Whatever You Do

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

These words from Paul sound nice, but sometimes we look around at our life and the work we are given to do just doesn’t feel as though it is worth doing in the Name of the Lord Jesus. It feels too … mundane.

As you listen to this, it is likely sometime late in January of 2023. Late enough in the month for the newness and excitement of the holiday season to have worn off, but early enough in the year to still have that feeling that there must be something more your life should be about. You look around and find yourself surrounded by the mundane everyday tasks of life: household duties that hold no praise or glamour, a job that feels like work, a world with increasing demands upon your time, and you are left exhausted and empty wondering what the point of it all is. Our hearts long for more. We long to make a difference. To make a mark on the world before we leave it. And yet our lives are so often consumed with the mundane seemingly meaningless tasks of life.

Researchers tell us this a normal part of human growth and development. There is a whole stage of life consumed with this as the central;—what researchers call;— “psycho social” crisis. The stage is the longest one we are in. It lasts roughly from 30 years old to 65 and it centers around the struggle between generativity and stagnation. People who are generative feel like they are making a difference in the world, improving things in some way for themselves, the people around them, and future generations. When people are generating, they find a sense of purpose and meaning in their life, and there is a measurable increase in their happiness and life satisfaction.

On the other side of the fence is the struggle with stagnation. Those struggling with stagnation lack a sense of accomplishment, they often think of themselves as worth;—less, and are unable to perceive themselves as having the sufficient skills, talents, and abilities to impact the world around them in a positive way or contribute to society as a whole.

And so, our longing is created into us. It is as though we are knights on a quest, and yet sadly too many of us don’t know what the quest is. We turn on the TV and see athletes and actors accomplishing things; we hear the praise they get, and our hearts yearn for something more. We see new discoveries in medicine and technology; we see progress and our hearts yearn to be a part of it. We go to church and see the pastor preach, the choir sing, musicians lead worship, and we think to ourselves, “But where do I fit in?” We look around at our lives and we don’t see any knightly quests. We are surrounded by the mundane.

But what if the mundane were the quest? What if the mundane was marvelous? What if the best way to make a lasting impact in the world was to do the everyday things heartily onto the Lord?

This is exactly what Paul tells us. Our text for the day comes from the book of Colossians. It is a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the first-century Christians. Now we will get to the heart of our text from chapter 3 in a few moments. But before we do, it is imperative we understand the beginning of the letter. Paul is going to talk about how we as Christians should live our lives, but first he is going make certain that no one walks away from this discussion with the mistaken idea that living a certain way is what makes us a Christian, makes us a child of God.

In his first couple of chapters Paul makes the sufficiency of Jesus in our lives abundantly clear. Paul writes that Jesus is “Before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.” This is the Word of the Lord.

When it comes to the grandiose making a mark on the world, no one does it better than Jesus. He is the beginning; He is the end of it. He is not only 100 percent man but 100 percent God. And it was by His blood we are reconciled to God the Father. Because of His death and resurrection, we now are able to call God our Heavenly Father. We are adopted children of God.

Think about that knight in search of a quest. You can’t make yourself a knight. The king chooses you; He knights you; and then He gives you a quest. Fulfilling your quest does not make you a knight. Only the king can do that. But as a knight, it is your duty to fulfill his quests.

So, what are our quests?

Well, after carefully establishing our irrevocable identity in Christ, Paul moves on to our lives in light of this new identity. In chapter 3 he tells his readers, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.”

Whatever you do … twice in just a few verses Paul emphasizes that it is whatever you do. There is nothing fancy or glamorous in this list. It’s not a list of holy quests, grails to search for. It is a list of the everyday things. Being a husband, being a wife, being a parent, being a child, being an employee or boss. This is the mundane. You don’t need to be the star football coach or some wise and kind politician; you don’t need to find the cure for cancer or sing on American Idol. You don’t need to preach the best sermon or serve in some remote location. You need to do the work that is in front of you … heartily … for the Lord.

And note, Paul spends more time talking about the way you do the work than what the work is. He calls us to do the work heartily and to be compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient, quick to forgive, willing to put up with one another’s foibles. These things seem to matter more than the outcome of the quest we’ve been sent on. They matter more than our perceived impact of the work in question.

In our world where our merit is so often judged by what we do, this can be quite hard to live out. I can’t tell you how many times my kids have come to me before a swim meet terrified that they aren’t going to win, or swim well. Or my daughter has come up to me the morning of a math test that she has studied and studied for;—and she knows she will still likely fail. In each of these cases and so many more, my wife and I comfort them. Tell them that win or lose they are still our children, and we love them. But before sending them off I always ask them what the two rules are. In our household we have two rules. You can ask any of my kids what the two rules are and they will quickly spout back to you, “Try hard and have fun.” We’re not worried about whether they win every swim race or ace every test. My wife and I want to make sure they are working heartily;—if you will;—and doing so with kind, compassionate hearts. This is what Paul is after.

As Christians it turns out we have been given a quest. But it is not one with a holy grail at the end, but simply the work that needs to be done all around us.

But wait you say, what does that even mean? The work in front of me is the mundane and useless. It is the diapers that need changing. Well, it may be mundane, but it’s not useless. That diaper needs to be changed. And you are the one called to do it.

As Don Everts points out in his book, Discover Your Gifts, Martin “Luther went so far as to point out that if a father is washing diapers in the home, his friends may ridicule him as an effeminate fool (this was in the sixteenth century, remember), but God with all His angels and creatures is smiling. The reality is work of all kinds;—whether with the hands or mind;—evidences our dignity as human beings because it reflects the image of our Creator God.”

Don continues in saying, “If no task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God, then we can see the world ablaze with the glory of God’s work through the people He has created and called;—in everything from the simplest actions such as milking a cow to the most brilliant artistic or historic achievements.”

During the reformation, Martin Luther had a lot to say on this topic. If we could build a time machine and step back into Europe 500 years ago, we would see a world just like this;—a world where those with powerful jobs;—kings, princes, rulers;—were seen as more valuable because they had those jobs, a world where bakers, farmers, and blacksmiths were seen as more expendable.

During that time, Luther, inspired by Scripture;—Scriptures just like the one we’re reading today;—looked at the world through a different lens and came up with a distinctly different picture. He described people as having multiple vocations and insisted each of them was just as important as all of the others. When we hear the word “vocation,” we tend to think of our careers, but for Luther the word meant “callings.” Luther saw all of our roles and relationships in life from being a daughter, sister, