to bring more of their faith into their 9-to-5 and make a real impact in their workplace. Join us to discover how every day at work can be about more than just a paycheck.
If you're looking to get even more out of this podcast episode, check out the full sermon on the same topic on our YouTube channel https://go.clc.tv/ps43.
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Episode Transcript
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Hey, welcome back to another episode of between sermons
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where we are continuing our conversation from Sunday. And
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this is actually our last conversation we're going to
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be having about kingdom. And so that's been our
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theme over the last few weeks. And if you
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missed any of those messages or you want to
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hear a little bit more behind what we're talking
about today, go ahead and check those out online.
But today we get to have a conversation with
my good friend Pastor Jason Parks.
Just Jason.
Pastor Jason Parks, psalmist.
Oh, please.
No, you got title. Now. When should we expect
that single to drop?
My single will drop right after yours. I don't
want us to drop on the same day. Absolutely.
Yeah. Just sometimes when you follow the.
Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you that didn't
see the message, Jason opened up singing a song
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which is not your wheelhouse, but you carried it
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well. I mean, you sounded better than I would
have sounded if I had chosen.
Listen, I'm a strong tenor in the last row
of the choir, right. You put me into a
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choir and put me in the last row. I'm
going to hold it down now.
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If you move me up, that's still an improvement
over me. They don't let me in the choir.
They're like, you can watch the choir. Why don't
you go in the background and, I don't know,
run pro presenter for us or something?
I think an old version of me would be
embarrassed by that situation.
You've matured.
Yeah. And I'll get to kingdom stuff or whatever.
We could talk about that. But I guess in
my life, God is really showing me, like, ego
has to go. If you're going to be in
a space where people see you and all that
stuff, ego has to go. And if I can't
obey in small things like that, which maybe it's
not small, it is not small to me, but
maybe it is small to maybe someone who can
really, really sing, but it's huge. But if I
can't obey in that type of situation and let
my ego go, then he can't trust me with
other things. And my goal in my heart is
to always be submitted to God. And so if
that means embarrassing myself a little bit by singing
because he wanted a moment, I'm going to do
it. It was a moment. I'm just encouraging anyone
who wants to see the message, please do. Just
skip the first ten minutes.
Fast forward.
Just go to seven minutes in. I'm not sure
how long it was, and then you'll enjoy maybe
the rest.
Of it, but I love that. I love that
perspective too, of if you're going to actually die
to self, pick up your cross, then sometimes that
may seem extreme and sometimes that may mean singing
a song. Yeah. When you don't really want to.
Now, did you have to argue with the Holy
Spirit on that one? I did. That's a dumb
idea.
I did argue a little bit, but again, to
me that's the wrestle of.
Yeah, yeah.
Right. And it's when Holy Spirit reflected to me
what that conversation was about. Right. When I started
thinking about what I was thinking. Yeah, that's your
ego. If you sing to me in private, why
wouldn't you sing in public? Oh, that kind of
relationship.
Embarrassed to know me.
Yeah, it was a little wrestle. And then when
I started thinking about what I was thinking about,
I was like, man. And I just said, well,
I'll sing and it's just going to be me
singing to you. And that's how I'm going to
act like. I hope that's okay. It's going to
be me and you. I'm not leading anyone in
song. I'm not trying to be the chorus.
It just has make a joyful noise. Yeah.
And it was a noise.
Pleasant.
It was a noise. It was a noise. But
I will say I did hear some clcers supporting
me. They were singing along. So it wasn't just
me having a harmonic solo, it was a congregational.
I'm sure I made you sound better from that
front row.
I mean, man, you have strong lungs.
I don't know what I got, but it ain't
good for singing. That's for. So. Thankfully, the Holy
Spirit has never told me that I need to
sing at the start of message because if he
did, I would need like audible voice from heaven
to be like, okay, that's not just Brent being.
Having a weird moment.
We'll get you some auto tone, bro.
But man, for real, need it. I don't know
if it works that well, but I have been
in a place where and it feels weird when
you're like, God, that's not a good idea. How
do you tell the creator of the universe that
his idea is bad and yet we have the
audacity to do that all the time. We're like,
no, that's not a good idea.
Yeah, I guess I'll relate this to even the
series and kind of my purpose when we're talking
about the kingdom. One of the things that I
found out though, is when you really are an
ambassador and you have a king, you actually are
supposed to obey the king, amazing concept. That's actually
what's supposed to happen. Right. And there are things
that if I'm in a kingdom, we don't get
this context because of the type of government we're
in. Right. And so, of course, you have to
look up, okay, what is a monarchy? What happens
when there's a prime minister versus a president and
all that stuff? But in a most traditional sense
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of a kingdom, that king dictates everything. But that's
also because that king takes care of everything. Right.
And so for me, it was like, okay, I
have to be a living example of that. You
just can't preach it or talk about it. It
was in no way intentional. Right. It wasn't like
an object lesson. Let me do something real cute.
But as I reflect on it, it was like,
yeah, no, you have to recognize that even when
you don't understand it, the king wants you to
do this, and he also takes care of me
in ways that I can't explain. So I don't
know why you want me to do this, but
I also don't know why you've given me favor.
In those ways, sometimes not even on us to
figure out the why.
Right.
We just obey. I don't make a lot of
sense to me, but all right, you told me
to do it.
Listen, you've gone on some missions trips. You've gone
to some places that do not make sense to
me.
Well, they didn't make sense to me either.
They don't make sense.
My favorite is I took, this is so random.
So when I was pastoring in Blue Island, a
predominantly hispanic area of Chicagoland, I took a group
from that church to.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Makes a whole lot of sense. Like, no idea.
No idea why, but it was fantastic. It was
great.
But again, when you're following this kingdom perspective and
we're supposed to be ambassadors, again, from my research,
the king picks the ambassador. The king picks. And
then gives you the. And again, somebody may know
a lot more than me, but that's just how
it.
Yeah.
So if it's Siberia for this trip.
That'S where I'm going.
I need you in Siberia. I'll take care of
you while you're in Siberia. Come on back and
I will do other things that are beyond your
control for that's. I'm really leaning into this kingdom.
Mean, I don't understand everything perfectly.
Yeah, but you said something great yesterday that I
was like, yes, I need people to get this.
And that is just simply that in three messages
for 30 minutes a message and even add in
the podcast. It's still not nearly enough time to
talk about everything that this concept of kingdom entails.
Or even. Just. Even if you just sliced it
down to being an ambassador, right. We could talk
about being an ambassador for 52 weeks and still
not cover everything that we could possibly cover.
Right.
What I love to hear is you saying this
is something that you're going to be thinking about
more, because when we do a series, we want
that to take place. We want people to go,
okay, this isn't just something we're doing for a
couple of weeks. How does this affect the way
I'm thinking and acting and living and man now
when I'm reading scripture, it's happened to me a
bunch lately. I'm reading through the Bible. Every time
the word kingdom is mentioned, there's something in my
brain that's just like, pay attention. Right? And so
if more people start reading through scripture and every
time we're singing a song about he's the king
of kings, what does that mean? Sometimes it just
becomes words. But the words, there's a purpose behind
it. There's a meaning behind it. There's a depth
there that I want to encourage people to keep
digging that not just take the three weeks and
be like, all right, I got everything I needed
from kingdom moving on to the next thing. What's
the next thing we're doing? Relationships. All right, forget
about kingdom now.
It's mean. And I'll say this, there are preachers
out here that kind of live this kingdom life.
I think Tony Evans does a really great job
of integrating this concept of kingdom into applicable. You
know, he has kingdom man and kingdom woman and
kingdom family, and I think he does a great
job. So I would certainly recommend those, especially the
kingdom man book. I've definitely read and done that
Bible study, and so it's good to have those
types of resources because we're not alone in trying
to figure this out. Nor is it brand new
either. But leaning into it more and more, I
recognize that my perspective and the lens that I
see things has been just not as clear as
I thought it was. Right. And there's this great
book. I can't remember the name of it, but
I'll look it up. The book talks about how
our westernized viewpoint has kind of, yeah, we kind
of messed up how we see a lot of
the biblical stories, and that's really the basis of
why we need to study the word and understand
historical context and all of that, not just kind
of read on a surface. And then it's not
isegesis, right. It's not. Oh, that scripture really works
for me and where I want to go. Right.
But it takes time to understand just the concept
of, okay, I have a king and, okay, what
does that mean? And who is this king? And
finding that language about the king. Yeah.
Because, I mean, when we're in a culture where
we have a president and not a king and
we can like our president, we cannot like our
president, we can throw shoes at our president, we
can make fun of our president. We can do
all of these things that happened several years ago.
You got the reference. Come on, now. I'm not
Bush. I'm that old. Yeah, it was Bush. So
there's all of these. We don't view our president
the way the biblical writers would have viewed their
king.
Right.
And so sometimes we have to stop reading through
the filter of a western, modern brain and start
reading scripture. Okay, what was the audience and that
really, man, I'm excited. I get to teach a
course in our next round of Life University about
biblical interpretation. And so how do we actually understand
scripture? And so we're going to be talking a
lot about context and who's the audience learning how
to do all those things.
It'll shape you when you find out what scripture
means.
Oh, man.
It'll shape you. It'll check you. And to me,
that's why when you look at Hebrews four and
scripture says, like, the word of God is alive,
right. And it's active and it's so sharp that
it can separate bone and marrow. Right. Soul and
spirit. And it is so sharp that it will
actually help you discern the very intent and the
thoughts of your heart. And when we get to
the place of seeing scripture like that, it'll start
shaping us. It'll start shaping us. So I'm looking
forward to Bible university. I'm going to call it
Bible University because that's what you're going to learn.
Up in life university.
Life university.
There you go. It's all good, man. Okay, so
I've got to ask. So this is going to
be kind of a little bit of a background
question. So the start of the series, people kept
saying that I was spicy, and I didn't think
I was spicy, but they were a little bit.
But so I don't know what label to throw
on what you were on Sunday. I think the
best term would be to steal from Joe Sangle
and just say you were fired up.
I was fired up.
You were fired up. And so walk me through
why? What was going on during the week that
lit a fire in your spirit that you got
up there and you were as fired up as.
I don't think I've ever been that fired up.
Certainly it was the subject matter, but all week
it starts before last week, it's just been a
season of kind of spiritual warfare. And I don't
throw that around carelessly. I don't. And I don't
like to make things dramatic because life happens. And
a lot of times we try to over spiritualize
things.
For me, it's like, no, you just didn't eat.
Well, the devil wants to mess up my finances.
No, you missed the due date.
You didn't pay the bill.
But it's been the season where it's felt like
these various things, and most of them are internal.
It's not, oh, the house burned out. It's none
of that. It's more doubt about what my calling
is than ever before. More doubt of how I'm
doing as a father, more doubt of, okay, are
you really doing great as a husband or all
of these things or how good can the other
shoe has to drop, right. All of that. I
remember in a week, I had a major car
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issue. A brand new washing machine went out and
flooded the first floor. The second floor toilet flooded
for no reason. It just was water coming out
of the toilet all of a sudden. And that
came down to the first floor. Several thousand dollars
worth of repairs and things like that. And so
I remember this was a turning point where I
said, I'm going to fight differently. When the washing
machine broke and I ordered another washing machine, it
was brand new, and they installed it and it
broke and flooded the first floor. I told my
wife, I said, get a mop, turn on some
worship music, because we're going to fight like this.
So it started a few weeks back.
You've been going through it?
Going through it and deciding that I was going
to fight my battles differently, through worship, through prayer,
getting more focused on scripture. And so going into
our fast this month, I was even more focused.
And so again, it started revving up. Oh, here's
some chest pains. Take that. Oh, you're having a
stroke. Nothing's happening. Maybe you or other folks can
identify this, but I have the type of imagination,
and if I allow it to go down a
trail of thought, it will take me into dark
places. It's like, well, how did I get here?
Start googling your symptoms.
All of a sudden, it's like, okay, a small
chest pain turns into, okay, I need to find
a wheelchair. Okay. How would Jennifer get me in
and out the house if something happens? And so
again, I started thinking about what I was thinking
about. And holy spirit, of course, just began to
say, hey, no, you actually can declare the word
of God. You are healed. Don't allow this to
keep going. So it was chest pains and all
these kind of just weird stuff. I broke out.
I am not want to get sick at all
or anything. No allergies. And all of a sudden
I had a breakout on my body. It's like
I didn't eat anything that I don't normally eat.
And so it was just constant pestering. And I
think I got fed up. Friday when he says,
just tell them you can't preach. Just tell them
you've gone through too much to preach. And that's
when I said this whole thing was to try
to get me there. And so it was a
very difficult week internally. I didn't let on anybody
else what was going on, but it was just
a lot of warfare to try to keep me
from getting to that point. And on my way
to church is where the. I'm going to worship
God. Okay, that's cool. I'm a worship God. No,
actually, it's going to look a little different than
what you're. I need you to this song that
has been in you all week. Sing that song.
I know we say tell the truth and shame
the devil. No, you're going to bring to open
shame what the enemy has tried to do in
private. You're going to publicly disclose what you've gone
through and that you are still victorious and you
still showed up and all of that. And I
was mad in the car. I mean, the music
was turned up. I'm singing I'm mad like, I
will not let the devil win. You're not going
to stop me. So that's the last couple of
weeks. But that's what happened and got me to
that point where I'm going to draw a line.
And holy spirit has really been helping me focus
on embracing the authority you have been given, embracing
the power that you have been given by Jesus,
by what he did. It includes these types of
things, right. And so take authority, stand strong and
let people know, hey, I'm not ashamed of the
fact that it was a rough week and I'm
here anyway. Yeah, that was a lot of background.
A lot of this. I promise we are going
to get to the kingdom stuff. But there was
something that you said that I just feel like
I need to highlight for everybody listening you said
you started thinking about what you're thinking about. And
I think that that is a skill set, that
is an activity that not enough people engage in
that they become comfortable with. Well, these are the
thoughts. And so that's what I'm thinking. But we
do need to. The Bible tells us, take every
thought captive.
Right.
How do you take a thought captive if you're
not thinking about what you're thinking about?
Right.
And recognizing. Man, my thought pattern, it seems like
every time this thing happens, my thoughts go here,
when I know, based on scripture, they need to
go here. And so I think more people need
to take a moment and stop and say, okay,
what's my thought pattern been like over the last
24 hours, over the last seven days? What have
I been thinking about the most? Is there an
anxiety? Is there a fear? Is there a worry?
Is there something that I've been stressing over and
dwelling on? Is there a sin that I'm battling?
But my thoughts are just constantly thinking about that
thing. We use the example, stop thinking about a
pink elephant. Immediately you're going to be thinking about
a pink elephant. So if you're battling sin, but
all you're doing is thinking about how you're battling
sin, you're going to lose the battle.
Right.
And so we've got to learn how to take
every thought captive, how to actually think about what
we're thinking about and do something about that. I
just wanted to kind of give that little pause.
You can do whatever you want, and I want
to help someone. At least let me share my
process of that.
Yeah.
Internally. Right. Because I've heard people say it, they
don't necessarily tell you how to do it. And
I want to make sure that we make a
distinction between what, let's say, modern psychology or a
psychiatrist would tell you versus helping us stay in
a biblical perspective of that. And so in that
scripture, we are to cast down any imagination or
argument in a global sense. If it's argument about
the divinity of Christ on a big scale, or
if it's any argument that says that I am
not new, I'm really not saved. So you cast
that down, you bring it into captivity, but it's
in relation to it trying to exalt itself above
the knowledge of Christ, right. The knowledge of what
we know. And so it has to be this
thought, okay, I should not preach on Sunday. Tell
them not to preach. Okay? This is what I
do. Who would actually tell me to preach? To
preach and not preach. Would God ever tell me
when I have already been assigned when I know
it's part of my calling, when I have the
assignments come from heaven. But if my leader here
on earth says, here, I want you to preach
on this, who would tell me to backtrack on
all of that and just go with how I'm
feeling? That would not be God.
No.
Okay, hold on. Okay. God, that's not you. Okay.
This thought, when I compare it and it tries
to rise above what I know, how God would
communicate with me, what God's character is, what his
words, when it conflicts against that, I capture it
and say, I will not do anything. And I
literally will verbalize something. I will speak scripture right.
Or I will say, in that instance, I'm going
to preach to bring God glory. I'm going to
preach because, enemy, you don't want me to. So
I'm going to do it right. So that is
kind of my pride. I always compare what's very
important that I point out here. I always compare
it to what I know to be true of
God. Now, that does take some work. You have
to read the word, right. We only know God.
You can only know what he's saying.
If you know what he's saying. Right. And so
I compare those thoughts, and I discern who would
this be from? Who would tell, this is not
God? If it's condemnation, that is not God. If
the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit is
convicting me of something, it always leads me back
to God. So if I do something. Hey, don't
do that. That's not glorifying God. However, if you
do this, this will glorify God. Right. It's always
that. That's how I distinguish conviction from condemnation. So
that's how I capture thoughts. I'm sure there's more
eloquent examples of that.
But for me, fantastic. I love it.
That's how I nip it in a butt.
I like it. I think you helped some people
just there.
I hope so. I think if you're not thinking
about what you're thinking about, you will go down
a trail. And that's what the enemy does. He
influences us. Through distraction, he influences us, I'll say,
mentally and spiritually. And really, it's us who give
him that open door. We have to give into
it. And so our thought life is very important.
Yeah. And it's really dangerous when we go on
autopilot with stuff and we're just going through the
motions. We're just thinking the thoughts and moving on.
So we got to kind of switch off of
the autopilot and actually take stock in. Okay, what
am I thinking about? Why am I thinking about
that? Is that a good thing to be thinking
about? Not a good thing to be thinking about.
Yeah, I think that there's a practice in that,
that I think people need to exercise. I would
say on a daily basis, 100%, but, yeah. Cool.
I think you get better and better at it
over time. I'm not great at it, but I'm
trusting God to continue to grow.
Yeah. And there's going to be moments of weakness
when you're not as good at it, and then
there's moments when holy spirit strengthens you and you're
great at it.
And I'll just say this, and we can move
on. But that's why also having the right people
around you is so important.
Because if you're like, pastor, well, I'm.
Just saying that wasn't even a plug for the
life group season that's coming up, starting February 25.
But even if you can't see what's happening, someone
else who knows you and praying for you and
you're accountable to and all of that, they can
say, no, that's not you. I've literally had people
say, that's not you. And it was that. That
shook me, like, well, no, that actually isn't. You're
right. Oh, man. Right. And so it's not okay.
I have to control every thought all the time.
It's not that. It's that and having community that
knows you and a community that sees you and
prays for you, et cetera. So I just want
to make sure people know that life groups is
a perfect place to find that community, especially since
our life group season is starting February 25.
Yes. And you take your thoughts to them and
just say, man, I've been thinking about this a
lot lately, and I don't know if maybe this
is God, maybe this is a distraction.
I don't really know.
But let me take it to somebody that's got
some wisdom, some experience that knows me and knows
God, because I think sometimes we go for advice
to people that know us but not necessarily knowing
God, and that becomes a whole other subject matter
we could get into. But we need it right
there. We need people that know us but also
know God to be able to help us navigate
this stuff. All right, so, kingdom.
Yes.
So you made a big statement that I absolutely
loved. It's the concept of the kingdom needs to
be at work. At work, work. And so we
broke down, or you broke down. How we spend
the majority of our time in the workplace and
the danger comes when all of a sudden that
becomes this separate thing. So I've got my identity
as a citizen of the kingdom of God. I've
got this assignment to be an ambassador, and I'm
going to take that hat and put it on
the shelf and say, okay, but now I have
to go to work, and I've got to earn
my paycheck and do my job so I don't
get fired, so I can put food on the
table, so I can give my offerings to the
church. And so we separate the two things, which
I think is a huge mistake and directly opposes
what scripture tells us we need to bring the
kingdom to our workplace. So what was that revelation
like for you? Because you kind of shared a
story about how you were a citizen at work,
but you weren't an ambassador at work. And I
thought that was just, I.
Was a really good citizen, too. I did the
right things and didn't do anything wrong and treated
people fairly and loved them and et cetera. I
was a good citizen. And the difference between a
citizen and ambassador is that you can be a
citizen without going anywhere. It is essentially just who
you are connected to from a national perspective. You
don't have to do anything, and you're concerned, and
you really are concerned about your own rights and
privileges and being free to exercise those. And as
long as nothing kind of impedes on that, you're
okay. I'm a good citizen, right? I don't break
any laws. I'm a good citizen. An ambassador is
active. An ambassador has to recognize they're in a
foreign territory, they're ascent to a foreign territory, and
they are commissioned to be actively engaging in the
culture of where they are actively communicating about their
nation and their culture, actively doing it.
They have a job to do.
They have a job to do. And so an
ambassador is not an ambassador at all who does
not engage with someone that is not from their
nation. And so the story for me was that
when I was being a good citizen at work,
being right and all of that, someone found out
that I was a preacher. They saw me on
stage one day, and so they came and got
me when there was a coworker who had her
mother, a family member who was sick. Now, the
coworker was there, but the mother was in a
totally different city. So they came and got me
and said, well, hey, we saw you. We saw
you do. It's got to be something you can
do about this, right? And so that work culture
was asking me to engage. And so that's where
the. Okay. Citizens don't engage. I can just be
here. I want to be in my own right.
No, it's time for you to be an ambassador.
So I go into this room and it's like
ten people in there just waiting, looking for me.
And I'm like, well, what is this about? What
are we doing here? We need you to pray
and pray for her, but pray for her mother.
And so even to me, it was kind of
like, well, there's no laying hands on anyone then.
There's no organ in the background. There's none of
that. If you're going to pray, this prayer has
to work. And I mean, biblically, we see Jesus
doing it, right? But again, this whole kingdom concept
is recognizing that what has been given, whatever your
king has, he has given you as well, because
you're in his kingdom. And so we see jesus
speaking the word only when he heals someone's daughter.
And sending the words just your faith has made
this possible. So go, I don't even have to
be there, right? And so in that moment, it
was like, you just got to pray. And I
was timid. I mean, it was like, is this
going to be an HR violation? Like, am I
going to lose my.
I don't know what denomination these people.
Are or if not even saved, none of that.
There was no context, but they wanted me to
engage in that situation based upon someone saying, hey,
he's a preacher, or some, he can do something,
right. And so ended up praying and just praying
sincerely. And the mom recovered. I mean, it was
a dire situation. My understanding is that she ended
up recovering and being well. So I got outed
as an ambassador, right. It was forced upon me.
And so after know one co worker, I was
walking through, hey, pastor, and it's like, are y'all
just gonna say that it's over now? So I'm
outed as an ambassador at work.
I love that. It was basically like an intervention
at work, right? Like the Holy Spirit orchestrated an
intervention for you.
You're not going to do this, so I will.
We're going to bring some people around the room
to force you into this situation. But I think
that what people need to hear is that it
doesn't require that, right? You don't have to have
an intervention at work, and you don't have to
be a preacher. They don't have to see you
on a stage, on a YouTube video or whatever
in order to have that moment. I think God
has placed each of us where we're supposed to
be for a reason. And I think that there's
a challenge in how do we view what we're
doing in work as ministry, that it's not just
about punching a clock, taking home a paycheck, but
what does that look like? How do we navigate
that? So let's say somebody's listening to this and
they work in a restaurant as a server or
whatever, or somebody works in a factory. What does
this look like in practicality when it says, okay,
yes, you're there to do a job, but you're
also there for the kingdom as an ambassador? What
does that look like?
So it's two parts to that. Right. So in
my case, it was praying all that. So let
me separate that as you just did. Your character
really matters a lot at work. So I don't
want people to move towards action until they get
the character part you're doing before you be. You
have to be someone who is changed by Christ.
You have to be someone who loves people, as
Christ has told us. You have to be that
and embrace that. And we have to be consistent
in how we show up at times. And there's
this old saying that people may never read the
Bible. We're the only bible that they will read.
Right. We demonstrate something to people, and so our
character has to be such where we're honest with
people, we engage them genuinely, we show love. Right.
So let's take the case of a waitress. Right.
Your character and this decision to be excellent at
this job is where you can start. And so
showing up on time, there are times when you
have to give sacrificially, which means, hey, someone calls
off and they're looking for someone that can fill
in for them on a shift. It can be
in that moment saying, hey, you know, I can
take care of that. Is everything okay? Is there
a reason why you called off? That's one of
the first places I want to make sure I
accentuate there may be opportunities for you to be.
To represent the kingdom in saying, hey, I want
to care for you. The world misses a lot
of that. I want to care for you. Is
everything okay? You called off. Yeah, it's my mom,
my dad, or my kid. I couldn't find babysitting.
Okay. Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I
pray for you? Maybe that sounds weird, but if
this situation happens, maybe there's something I can do.
Let me pray, or let me.
That often can be that door that opens. Somebody
is sharing. And sometimes it's funny because for a
lot of even believers, our brain doesn't just automatically
go there. But it should. We were in Japan.
We're working with this guy. He's a Christian, he's
a believer. He's actually dedicating his whole life to
it. And we were out in the park, and
somebody mentioned that they had a headache. And so
Pastor Harry, who's on the trip, was like, why
don't we pray for that right now? And he
was just like, I mean, yeah, why don't we?
But in his mind, it was like, no, prayer
is the thing that we do when somebody asks
for it or the thing that we do at
church. But just this idea that our team, because
it happened with Harry but happened with others, it
was like the moment they saw a need, their
reaction was, let's stop what we're doing and let's
pray over this person. Pray about this. And I
think that in the workplace, we need to kind
of have the same mentality of, okay, when somebody
is like, man, I'm really not feeling well. Today
is our only reaction to say, oh, I'm sorry
to hear that. Moving on, right? Or do we
say, oh, man, I'm really sorry to hear about
that. Would you mind if I prayed for you?
And you can offer to pray. We taught this
in our evangelism course. You can offer to pray
right there in that moment. Or if it's a
busy work day and all this stuff, you can
just say, hey, you know what? After work, I
would love to pray for you. And if the
person says, no thanks.
Right, okay, no problem. That's fine.
No big deal.
And it's not about us. It really is about
meeting needs. Maybe it's not. You don't pray with
that person. Maybe it's an act of compassion, an
act of mercy where you can fill in a
gap for them. If you do that, over time,
people's how they see you will begin to change.
They begin to frame you as someone who is
connected to people. They will see you as someone
who actually cares and compassionate.
And then they're going to ask questions.
They're going to ask questions.
Why do you care about me so much?
Like, you don't even know me. And that's character
matters?
Absolutely.
And we want to skip over that part and
how we show up. I can tell you, as
someone who works in corporate America and within the
C suite, or what have you, decisions are made
based upon people's. I mean, I. You think it's
just work ethic. People care about character. So I
say that in the natural, in just a regular,
even in the corporate world, the corporate world, your
character matters, but when it comes to being an
ambassador, it really matters because it's the open door
where people can get to know Christ before you
even preach a message, they can see your character.
So practically speaking, being someone that has integrity, do
what you say, what you're going to do, and
then do what you're going to say. Doing the
right thing when no one's looking, because we are
working as unto the Lord and that type of
mentality helps us keep that high standard of excellence.
Could we just hit that right there? That. Do
what you say you're going to do. If somebody
asks you for something, you're like, oh, yeah, I'll
send that report out. They shouldn't have to come
back and say, hey, how come you didn't send
out that report, right? And if you're forgetful or
you're flighty, man, pull out your phone, set a
reminder. Do whatever you need to do. When I
was in high school, I had to wear a
rubber band to remind myself, oh, there's something I'm
supposed to grab from my locker. Whatever you need
to do, whatever tricks you need to utilize. Because
I think that a lot of people use forgetfulness
as a pass. It's like, well, I am trustworthy.
I just didn't do that thing the way I
said I was because I forgot. Well, then you're
not trustworthy.
I'll say this. Let's say that was really harsh,
by.
The way, what I just said.
Well, not you.
That's me.
No, I'm a jerk. We're used to you being
willing to say I messed up. Yeah, no excuses.
I missed that. And I apologize because I know
that's important to fill that gap. Let me get
it done.
Honestly, I have way more respect for somebody that
does that than somebody that gives me a weak
excuse. Somebody's like, oh, yeah, I was totally going
to send that. At the end of the day,
I just haven't gotten around to it yet. You
forgot about it. Tell me you forgot.
I'm not saying that I'm perfect at it. That's
easy. But I have found that the more I
practice that, to your point, I think more people
respect you as a person, as an individual, especially
if you're in leadership. I missed it. That's on
me, period, point blank. And eventually, if they'll ask,
is everything okay? Especially if it's not normal for
you, then you may want to throw in like,
man, it was the kids. Something happened this morning
or something happened this week. It threw me off.
But the most important part. Let me get that
thing to you.
We taught that in one of our leadership courses
in Lifeu. I don't even remember which one it
was, but it's this idea of like, when you
screw up, own the mistake, apologize for it. But
in your apology, you're not giving the excuses, you're
giving your solution.
Right?
So you're saying, hey, I know that's important for
you. I'm so sorry that I missed that deadline.
Here's what I can do. I can drop this
project that I'm doing right now. I can get
that out to you by 03:00 today. Will that
work? Instead of just leaving it as this. Oh,
yeah, my bad. Sorry. And then walking away, it's
like, no, if I screwed up, I'm going to
make it right. And here's how I'm going to
make it right. And being upfront with that man
as a leader, that carries a ton of weight.
And overall, again, the point here is how can
we practically walk out being an ambassador without it
being a big evangelistic movement. Right? The character piece,
owning mistakes, communicating well with people, being full of
mercy and grace and forgiveness for people when things
mess up and things don't always work out perfectly
all the time, but at least they know who
you are. And here's the something's different about you.
That's when you at least know you're on the
right track. You're just not like everyone else around
here.
That character piece is so huge. And I've got
to throw somebody on the bus. I won't name
his name because I love the man. So my
football coach in high school.
We can google that. You know that.
I know. And he's an amazing guy. Anyways, I'll
get to the point of this. So this man
would invent the most creative, obscene cussing that you
have ever heard in your life. I mean, his
motivational speeches for us to go win a game,
the references to anatomies and sexual acts. But it
was like over the top. I've had other coaches
that nowhere near the level of creativity in his
language use as this guy. He was like the
Gordon Ramsey of football coaches. He just had a
way with words. And I remember one year I
was going to miss the start of our two
a day camp by a few days because I
was going on a missions trip to Kenya. And
I was like. I was like, I'm dreading this
moment of having to tell my coach I'm not
going to be for the biggest practice of the
year. And I came to him and I'm like,
hey, I just got to let you know, I'm
going on this missions trip to Kenya. And, man,
I'm really sorry, the dates just. And he was
like, oh, wow, Brent, I didn't even know you
were a believer. I'm a believer, too. And in
that moment, I was like, no, you're not. As
a teenager, I was looking at this man going,
there's nothing about your character. There is nothing about
the way you function or operate that leads me
to believe you believe in the same Jesus as
me. Now, since that moment, I've seen, like, he
did the church that he goes to, he did
like a special father's day message and shared his
heart and stuff. And I've heard stories because he's
still coaching and all this stuff, and like, okay,
yes, he does love Jesus. There's evidence of it.
Maybe the four years I was at.
That school, it was early in the process.
Maybe he was a new believer. Right? Maybe early.
I don't know. I'm proud of him. Love the
guy. But that time when he dropped the bomb
on me that he was a believer, too, I
was like, I don't think you know what that
word means.
Yeah, it shouldn't be a shock, especially, again, going
back to work. We're spending seven, 8910 hours there.
Yeah, they should know.
At the very least, they should recognize you live
at a different standard.
Right. And so, again, practically, that character matters more
than anything because they're going to see that. They're
going to experience that more often, and then that
character leads to opportunities to go beyond. Now, I
think, okay. Personal prayer moments happens more often when
people recognize your character. I'll give you an example.
It is hard for someone to admit to you
that they have a need and they're willing to
accept prayer. Let's say they have an issue in
their marriage. Using that example, it's hard for them
to explain their struggle in their marriage. If your
character demonstrates that you're a gossiper, right. Why would
they ever disclose what's going on? What's creating this
chaos in their world if what they know of
you is that you can't hold water like you
can't hold anything? And so those personal prayer moments,
those moments to invite them to church, that happens
more often when we are consistent in how we
show up in terms of being excellent with our
work output, being consistent in our words and our
actions and all of that, really not living out
our faith. And so then the next step is
that, of course they'll tell you what's going on.
And you can then say, hey, I don't know
where you are in terms of your faith. I'm
a believer. I do believe prayer works. Do you
mind if I just say a quick prayer about
this? Because essentially, you caught them at the most
intimate moment of their life or in a moment
of their life. And so then it creates that
opportunity. But we have to start with character.
Absolutely. 100%. And I think that what character can
do is it opens up that door for people
to recognize there's something unique, there's something different here.
When you have great character, it just draws people
to you.
Right.
And in that drawing, that's when you can look
for those holy spirit open door moments. And so
when somebody says, I had a really rough night
last night, you can ask follow up questions. When
somebody says, man, I think my wife's going to
kick me out of the house, it's like, whoa,
man, what's going on? Let's talk. And so I
think that more believers need to be quick to
invite somebody for a cup of coffee than anything
else. That's a good point. Can we sit and
talk? Because I think a lot of times, offering
prayer or an invite to church for somebody, that's
just not a part of that culture, not a
part of that world. Those are weird concepts, right?
Give me your thoughts and prayers. That's fine. But
it creates this weird dynamic. But if you say,
hey, man, I hear you're hurting, and, man, is
there anything I can do? You want to grab
a cup of coffee after work? You can just
share with me what's going on. Yeah, let me
help. And if you're the kind of person, like
you said, that every time somebody gets a piece
of news, it's like, oh, yeah, so and so
told me about, then obviously they're going to be
like, no, I'm good.
Right.
But if you've demonstrated your character, if you've demonstrated
that you care for them in other ways, then
when that moment comes, they're more likely to say,
yeah, let's grab a cup of coffee. I do
need to talk to somebody because you may not
be the paid counselor in their life, but, man,
you have no idea how much counseling happens over
a cup of coffee.
Right? It's huge. I think it's important, too. And
this is, I'm not changing the subject, but another
aspect of this, where our character comes out, is
in success. I have seen people like, they are
good citizens and ambassadors when we are all on
the same level, for lack of a better term,
and then all.
Of a sudden they get a promotion.
Somebody gets a promotion and they lose it. It's
like, what happened? Are you the same person? And
so even handling success matters. I do believe that
God's people, we have favor on our life. I
believe that not everyone is rich and all of
that, but there are times when God says, hey,
you're my person. I'm not going to allow this
to happen to you. And we have to navigate
those situations again. When it's something where, okay, you
keep me from getting fired, it's fine. But when
God says, okay, no, I kind of want you
to be in a position of influence. We have
to navigate that well. I actually believe that the
first six chapters of Daniel has so many instances
where he navigates promotion well. He even navigates not
being seen well. He worked under three different kings,
and so each king had a different situation. We
know, of course, Daniel's dream interpretation played a role
in it. But if you notice, between Nebuchadnezzar and
Nebuchadnezzar's son, whose name I always butchered, Bethesda Zazar,
or something like that, the reality is that with
Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel had prominence, he had rank. When you
get to Nebuchadnezzar's son, Daniel is not as high
up there anymore, because they had to go find
him. It was actually the queen or the king's
wife that said, hey, there's this guy in the
kingdom somewhere. If Daniel was as prominent as he
was with Nebuchadnezzar, no one would have to.
He's in his.
Yeah, yeah. He would have been like, yeah, go
get the guy that has always been around. No,
something happened. He lost some prominence between those two.
And then we later see him being promoted again
with Darius. And in each one of those situations,
Daniel was mean. That first time around. Daniel said,
we got to pray because we're all going to
die. And he didn't have rank. He just essentially
was like one of the many. And it was
through how he was able to intervene and intercede
for all of them, even the soothsayers and all
that. No one died because of Daniel's ability to
interpret that dream. But the point is, I think
Daniel is. I would point people to see Daniel
in that perspective of someone working in a government
job and doing it well. Nehemiah is a good
example of that. I mean, it's a totally different
point. Like, Nehemiah had prominence as a cup bear.
Now, some may say that's, like, almost the worst
job to have, because if someone's going to kill
the king. They're going to kill the cup bear
first.
They're the first one to die.
They're the first one to die because of.
But you end up very close to the king.
Right. And so Nehemiah took his role and his
pain and sorrow for what was happening in Jerusalem,
and he used his influence to tell the truth
to the king. He didn't lie. He told him
exactly, hey, I'm down. I'm sad because of what's
going back. Will you allow me to go back?
And we see him use his influence ultimately to
benefit the people of God. That's a totally different
kind of lesson in what we're supposed to do
with influence. But that's still, to me, a kingdom
concept. For those of that in the workplace.
And when you're talking about kingdom culture, humility has
to be a part of that conversation. And so
I think that's what we see with Daniel is
a humility. Even in the promotion, it's really easy
to be humble when you are the bottom of
the totem pole, when you're at the lowest of
the low. It's real easy to be humble. Now,
not everybody does, even in that moment, but it's
harder to be humble the higher you rise. And
so as believers, that is part of the character
that we're called to. But you mentioned Daniel, and
it brought a thought up that. So Daniel used
his spiritual gift of interpretation of dreams in order
to serve a secular community.
Right.
So he took this kingdom ability that was given
to him, and he brought it into this workplace.
What does that look like in 2024? So for
a Christian that says, look, God's given me this
spiritual gift, but they're just using it at church,
it's like, I've got this gift, and so I'm
using it on the greeter team, or I'm using
on the prayer team, or I'm using on the
media team or whatever, and then it's just on
Sunday, and then I don't use that gift Monday
through Friday, Monday through Saturday. What do you say
to that person? And then how do you encourage
somebody to use their gift? What's the right way
to say this in an appropriate manner? Because if
you walk up to your boss and say, thus
saith the Lord.
Right.
Probably not the right approach. Yeah.
So I'll try to be broad about. But I'll
use specific roles. I'll use specific roles. Let's say
you're in HR, you work for HR, and you
have a strong prophetic gift. Let's use that gift,
for instance. And maybe you're in meetings where you're
talking about the course of the company, or maybe
you're in meetings with people and you're making decisions
about hiring and firing and holy spirit just gives
you insight on kind of something that's coming or
maybe insight on a person. It's an opportunity for
mercy, whatever. You just have this spiritual insight. And
the way that looks is that you don't walk
in saying, thus said the Lord of hosts. No.
Hey, have we thought about maybe a different approach
to this? I'll take a step back going into
that meeting, and I'll try to make this really
practical. Let's say I'm going to be really deep
spiritually, but try to be real practical. Let's say
the Lord gives you a vision of what's to
come next week or whatever. What you would do
is work backwards and say, okay, how do I
support, if I can support that with facts, right.
Okay, Lord. You're saying that the stock market is
going to fall. I'm just trying to figure something
out. Okay, lord. All right. Is there some indication
that I can present, how do I present this
to those that I work with and you come
up with some facts, create something that actually you
can support your idea in the language and the
manner of your environment. Right. That's important. Not just
walk in and say, I got a hunch that
won't work, especially in a corporate environment that's not
going to work. So if you're in HR, you
have insight about people or something like that. Hey,
guys, can we look at this a little differently?
Here's what I think. Maybe we're missing something around
this person.
I've got some concerns.
Got some concerns.
Because a lot of times what I've seen is,
especially in that kind of HR environment, you've got
almost like a word of knowledge, a word of
wisdom, like you're seeing something in this person. But
there's probably a red flag that also indicates the
same thing. And it may be that everybody's like,
oh, but the green flags are so green. That
red flag, it's kind of like a pinkish color.
It's not that big of a deal.
Your voice in the room may just be to
say, you know what? I know that we said
this probably isn't that big of a deal, but
what if it is, right? And maybe it could
be a real problem if it affects things sometimes
just redirecting the conversation.
Right. And how does that connect to your environment?
Okay, this is a red flag. Actually, let's not
minimize this red flag because it actually conflicts with
what we said in the last meeting. So you
have to be able to speak the language of
that territory is the point, right. As an ambassador,
even if maybe it's not on that level, you're
in a position of influence or power in that.
But that, again, if the Holy Spirit is speaking
to you about something, what is the language of
your environment and use it to communicate well. But
again, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, I think
that's a practical way of looking at, how do
I do that? You have to communicate and not
just be too lofty and be okay with.
Them saying, no, we're still going to do our
thing. Because you are in a secular environment in
the church world, if the pastor wants to steamroll
ahead, even though there's all of this spiritual insight,
saying you shouldn't, that's a pretty big problem. But
in the corporate world, your boss is still going
to do what your boss wants to do.
Right?
But God placed you there to be of influence.
So influence as much as you can. But if
they decide to go on ahead, don't get all
offended and upset, and they never listen to my
wisdom.
Okay, that's a can of worms. We have to
be very careful about overglorifying the use of our
gifts in the workplace and not just drop in.
The workplace off, okay? That's the can of worms
using our gifts, man. My preference, especially if I
get a prophetic or a word of knowledge or
a word of wisdom or anything, is my default
stance is I could be wrong.
Yeah.
And as long as my default stance is I
could be wrong, then I'm going to operate in
the correct manner. And so if I feel like
God's telling me I need to share this with
somebody, I'm not coming up to them saying, this
is the word of the Lord. For you say,
I was praying and I feel like, and I
could be wrong, but I'm really feeling this strongly,
so I just wanted to share it with you.
But if I take this default stance of I'm
not infallible, right, God's word is infallible, the spirit
is perfect. But my interpretation of the spirit, my
understanding of the spirit, it could have been bad
pizza. It could have been my own thoughts, it
could have been an intrusive thought. It could have
been a million other things.
I'll just say this, we can move on. You
can be right. And the timing could be wrong.
Absolutely.
You could be right. And God is going to
use the fact that they go another way to
remember you and say, actually, you were right about
that. We need to talk about.
Oh, yeah. And they will remember.
They're going to remember.
Blows up in their face and what God had
told you is true and it's a disaster. They're
going to go, man, there was one person in
that room that said, we shouldn't do this.
Yeah, I had a situation like that when I
made a suggestion and it was overlooked and later
they came back. You have some good instincts. That
was the phrasing.
You were right.
We were really good. Right. That's how it was
put.
That's a much more corporate way of saying it.
Yeah. And it was fine. Like, yeah, you call
it instincts.
Whatever is the spirit.
That's fine. I think we can practically use our
gifts. We just have to be careful that we
don't overemphasize and just make it real. Just use
it. Speak the language of your environment. And God
can use that for promotion. He can use that
for ultimately his will in that workplace and open
up doors for people to know the king.
Yeah. And I think that there is room for
all of the spiritual gifts in the workplace. I
think that's why God gives them to us. It's
for everything that we interact with. It's for Sunday,
it's for church, it's for your community, it's for
the grocery store. I love what my mother says
about, you need the Holy Spirit. Just go to
Walmart. The spirit is with you. The gifts are
with you. Not just for church use, but it's
for everything. And everything does include the workplace. And
so we could take the time and go through
every single one of them and. Okay, where does
the teaching gift come into play? And where does
this gift come into play? But I think that
we're already coming up on the hour mark, so
we don't have time to do that. But I
would just say, look at your spiritual gifts differently,
that it's not just a Sunday thing, it is
a life thing. And so how can I use
these gifts in my family, in my workplace? And
if anybody's listening to this and they're like, I
have no idea what my spiritual gifts are. We
got this thing called growth track. You can do
it online, you can do it in the church.
We have a spiritual gifts test. It's not perfect,
but it gives you a great understanding or great
kind of starting point.
Yeah, I agree with that.
All right, so we're wrapping up on the hour.
Man, there's so much more I wanted to talk
about.
That's your fault.
Should we do a part two?
No. I need to go hide from my singing
debut.
I need to let that need to rest some
more from Sunday. All right, so I just want
to give you kind of your final moment. You're
talking to an audience that is in the workplace
and they're trying to navigate, what does it mean
to not just be a citizen here? Because I
think a lot of us, we do have that
mindset of, as long as I'm doing the things
a citizen should do, I'm good. I'm covered. But
to view work as I am an ambassador of
Jesus Christ in this factory, in this warehouse, in
this store, in this restaurant, in this corporate office,
I am an ambassador. And everything I'm doing, I'm
supposed to work as unto the Lord because he's
my boss before anybody else is my boss. So
what am I doing to please him? So with
that kind of framework, that kind of concept, what's
your last like? People need to get this. This
is the advice that I give you as you
go into work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whenever
it is.
Yeah. I would say be very intentional around asking
the Lord directly. Give me insight on why I'm
here.
I love it.
Why am I here? And get beyond. I'm just
here to do a job. I'm just here to
put my 40 hours in, and it's not just
a paycheck. And so we are called. And really,
Jesus said, pray that there are just more people
to work this harvest and the harvest. If we
look at really what a harvest is, he didn't
say just work the fields. He said, work the
harvest. That means that it's ready to be harvested.
Lord, who are those that are ready to be
harvested? You've been working on their heart already. You've
exposed them already. Show me who that is on
my job and that harvest, I'll be ready for.
Outside of that, what needs to be in me,
that needs to be right so that they see
my character. And so regardless of the job and
the job description, I think if we focus on
the fact this is much more than God is
so intentional. This is not about. I'm just here
to punch a clock. You're missing the point. And
we are here to spread the message of the
king. So why am I here? Who is this
harvest? Because there is a harvest, and we are
workers in that field. And then what are the
areas of my character that I need to work
on and make sure it shows up well for
you. So that's what I would say. And then
the opportunities, that's who the Holy Spirit is. He
will show us in those moments what to say.
He'll give us how to do. So don't be
concerned about all of that. But just start with,
okay, character, who is the harvest, and why am
I here?
Yeah, I love it. It's beautiful. I think that
is kingdom at work. And you talked about in
the message, we want kingdom culture in our workplace,
but we don't have kingdom character. Right. Yeah. I'll
just echo what you said, that we got to
work on the character thing. And I would just
add this kind of, this asterisks, fine print to
it is it's not going to be perfect.
Right.
And if you're waiting for it to be perfect
before you are used by God, you're missing it.
And so talk to the Holy Spirit, Jason and
Brent, we can't tell you what you should do,
when you should do it, but the Holy Spirit
can 100%. And so you work on your character.
You keep talking to the Holy Spirit, you keep
talking to God and say, what am I supposed
to be doing here? And you ask that question
every day. You walk into the office every morning,
you get there, you say, okay, God, I know
what I'm supposed to do today. I've got this
deadline. I've got that deadline. I've got these meetings.
God, what are you wanting me to do today?
Who do you want me to talk to? What
do you want me to say to them? How
do you want me to be an encourager today?
How do you want me to exercise the kingdom
in this location?
That was better than what I said. I'm glad
you kind of fixed that up.
You're a good friend. We're just bouncing off.
You didn't let me just hang out.
That's that sounding board, man.
You covered me. That was a good pastor move
right there. Pastor's cover. That was really good. I
appreciate you.
Amen. Hallelujah.
Thank you, Jesus.
All right, this is our last conversation about kingdom.
This weekend. We have our first love conference. That
is the biggest thing CLC does. It's going to
be amazing. We've got John Bever on Friday night.
We got me Saturday morning. I'm going to be
talking about drift in our lives. It's going to
be fantastic. It's going to make everybody uncomfortable. And
then we'll have a nice, uplifting message, probably from
Nona Jones on Saturday night. I'm excited about that
one. She's got a lot of influence. Her work
with Facebook and meta and her work with the
Bible app. Just some really cool stuff. And then
we got gospel ninja Dan Leanne on Sunday morning.
And then I love Dan. Dan is amazing.
I love Dan. And he's so consistent. I've seen
him out in public.
He is consistent.
Dan is Dan.
Dan is Dan. I love it.
I love him.
And then Sunday night's going to be a unique
night. We've got a special music guest, Dwayne Crocker
and we've got prophet Dennis Kramer. So it's going
to be a big worship prophetic night. Kind of
had all those smart speakers tell us stuff. Now
we're just going to hear from the Holy Spirit
and it's going to be a great way to
close it out. So hope to see you there.
It's going to be great.
I'm excited. I'm all in. All right, man. Cool.
Well, God bless. We'll see you next time on
between sermons.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of between sermons
(04:08:03):
where we are continuing our conversation from Sunday. And
(05:38:30):
this is actually our last conversation we're going to
(07:54:11):
be having about kingdom. And so that's been our
(10:55:06):
theme over the last few weeks. And if you
(14:41:14):
missed any of those messages or you want to
(19:12:36):
hear a little bit more behind what we're talking
about today, go ahead and check those out online.
But today we get to have a conversation with
my good friend Pastor Jason Parks.
Just Jason.
Pastor Jason Parks, psalmist.
Oh, please.
No, you got title. Now. When should we expect
that single to drop?
My single will drop right after yours. I don't
want us to drop on the same day. Absolutely.
Yeah. Just sometimes when you follow the.
Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you that didn't
see the message, Jason opened up singing a song
(19:22:20):
which is not your wheelhouse, but you carried it
(21:52:37):
well. I mean, you sounded better than I would
have sounded if I had chosen.
Listen, I'm a strong tenor in the last row
of the choir, right. You put me into a
(23:10:24):
choir and put me in the last row. I'm
going to hold it down now.
(23:42:52):
If you move me up, that's still an improvement
over me. They don't let me in the choir.
They're like, you can watch the choir. Why don't
you go in the background and, I don't know,
run pro presenter for us or something?
I think an old version of me would be
embarrassed by that situation.
You've matured.
Yeah. And I'll get to kingdom stuff or whatever.
We could talk about that. But I guess in
my life, God is really showing me, like, ego
has to go. If you're going to be in
a space where people see you and all that
stuff, ego has to go. And if I can't
obey in small things like that, which maybe it's
not small, it is not small to me, but
maybe it is small to maybe someone who can
really, really sing, but it's huge. But if I
can't obey in that type of situation and let
my ego go, then he can't trust me with
other things. And my goal in my heart is
to always be submitted to God. And so if
that means embarrassing myself a little bit by singing
because he wanted a moment, I'm going to do
it. It was a moment. I'm just encouraging anyone
who wants to see the message, please do. Just
skip the first ten minutes.
Fast forward.
Just go to seven minutes in. I'm not sure
how long it was, and then you'll enjoy maybe
the rest.
Of it, but I love that. I love that
perspective too, of if you're going to actually die
to self, pick up your cross, then sometimes that
may seem extreme and sometimes that may mean singing
a song. Yeah. When you don't really want to.
Now, did you have to argue with the Holy
Spirit on that one? I did. That's a dumb
idea.
I did argue a little bit, but again, to
me that's the wrestle of.
Yeah, yeah.
Right. And it's when Holy Spirit reflected to me
what that conversation was about. Right. When I started
thinking about what I was thinking. Yeah, that's your
ego. If you sing to me in private, why
wouldn't you sing in public? Oh, that kind of
relationship.
Embarrassed to know me.
Yeah, it was a little wrestle. And then when
I started thinking about what I was thinking about,
I was like, man. And I just said, well,
I'll sing and it's just going to be me
singing to you. And that's how I'm going to
act like. I hope that's okay. It's going to
be me and you. I'm not leading anyone in
song. I'm not trying to be the chorus.
It just has make a joyful noise. Yeah.
And it was a noise.
Pleasant.
It was a noise. It was a noise. But
I will say I did hear some clcers supporting
me. They were singing along. So it wasn't just
me having a harmonic solo, it was a congregational.
I'm sure I made you sound better from that
front row.
I mean, man, you have strong lungs.
I don't know what I got, but it ain't
good for singing. That's for. So. Thankfully, the Holy
Spirit has never told me that I need to
sing at the start of message because if he
did, I would need like audible voice from heaven
to be like, okay, that's not just Brent being.
Having a weird moment.
We'll get you some auto tone, bro.
But man, for real, need it. I don't know
if it works that well, but I have been
in a place where and it feels weird when
you're like, God, that's not a good idea. How
do you tell the creator of the universe that
his idea is bad and yet we have the
audacity to do that all the time. We're like,
no, that's not a good idea.
Yeah, I guess I'll relate this to even the
series and kind of my purpose when we're talking
about the kingdom. One of the things that I
found out though, is when you really are an
ambassador and you have a king, you actually are
supposed to obey the king, amazing concept. That's actually
what's supposed to happen. Right. And there are things
that if I'm in a kingdom, we don't get
this context because of the type of government we're
in. Right. And so, of course, you have to
look up, okay, what is a monarchy? What happens
when there's a prime minister versus a president and
all that stuff? But in a most traditional sense
(23:55:38):
of a kingdom, that king dictates everything. But that's
also because that king takes care of everything. Right.
And so for me, it was like, okay, I
have to be a living example of that. You
just can't preach it or talk about it. It
was in no way intentional. Right. It wasn't like
an object lesson. Let me do something real cute.
But as I reflect on it, it was like,
yeah, no, you have to recognize that even when
you don't understand it, the king wants you to
do this, and he also takes care of me
in ways that I can't explain. So I don't
know why you want me to do this, but
I also don't know why you've given me favor.
In those ways, sometimes not even on us to
figure out the why.
Right.
We just obey. I don't make a lot of
sense to me, but all right, you told me
to do it.
Listen, you've gone on some missions trips. You've gone
to some places that do not make sense to
me.
Well, they didn't make sense to me either.
They don't make sense.
My favorite is I took, this is so random.
So when I was pastoring in Blue Island, a
predominantly hispanic area of Chicagoland, I took a group
from that church to.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Makes a whole lot of sense. Like, no idea.
No idea why, but it was fantastic. It was
great.
But again, when you're following this kingdom perspective and
we're supposed to be ambassadors, again, from my research,
the king picks the ambassador. The king picks. And
then gives you the. And again, somebody may know
a lot more than me, but that's just how
it.
Yeah.
So if it's Siberia for this trip.
That'S where I'm going.
I need you in Siberia. I'll take care of
you while you're in Siberia. Come on back and
I will do other things that are beyond your
control for that's. I'm really leaning into this kingdom.
Mean, I don't understand everything perfectly.
Yeah, but you said something great yesterday that I
was like, yes, I need people to get this.
And that is just simply that in three messages
for 30 minutes a message and even add in
the podcast. It's still not nearly enough time to
talk about everything that this concept of kingdom entails.
Or even. Just. Even if you just sliced it
down to being an ambassador, right. We could talk
about being an ambassador for 52 weeks and still
not cover everything that we could possibly cover.
Right.
What I love to hear is you saying this
is something that you're going to be thinking about
more, because when we do a series, we want
that to take place. We want people to go,
okay, this isn't just something we're doing for a
couple of weeks. How does this affect the way
I'm thinking and acting and living and man now
when I'm reading scripture, it's happened to me a
bunch lately. I'm reading through the Bible. Every time
the word kingdom is mentioned, there's something in my
brain that's just like, pay attention. Right? And so
if more people start reading through scripture and every
time we're singing a song about he's the king
of kings, what does that mean? Sometimes it just
becomes words. But the words, there's a purpose behind
it. There's a meaning behind it. There's a depth
there that I want to encourage people to keep
digging that not just take the three weeks and
be like, all right, I got everything I needed
from kingdom moving on to the next thing. What's
the next thing we're doing? Relationships. All right, forget
about kingdom now.
It's mean. And I'll say this, there are preachers
out here that kind of live this kingdom life.
I think Tony Evans does a really great job
of integrating this concept of kingdom into applicable. You
know, he has kingdom man and kingdom woman and
kingdom family, and I think he does a great
job. So I would certainly recommend those, especially the
kingdom man book. I've definitely read and done that
Bible study, and so it's good to have those
types of resources because we're not alone in trying
to figure this out. Nor is it brand new
either. But leaning into it more and more, I
recognize that my perspective and the lens that I
see things has been just not as clear as
I thought it was. Right. And there's this great
book. I can't remember the name of it, but
I'll look it up. The book talks about how
our westernized viewpoint has kind of, yeah, we kind
of messed up how we see a lot of
the biblical stories, and that's really the basis of
why we need to study the word and understand
historical context and all of that, not just kind
of read on a surface. And then it's not
isegesis, right. It's not. Oh, that scripture really works
for me and where I want to go. Right.
But it takes time to understand just the concept
of, okay, I have a king and, okay, what
does that mean? And who is this king? And
finding that language about the king. Yeah.
Because, I mean, when we're in a culture where
we have a president and not a king and
we can like our president, we cannot like our
president, we can throw shoes at our president, we
can make fun of our president. We can do
all of these things that happened several years ago.
You got the reference. Come on, now. I'm not
Bush. I'm that old. Yeah, it was Bush. So
there's all of these. We don't view our president
the way the biblical writers would have viewed their
king.
Right.
And so sometimes we have to stop reading through
the filter of a western, modern brain and start
reading scripture. Okay, what was the audience and that
really, man, I'm excited. I get to teach a
course in our next round of Life University about
biblical interpretation. And so how do we actually understand
scripture? And so we're going to be talking a
lot about context and who's the audience learning how
to do all those things.
It'll shape you when you find out what scripture
means.
Oh, man.
It'll shape you. It'll check you. And to me,
that's why when you look at Hebrews four and
scripture says, like, the word of God is alive,
right. And it's active and it's so sharp that
it can separate bone and marrow. Right. Soul and
spirit. And it is so sharp that it will
actually help you discern the very intent and the
thoughts of your heart. And when we get to
the place of seeing scripture like that, it'll start
shaping us. It'll start shaping us. So I'm looking
forward to Bible university. I'm going to call it
Bible University because that's what you're going to learn.
Up in life university.
Life university.
There you go. It's all good, man. Okay, so
I've got to ask. So this is going to
be kind of a little bit of a background
question. So the start of the series, people kept
saying that I was spicy, and I didn't think
I was spicy, but they were a little bit.
But so I don't know what label to throw
on what you were on Sunday. I think the
best term would be to steal from Joe Sangle
and just say you were fired up.
I was fired up.
You were fired up. And so walk me through
why? What was going on during the week that
lit a fire in your spirit that you got
up there and you were as fired up as.
I don't think I've ever been that fired up.
Certainly it was the subject matter, but all week
it starts before last week, it's just been a
season of kind of spiritual warfare. And I don't
throw that around carelessly. I don't. And I don't
like to make things dramatic because life happens. And
a lot of times we try to over spiritualize
things.
For me, it's like, no, you just didn't eat.
Well, the devil wants to mess up my finances.
No, you missed the due date.
You didn't pay the bill.
But it's been the season where it's felt like
these various things, and most of them are internal.
It's not, oh, the house burned out. It's none
of that. It's more doubt about what my calling
is than ever before. More doubt of how I'm
doing as a father, more doubt of, okay, are
you really doing great as a husband or all
of these things or how good can the other
shoe has to drop, right. All of that. I
remember in a week, I had a major car
(23:59:38):
issue. A brand new washing machine went out and
flooded the first floor. The second floor toilet flooded
for no reason. It just was water coming out
of the toilet all of a sudden. And that
came down to the first floor. Several thousand dollars
worth of repairs and things like that. And so
I remember this was a turning point where I
said, I'm going to fight differently. When the washing
machine broke and I ordered another washing machine, it
was brand new, and they installed it and it
broke and flooded the first floor. I told my
wife, I said, get a mop, turn on some
worship music, because we're going to fight like this.
So it started a few weeks back.
You've been going through it?
Going through it and deciding that I was going
to fight my battles differently, through worship, through prayer,
getting more focused on scripture. And so going into
our fast this month, I was even more focused.
And so again, it started revving up. Oh, here's
some chest pains. Take that. Oh, you're having a
stroke. Nothing's happening. Maybe you or other folks can
identify this, but I have the type of imagination,
and if I allow it to go down a
trail of thought, it will take me into dark
places. It's like, well, how did I get here?
Start googling your symptoms.
All of a sudden, it's like, okay, a small
chest pain turns into, okay, I need to find
a wheelchair. Okay. How would Jennifer get me in
and out the house if something happens? And so
again, I started thinking about what I was thinking
about. And holy spirit, of course, just began to
say, hey, no, you actually can declare the word
of God. You are healed. Don't allow this to
keep going. So it was chest pains and all
these kind of just weird stuff. I broke out.
I am not want to get sick at all
or anything. No allergies. And all of a sudden
I had a breakout on my body. It's like
I didn't eat anything that I don't normally eat.
And so it was just constant pestering. And I
think I got fed up. Friday when he says,
just tell them you can't preach. Just tell them
you've gone through too much to preach. And that's
when I said this whole thing was to try
to get me there. And so it was a
very difficult week internally. I didn't let on anybody
else what was going on, but it was just
a lot of warfare to try to keep me
from getting to that point. And on my way
to church is where the. I'm going to worship
God. Okay, that's cool. I'm a worship God. No,
actually, it's going to look a little different than
what you're. I need you to this song that
has been in you all week. Sing that song.
I know we say tell the truth and shame
the devil. No, you're going to bring to open
shame what the enemy has tried to do in
private. You're going to publicly disclose what you've gone
through and that you are still victorious and you
still showed up and all of that. And I
was mad in the car. I mean, the music
was turned up. I'm singing I'm mad like, I
will not let the devil win. You're not going
to stop me. So that's the last couple of
weeks. But that's what happened and got me to
that point where I'm going to draw a line.
And holy spirit has really been helping me focus
on embracing the authority you have been given, embracing
the power that you have been given by Jesus,
by what he did. It includes these types of
things, right. And so take authority, stand strong and
let people know, hey, I'm not ashamed of the
fact that it was a rough week and I'm
here anyway. Yeah, that was a lot of background.
A lot of this. I promise we are going
to get to the kingdom stuff. But there was
something that you said that I just feel like
I need to highlight for everybody listening you said
you started thinking about what you're thinking about. And
I think that that is a skill set, that
is an activity that not enough people engage in
that they become comfortable with. Well, these are the
thoughts. And so that's what I'm thinking. But we
do need to. The Bible tells us, take every
thought captive.
Right.
How do you take a thought captive if you're
not thinking about what you're thinking about?
Right.
And recognizing. Man, my thought pattern, it seems like
every time this thing happens, my thoughts go here,
when I know, based on scripture, they need to
go here. And so I think more people need
to take a moment and stop and say, okay,
what's my thought pattern been like over the last
24 hours, over the last seven days? What have
I been thinking about the most? Is there an
anxiety? Is there a fear? Is there a worry?
Is there something that I've been stressing over and
dwelling on? Is there a sin that I'm battling?
But my thoughts are just constantly thinking about that
thing. We use the example, stop thinking about a
pink elephant. Immediately you're going to be thinking about
a pink elephant. So if you're battling sin, but
all you're doing is thinking about how you're battling
sin, you're going to lose the battle.
Right.
And so we've got to learn how to take
every thought captive, how to actually think about what
we're thinking about and do something about that. I
just wanted to kind of give that little pause.
You can do whatever you want, and I want
to help someone. At least let me share my
process of that.
Yeah.
Internally. Right. Because I've heard people say it, they
don't necessarily tell you how to do it. And
I want to make sure that we make a
distinction between what, let's say, modern psychology or a
psychiatrist would tell you versus helping us stay in
a biblical perspective of that. And so in that
scripture, we are to cast down any imagination or
argument in a global sense. If it's argument about
the divinity of Christ on a big scale, or
if it's any argument that says that I am
not new, I'm really not saved. So you cast
that down, you bring it into captivity, but it's
in relation to it trying to exalt itself above
the knowledge of Christ, right. The knowledge of what
we know. And so it has to be this
thought, okay, I should not preach on Sunday. Tell
them not to preach. Okay? This is what I
do. Who would actually tell me to preach? To
preach and not preach. Would God ever tell me
when I have already been assigned when I know
it's part of my calling, when I have the
assignments come from heaven. But if my leader here
on earth says, here, I want you to preach
on this, who would tell me to backtrack on
all of that and just go with how I'm
feeling? That would not be God.
No.
Okay, hold on. Okay. God, that's not you. Okay.
This thought, when I compare it and it tries
to rise above what I know, how God would
communicate with me, what God's character is, what his
words, when it conflicts against that, I capture it
and say, I will not do anything. And I
literally will verbalize something. I will speak scripture right.
Or I will say, in that instance, I'm going
to preach to bring God glory. I'm going to
preach because, enemy, you don't want me to. So
I'm going to do it right. So that is
kind of my pride. I always compare what's very
important that I point out here. I always compare
it to what I know to be true of
God. Now, that does take some work. You have
to read the word, right. We only know God.
You can only know what he's saying.
If you know what he's saying. Right. And so
I compare those thoughts, and I discern who would
this be from? Who would tell, this is not
God? If it's condemnation, that is not God. If
the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit is
convicting me of something, it always leads me back
to God. So if I do something. Hey, don't
do that. That's not glorifying God. However, if you
do this, this will glorify God. Right. It's always
that. That's how I distinguish conviction from condemnation. So
that's how I capture thoughts. I'm sure there's more
eloquent examples of that.
But for me, fantastic. I love it.
That's how I nip it in a butt.
I like it. I think you helped some people
just there.
I hope so. I think if you're not thinking
about what you're thinking about, you will go down
a trail. And that's what the enemy does. He
influences us. Through distraction, he influences us, I'll say,
mentally and spiritually. And really, it's us who give
him that open door. We have to give into
it. And so our thought life is very important.
Yeah. And it's really dangerous when we go on
autopilot with stuff and we're just going through the
motions. We're just thinking the thoughts and moving on.
So we got to kind of switch off of
the autopilot and actually take stock in. Okay, what
am I thinking about? Why am I thinking about
that? Is that a good thing to be thinking
about? Not a good thing to be thinking about.
Yeah, I think that there's a practice in that,
that I think people need to exercise. I would
say on a daily basis, 100%, but, yeah. Cool.
I think you get better and better at it
over time. I'm not great at it, but I'm
trusting God to continue to grow.
Yeah. And there's going to be moments of weakness
when you're not as good at it, and then
there's moments when holy spirit strengthens you and you're
great at it.
And I'll just say this, and we can move
on. But that's why also having the right people
around you is so important.
Because if you're like, pastor, well, I'm.
Just saying that wasn't even a plug for the
life group season that's coming up, starting February 25.
But even if you can't see what's happening, someone
else who knows you and praying for you and
you're accountable to and all of that, they can
say, no, that's not you. I've literally had people
say, that's not you. And it was that. That
shook me, like, well, no, that actually isn't. You're
right. Oh, man. Right. And so it's not okay.
I have to control every thought all the time.
It's not that. It's that and having community that
knows you and a community that sees you and
prays for you, et cetera. So I just want
to make sure people know that life groups is
a perfect place to find that community, especially since
our life group season is starting February 25.
Yes. And you take your thoughts to them and
just say, man, I've been thinking about this a
lot lately, and I don't know if maybe this
is God, maybe this is a distraction.
I don't really know.
But let me take it to somebody that's got
some wisdom, some experience that knows me and knows
God, because I think sometimes we go for advice
to people that know us but not necessarily knowing
God, and that becomes a whole other subject matter
we could get into. But we need it right
there. We need people that know us but also
know God to be able to help us navigate
this stuff. All right, so, kingdom.
Yes.
So you made a big statement that I absolutely
loved. It's the concept of the kingdom needs to
be at work. At work, work. And so we
broke down, or you broke down. How we spend
the majority of our time in the workplace and
the danger comes when all of a sudden that
becomes this separate thing. So I've got my identity
as a citizen of the kingdom of God. I've
got this assignment to be an ambassador, and I'm
going to take that hat and put it on
the shelf and say, okay, but now I have
to go to work, and I've got to earn
my paycheck and do my job so I don't
get fired, so I can put food on the
table, so I can give my offerings to the
church. And so we separate the two things, which
I think is a huge mistake and directly opposes
what scripture tells us we need to bring the
kingdom to our workplace. So what was that revelation
like for you? Because you kind of shared a
story about how you were a citizen at work,
but you weren't an ambassador at work. And I
thought that was just, I.
Was a really good citizen, too. I did the
right things and didn't do anything wrong and treated
people fairly and loved them and et cetera. I
was a good citizen. And the difference between a
citizen and ambassador is that you can be a
citizen without going anywhere. It is essentially just who
you are connected to from a national perspective. You
don't have to do anything, and you're concerned, and
you really are concerned about your own rights and
privileges and being free to exercise those. And as
long as nothing kind of impedes on that, you're
okay. I'm a good citizen, right? I don't break
any laws. I'm a good citizen. An ambassador is
active. An ambassador has to recognize they're in a
foreign territory, they're ascent to a foreign territory, and
they are commissioned to be actively engaging in the
culture of where they are actively communicating about their
nation and their culture, actively doing it.
They have a job to do.
They have a job to do. And so an
ambassador is not an ambassador at all who does
not engage with someone that is not from their
nation. And so the story for me was that
when I was being a good citizen at work,
being right and all of that, someone found out
that I was a preacher. They saw me on
stage one day, and so they came and got
me when there was a coworker who had her
mother, a family member who was sick. Now, the
coworker was there, but the mother was in a
totally different city. So they came and got me
and said, well, hey, we saw you. We saw
you do. It's got to be something you can
do about this, right? And so that work culture
was asking me to engage. And so that's where
the. Okay. Citizens don't engage. I can just be
here. I want to be in my own right.
No, it's time for you to be an ambassador.
So I go into this room and it's like
ten people in there just waiting, looking for me.
And I'm like, well, what is this about? What
are we doing here? We need you to pray
and pray for her, but pray for her mother.
And so even to me, it was kind of
like, well, there's no laying hands on anyone then.
There's no organ in the background. There's none of
that. If you're going to pray, this prayer has
to work. And I mean, biblically, we see Jesus
doing it, right? But again, this whole kingdom concept
is recognizing that what has been given, whatever your
king has, he has given you as well, because
you're in his kingdom. And so we see jesus
speaking the word only when he heals someone's daughter.
And sending the words just your faith has made
this possible. So go, I don't even have to
be there, right? And so in that moment, it
was like, you just got to pray. And I
was timid. I mean, it was like, is this
going to be an HR violation? Like, am I
going to lose my.
I don't know what denomination these people.
Are or if not even saved, none of that.
There was no context, but they wanted me to
engage in that situation based upon someone saying, hey,
he's a preacher, or some, he can do something,
right. And so ended up praying and just praying
sincerely. And the mom recovered. I mean, it was
a dire situation. My understanding is that she ended
up recovering and being well. So I got outed
as an ambassador, right. It was forced upon me.
And so after know one co worker, I was
walking through, hey, pastor, and it's like, are y'all
just gonna say that it's over now? So I'm
outed as an ambassador at work.
I love that. It was basically like an intervention
at work, right? Like the Holy Spirit orchestrated an
intervention for you.
You're not going to do this, so I will.
We're going to bring some people around the room
to force you into this situation. But I think
that what people need to hear is that it
doesn't require that, right? You don't have to have
an intervention at work, and you don't have to
be a preacher. They don't have to see you
on a stage, on a YouTube video or whatever
in order to have that moment. I think God
has placed each of us where we're supposed to
be for a reason. And I think that there's
a challenge in how do we view what we're
doing in work as ministry, that it's not just
about punching a clock, taking home a paycheck, but
what does that look like? How do we navigate
that? So let's say somebody's listening to this and
they work in a restaurant as a server or
whatever, or somebody works in a factory. What does
this look like in practicality when it says, okay,
yes, you're there to do a job, but you're
also there for the kingdom as an ambassador? What
does that look like?
So it's two parts to that. Right. So in
my case, it was praying all that. So let
me separate that as you just did. Your character
really matters a lot at work. So I don't
want people to move towards action until they get
the character part you're doing before you be. You
have to be someone who is changed by Christ.
You have to be someone who loves people, as
Christ has told us. You have to be that
and embrace that. And we have to be consistent
in how we show up at times. And there's
this old saying that people may never read the
Bible. We're the only bible that they will read.
Right. We demonstrate something to people, and so our
character has to be such where we're honest with
people, we engage them genuinely, we show love. Right.
So let's take the case of a waitress. Right.
Your character and this decision to be excellent at
this job is where you can start. And so
showing up on time, there are times when you
have to give sacrificially, which means, hey, someone calls
off and they're looking for someone that can fill
in for them on a shift. It can be
in that moment saying, hey, you know, I can
take care of that. Is everything okay? Is there
a reason why you called off? That's one of
the first places I want to make sure I
accentuate there may be opportunities for you to be.
To represent the kingdom in saying, hey, I want
to care for you. The world misses a lot
of that. I want to care for you. Is
everything okay? You called off. Yeah, it's my mom,
my dad, or my kid. I couldn't find babysitting.
Okay. Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I
pray for you? Maybe that sounds weird, but if
this situation happens, maybe there's something I can do.
Let me pray, or let me.
That often can be that door that opens. Somebody
is sharing. And sometimes it's funny because for a
lot of even believers, our brain doesn't just automatically
go there. But it should. We were in Japan.
We're working with this guy. He's a Christian, he's
a believer. He's actually dedicating his whole life to
it. And we were out in the park, and
somebody mentioned that they had a headache. And so
Pastor Harry, who's on the trip, was like, why
don't we pray for that right now? And he
was just like, I mean, yeah, why don't we?
But in his mind, it was like, no, prayer
is the thing that we do when somebody asks
for it or the thing that we do at
church. But just this idea that our team, because
it happened with Harry but happened with others, it
was like the moment they saw a need, their
reaction was, let's stop what we're doing and let's
pray over this person. Pray about this. And I
think that in the workplace, we need to kind
of have the same mentality of, okay, when somebody
is like, man, I'm really not feeling well. Today
is our only reaction to say, oh, I'm sorry
to hear that. Moving on, right? Or do we
say, oh, man, I'm really sorry to hear about
that. Would you mind if I prayed for you?
And you can offer to pray. We taught this
in our evangelism course. You can offer to pray
right there in that moment. Or if it's a
busy work day and all this stuff, you can
just say, hey, you know what? After work, I
would love to pray for you. And if the
person says, no thanks.
Right, okay, no problem. That's fine.
No big deal.
And it's not about us. It really is about
meeting needs. Maybe it's not. You don't pray with
that person. Maybe it's an act of compassion, an
act of mercy where you can fill in a
gap for them. If you do that, over time,
people's how they see you will begin to change.
They begin to frame you as someone who is
connected to people. They will see you as someone
who actually cares and compassionate.
And then they're going to ask questions.
They're going to ask questions.
Why do you care about me so much?
Like, you don't even know me. And that's character
matters?
Absolutely.
And we want to skip over that part and
how we show up. I can tell you, as
someone who works in corporate America and within the
C suite, or what have you, decisions are made
based upon people's. I mean, I. You think it's
just work ethic. People care about character. So I
say that in the natural, in just a regular,
even in the corporate world, the corporate world, your
character matters, but when it comes to being an
ambassador, it really matters because it's the open door
where people can get to know Christ before you
even preach a message, they can see your character.
So practically speaking, being someone that has integrity, do
what you say, what you're going to do, and
then do what you're going to say. Doing the
right thing when no one's looking, because we are
working as unto the Lord and that type of
mentality helps us keep that high standard of excellence.
Could we just hit that right there? That. Do
what you say you're going to do. If somebody
asks you for something, you're like, oh, yeah, I'll
send that report out. They shouldn't have to come
back and say, hey, how come you didn't send
out that report, right? And if you're forgetful or
you're flighty, man, pull out your phone, set a
reminder. Do whatever you need to do. When I
was in high school, I had to wear a
rubber band to remind myself, oh, there's something I'm
supposed to grab from my locker. Whatever you need
to do, whatever tricks you need to utilize. Because
I think that a lot of people use forgetfulness
as a pass. It's like, well, I am trustworthy.
I just didn't do that thing the way I
said I was because I forgot. Well, then you're
not trustworthy.
I'll say this. Let's say that was really harsh,
by.
The way, what I just said.
Well, not you.
That's me.
No, I'm a jerk. We're used to you being
willing to say I messed up. Yeah, no excuses.
I missed that. And I apologize because I know
that's important to fill that gap. Let me get
it done.
Honestly, I have way more respect for somebody that
does that than somebody that gives me a weak
excuse. Somebody's like, oh, yeah, I was totally going
to send that. At the end of the day,
I just haven't gotten around to it yet. You
forgot about it. Tell me you forgot.
I'm not saying that I'm perfect at it. That's
easy. But I have found that the more I
practice that, to your point, I think more people
respect you as a person, as an individual, especially
if you're in leadership. I missed it. That's on
me, period, point blank. And eventually, if they'll ask,
is everything okay? Especially if it's not normal for
you, then you may want to throw in like,
man, it was the kids. Something happened this morning
or something happened this week. It threw me off.
But the most important part. Let me get that
thing to you.
We taught that in one of our leadership courses
in Lifeu. I don't even remember which one it
was, but it's this idea of like, when you
screw up, own the mistake, apologize for it. But
in your apology, you're not giving the excuses, you're
giving your solution.
Right?
So you're saying, hey, I know that's important for
you. I'm so sorry that I missed that deadline.
Here's what I can do. I can drop this
project that I'm doing right now. I can get
that out to you by 03:00 today. Will that
work? Instead of just leaving it as this. Oh,
yeah, my bad. Sorry. And then walking away, it's
like, no, if I screwed up, I'm going to
make it right. And here's how I'm going to
make it right. And being upfront with that man
as a leader, that carries a ton of weight.
And overall, again, the point here is how can
we practically walk out being an ambassador without it
being a big evangelistic movement. Right? The character piece,
owning mistakes, communicating well with people, being full of
mercy and grace and forgiveness for people when things
mess up and things don't always work out perfectly
all the time, but at least they know who
you are. And here's the something's different about you.
That's when you at least know you're on the
right track. You're just not like everyone else around
here.
That character piece is so huge. And I've got
to throw somebody on the bus. I won't name
his name because I love the man. So my
football coach in high school.
We can google that. You know that.
I know. And he's an amazing guy. Anyways, I'll
get to the point of this. So this man
would invent the most creative, obscene cussing that you
have ever heard in your life. I mean, his
motivational speeches for us to go win a game,
the references to anatomies and sexual acts. But it
was like over the top. I've had other coaches
that nowhere near the level of creativity in his
language use as this guy. He was like the
Gordon Ramsey of football coaches. He just had a
way with words. And I remember one year I
was going to miss the start of our two
a day camp by a few days because I
was going on a missions trip to Kenya. And
I was like. I was like, I'm dreading this
moment of having to tell my coach I'm not
going to be for the biggest practice of the
year. And I came to him and I'm like,
hey, I just got to let you know, I'm
going on this missions trip to Kenya. And, man,
I'm really sorry, the dates just. And he was
like, oh, wow, Brent, I didn't even know you
were a believer. I'm a believer, too. And in
that moment, I was like, no, you're not. As
a teenager, I was looking at this man going,
there's nothing about your character. There is nothing about
the way you function or operate that leads me
to believe you believe in the same Jesus as
me. Now, since that moment, I've seen, like, he
did the church that he goes to, he did
like a special father's day message and shared his
heart and stuff. And I've heard stories because he's
still coaching and all this stuff, and like, okay,
yes, he does love Jesus. There's evidence of it.
Maybe the four years I was at.
That school, it was early in the process.
Maybe he was a new believer. Right? Maybe early.
I don't know. I'm proud of him. Love the
guy. But that time when he dropped the bomb
on me that he was a believer, too, I
was like, I don't think you know what that
word means.
Yeah, it shouldn't be a shock, especially, again, going
back to work. We're spending seven, 8910 hours there.
Yeah, they should know.
At the very least, they should recognize you live
at a different standard.
Right. And so, again, practically, that character matters more
than anything because they're going to see that. They're
going to experience that more often, and then that
character leads to opportunities to go beyond. Now, I
think, okay. Personal prayer moments happens more often when
people recognize your character. I'll give you an example.
It is hard for someone to admit to you
that they have a need and they're willing to
accept prayer. Let's say they have an issue in
their marriage. Using that example, it's hard for them
to explain their struggle in their marriage. If your
character demonstrates that you're a gossiper, right. Why would
they ever disclose what's going on? What's creating this
chaos in their world if what they know of
you is that you can't hold water like you
can't hold anything? And so those personal prayer moments,
those moments to invite them to church, that happens
more often when we are consistent in how we
show up in terms of being excellent with our
work output, being consistent in our words and our
actions and all of that, really not living out
our faith. And so then the next step is
that, of course they'll tell you what's going on.
And you can then say, hey, I don't know
where you are in terms of your faith. I'm
a believer. I do believe prayer works. Do you
mind if I just say a quick prayer about
this? Because essentially, you caught them at the most
intimate moment of their life or in a moment
of their life. And so then it creates that
opportunity. But we have to start with character.
Absolutely. 100%. And I think that what character can
do is it opens up that door for people
to recognize there's something unique, there's something different here.
When you have great character, it just draws people
to you.
Right.
And in that drawing, that's when you can look
for those holy spirit open door moments. And so
when somebody says, I had a really rough night
last night, you can ask follow up questions. When
somebody says, man, I think my wife's going to
kick me out of the house, it's like, whoa,
man, what's going on? Let's talk. And so I
think that more believers need to be quick to
invite somebody for a cup of coffee than anything
else. That's a good point. Can we sit and
talk? Because I think a lot of times, offering
prayer or an invite to church for somebody, that's
just not a part of that culture, not a
part of that world. Those are weird concepts, right?
Give me your thoughts and prayers. That's fine. But
it creates this weird dynamic. But if you say,
hey, man, I hear you're hurting, and, man, is
there anything I can do? You want to grab
a cup of coffee after work? You can just
share with me what's going on. Yeah, let me
help. And if you're the kind of person, like
you said, that every time somebody gets a piece
of news, it's like, oh, yeah, so and so
told me about, then obviously they're going to be
like, no, I'm good.
Right.
But if you've demonstrated your character, if you've demonstrated
that you care for them in other ways, then
when that moment comes, they're more likely to say,
yeah, let's grab a cup of coffee. I do
need to talk to somebody because you may not
be the paid counselor in their life, but, man,
you have no idea how much counseling happens over
a cup of coffee.
Right? It's huge. I think it's important, too. And
this is, I'm not changing the subject, but another
aspect of this, where our character comes out, is
in success. I have seen people like, they are
good citizens and ambassadors when we are all on
the same level, for lack of a better term,
and then all.
Of a sudden they get a promotion.
Somebody gets a promotion and they lose it. It's
like, what happened? Are you the same person? And
so even handling success matters. I do believe that
God's people, we have favor on our life. I
believe that not everyone is rich and all of
that, but there are times when God says, hey,
you're my person. I'm not going to allow this
to happen to you. And we have to navigate
those situations again. When it's something where, okay, you
keep me from getting fired, it's fine. But when
God says, okay, no, I kind of want you
to be in a position of influence. We have
to navigate that well. I actually believe that the
first six chapters of Daniel has so many instances
where he navigates promotion well. He even navigates not
being seen well. He worked under three different kings,
and so each king had a different situation. We
know, of course, Daniel's dream interpretation played a role
in it. But if you notice, between Nebuchadnezzar and
Nebuchadnezzar's son, whose name I always butchered, Bethesda Zazar,
or something like that, the reality is that with
Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel had prominence, he had rank. When you
get to Nebuchadnezzar's son, Daniel is not as high
up there anymore, because they had to go find
him. It was actually the queen or the king's
wife that said, hey, there's this guy in the
kingdom somewhere. If Daniel was as prominent as he
was with Nebuchadnezzar, no one would have to.
He's in his.
Yeah, yeah. He would have been like, yeah, go
get the guy that has always been around. No,
something happened. He lost some prominence between those two.
And then we later see him being promoted again
with Darius. And in each one of those situations,
Daniel was mean. That first time around. Daniel said,
we got to pray because we're all going to
die. And he didn't have rank. He just essentially
was like one of the many. And it was
through how he was able to intervene and intercede
for all of them, even the soothsayers and all
that. No one died because of Daniel's ability to
interpret that dream. But the point is, I think
Daniel is. I would point people to see Daniel
in that perspective of someone working in a government
job and doing it well. Nehemiah is a good
example of that. I mean, it's a totally different
point. Like, Nehemiah had prominence as a cup bear.
Now, some may say that's, like, almost the worst
job to have, because if someone's going to kill
the king. They're going to kill the cup bear
first.
They're the first one to die.
They're the first one to die because of.
But you end up very close to the king.
Right. And so Nehemiah took his role and his
pain and sorrow for what was happening in Jerusalem,
and he used his influence to tell the truth
to the king. He didn't lie. He told him
exactly, hey, I'm down. I'm sad because of what's
going back. Will you allow me to go back?
And we see him use his influence ultimately to
benefit the people of God. That's a totally different
kind of lesson in what we're supposed to do
with influence. But that's still, to me, a kingdom
concept. For those of that in the workplace.
And when you're talking about kingdom culture, humility has
to be a part of that conversation. And so
I think that's what we see with Daniel is
a humility. Even in the promotion, it's really easy
to be humble when you are the bottom of
the totem pole, when you're at the lowest of
the low. It's real easy to be humble. Now,
not everybody does, even in that moment, but it's
harder to be humble the higher you rise. And
so as believers, that is part of the character
that we're called to. But you mentioned Daniel, and
it brought a thought up that. So Daniel used
his spiritual gift of interpretation of dreams in order
to serve a secular community.
Right.
So he took this kingdom ability that was given
to him, and he brought it into this workplace.
What does that look like in 2024? So for
a Christian that says, look, God's given me this
spiritual gift, but they're just using it at church,
it's like, I've got this gift, and so I'm
using it on the greeter team, or I'm using
on the prayer team, or I'm using on the
media team or whatever, and then it's just on
Sunday, and then I don't use that gift Monday
through Friday, Monday through Saturday. What do you say
to that person? And then how do you encourage
somebody to use their gift? What's the right way
to say this in an appropriate manner? Because if
you walk up to your boss and say, thus
saith the Lord.
Right.
Probably not the right approach. Yeah.
So I'll try to be broad about. But I'll
use specific roles. I'll use specific roles. Let's say
you're in HR, you work for HR, and you
have a strong prophetic gift. Let's use that gift,
for instance. And maybe you're in meetings where you're
talking about the course of the company, or maybe
you're in meetings with people and you're making decisions
about hiring and firing and holy spirit just gives
you insight on kind of something that's coming or
maybe insight on a person. It's an opportunity for
mercy, whatever. You just have this spiritual insight. And
the way that looks is that you don't walk
in saying, thus said the Lord of hosts. No.
Hey, have we thought about maybe a different approach
to this? I'll take a step back going into
that meeting, and I'll try to make this really
practical. Let's say I'm going to be really deep
spiritually, but try to be real practical. Let's say
the Lord gives you a vision of what's to
come next week or whatever. What you would do
is work backwards and say, okay, how do I
support, if I can support that with facts, right.
Okay, Lord. You're saying that the stock market is
going to fall. I'm just trying to figure something
out. Okay, lord. All right. Is there some indication
that I can present, how do I present this
to those that I work with and you come
up with some facts, create something that actually you
can support your idea in the language and the
manner of your environment. Right. That's important. Not just
walk in and say, I got a hunch that
won't work, especially in a corporate environment that's not
going to work. So if you're in HR, you
have insight about people or something like that. Hey,
guys, can we look at this a little differently?
Here's what I think. Maybe we're missing something around
this person.
I've got some concerns.
Got some concerns.
Because a lot of times what I've seen is,
especially in that kind of HR environment, you've got
almost like a word of knowledge, a word of
wisdom, like you're seeing something in this person. But
there's probably a red flag that also indicates the
same thing. And it may be that everybody's like,
oh, but the green flags are so green. That
red flag, it's kind of like a pinkish color.
It's not that big of a deal.
Your voice in the room may just be to
say, you know what? I know that we said
this probably isn't that big of a deal, but
what if it is, right? And maybe it could
be a real problem if it affects things sometimes
just redirecting the conversation.
Right. And how does that connect to your environment?
Okay, this is a red flag. Actually, let's not
minimize this red flag because it actually conflicts with
what we said in the last meeting. So you
have to be able to speak the language of
that territory is the point, right. As an ambassador,
even if maybe it's not on that level, you're
in a position of influence or power in that.
But that, again, if the Holy Spirit is speaking
to you about something, what is the language of
your environment and use it to communicate well. But
again, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, I think
that's a practical way of looking at, how do
I do that? You have to communicate and not
just be too lofty and be okay with.
Them saying, no, we're still going to do our
thing. Because you are in a secular environment in
the church world, if the pastor wants to steamroll
ahead, even though there's all of this spiritual insight,
saying you shouldn't, that's a pretty big problem. But
in the corporate world, your boss is still going
to do what your boss wants to do.
Right?
But God placed you there to be of influence.
So influence as much as you can. But if
they decide to go on ahead, don't get all
offended and upset, and they never listen to my
wisdom.
Okay, that's a can of worms. We have to
be very careful about overglorifying the use of our
gifts in the workplace and not just drop in.
The workplace off, okay? That's the can of worms
using our gifts, man. My preference, especially if I
get a prophetic or a word of knowledge or
a word of wisdom or anything, is my default
stance is I could be wrong.
Yeah.
And as long as my default stance is I
could be wrong, then I'm going to operate in
the correct manner. And so if I feel like
God's telling me I need to share this with
somebody, I'm not coming up to them saying, this
is the word of the Lord. For you say,
I was praying and I feel like, and I
could be wrong, but I'm really feeling this strongly,
so I just wanted to share it with you.
But if I take this default stance of I'm
not infallible, right, God's word is infallible, the spirit
is perfect. But my interpretation of the spirit, my
understanding of the spirit, it could have been bad
pizza. It could have been my own thoughts, it
could have been an intrusive thought. It could have
been a million other things.
I'll just say this, we can move on. You
can be right. And the timing could be wrong.
Absolutely.
You could be right. And God is going to
use the fact that they go another way to
remember you and say, actually, you were right about
that. We need to talk about.
Oh, yeah. And they will remember.
They're going to remember.
Blows up in their face and what God had
told you is true and it's a disaster. They're
going to go, man, there was one person in
that room that said, we shouldn't do this.
Yeah, I had a situation like that when I
made a suggestion and it was overlooked and later
they came back. You have some good instincts. That
was the phrasing.
You were right.
We were really good. Right. That's how it was
put.
That's a much more corporate way of saying it.
Yeah. And it was fine. Like, yeah, you call
it instincts.
Whatever is the spirit.
That's fine. I think we can practically use our
gifts. We just have to be careful that we
don't overemphasize and just make it real. Just use
it. Speak the language of your environment. And God
can use that for promotion. He can use that
for ultimately his will in that workplace and open
up doors for people to know the king.
Yeah. And I think that there is room for
all of the spiritual gifts in the workplace. I
think that's why God gives them to us. It's
for everything that we interact with. It's for Sunday,
it's for church, it's for your community, it's for
the grocery store. I love what my mother says
about, you need the Holy Spirit. Just go to
Walmart. The spirit is with you. The gifts are
with you. Not just for church use, but it's
for everything. And everything does include the workplace. And
so we could take the time and go through
every single one of them and. Okay, where does
the teaching gift come into play? And where does
this gift come into play? But I think that
we're already coming up on the hour mark, so
we don't have time to do that. But I
would just say, look at your spiritual gifts differently,
that it's not just a Sunday thing, it is
a life thing. And so how can I use
these gifts in my family, in my workplace? And
if anybody's listening to this and they're like, I
have no idea what my spiritual gifts are. We
got this thing called growth track. You can do
it online, you can do it in the church.
We have a spiritual gifts test. It's not perfect,
but it gives you a great understanding or great
kind of starting point.
Yeah, I agree with that.
All right, so we're wrapping up on the hour.
Man, there's so much more I wanted to talk
about.
That's your fault.
Should we do a part two?
No. I need to go hide from my singing
debut.
I need to let that need to rest some
more from Sunday. All right, so I just want
to give you kind of your final moment. You're
talking to an audience that is in the workplace
and they're trying to navigate, what does it mean
to not just be a citizen here? Because I
think a lot of us, we do have that
mindset of, as long as I'm doing the things
a citizen should do, I'm good. I'm covered. But
to view work as I am an ambassador of
Jesus Christ in this factory, in this warehouse, in
this store, in this restaurant, in this corporate office,
I am an ambassador. And everything I'm doing, I'm
supposed to work as unto the Lord because he's
my boss before anybody else is my boss. So
what am I doing to please him? So with
that kind of framework, that kind of concept, what's
your last like? People need to get this. This
is the advice that I give you as you
go into work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whenever
it is.
Yeah. I would say be very intentional around asking
the Lord directly. Give me insight on why I'm
here.
I love it.
Why am I here? And get beyond. I'm just
here to do a job. I'm just here to
put my 40 hours in, and it's not just
a paycheck. And so we are called. And really,
Jesus said, pray that there are just more people
to work this harvest and the harvest. If we
look at really what a harvest is, he didn't
say just work the fields. He said, work the
harvest. That means that it's ready to be harvested.
Lord, who are those that are ready to be
harvested? You've been working on their heart already. You've
exposed them already. Show me who that is on
my job and that harvest, I'll be ready for.
Outside of that, what needs to be in me,
that needs to be right so that they see
my character. And so regardless of the job and
the job description, I think if we focus on
the fact this is much more than God is
so intentional. This is not about. I'm just here
to punch a clock. You're missing the point. And
we are here to spread the message of the
king. So why am I here? Who is this
harvest? Because there is a harvest, and we are
workers in that field. And then what are the
areas of my character that I need to work
on and make sure it shows up well for
you. So that's what I would say. And then
the opportunities, that's who the Holy Spirit is. He
will show us in those moments what to say.
He'll give us how to do. So don't be
concerned about all of that. But just start with,
okay, character, who is the harvest, and why am
I here?
Yeah, I love it. It's beautiful. I think that
is kingdom at work. And you talked about in
the message, we want kingdom culture in our workplace,
but we don't have kingdom character. Right. Yeah. I'll
just echo what you said, that we got to
work on the character thing. And I would just
add this kind of, this asterisks, fine print to
it is it's not going to be perfect.
Right.
And if you're waiting for it to be perfect
before you are used by God, you're missing it.
And so talk to the Holy Spirit, Jason and
Brent, we can't tell you what you should do,
when you should do it, but the Holy Spirit
can 100%. And so you work on your character.
You keep talking to the Holy Spirit, you keep
talking to God and say, what am I supposed
to be doing here? And you ask that question
every day. You walk into the office every morning,
you get there, you say, okay, God, I know
what I'm supposed to do today. I've got this
deadline. I've got that deadline. I've got these meetings.
God, what are you wanting me to do today?
Who do you want me to talk to? What
do you want me to say to them? How
do you want me to be an encourager today?
How do you want me to exercise the kingdom
in this location?
That was better than what I said. I'm glad
you kind of fixed that up.
You're a good friend. We're just bouncing off.
You didn't let me just hang out.
That's that sounding board, man.
You covered me. That was a good pastor move
right there. Pastor's cover. That was really good. I
appreciate you.
Amen. Hallelujah.
Thank you, Jesus.
All right, this is our last conversation about kingdom.
This weekend. We have our first love conference. That
is the biggest thing CLC does. It's going to
be amazing. We've got John Bever on Friday night.
We got me Saturday morning. I'm going to be
talking about drift in our lives. It's going to
be fantastic. It's going to make everybody uncomfortable. And
then we'll have a nice, uplifting message, probably from
Nona Jones on Saturday night. I'm excited about that
one. She's got a lot of influence. Her work
with Facebook and meta and her work with the
Bible app. Just some really cool stuff. And then
we got gospel ninja Dan Leanne on Sunday morning.
And then I love Dan. Dan is amazing.
I love Dan. And he's so consistent. I've seen
him out in public.
He is consistent.
Dan is Dan.
Dan is Dan. I love it.
I love him.
And then Sunday night's going to be a unique
night. We've got a special music guest, Dwayne Crocker
and we've got prophet Dennis Kramer. So it's going
to be a big worship prophetic night. Kind of
had all those smart speakers tell us stuff. Now
we're just going to hear from the Holy Spirit
and it's going to be a great way to
close it out. So hope to see you there.
It's going to be great.
I'm excited. I'm all in. All right, man. Cool.
Well, God bless. We'll see you next time on
between sermons.
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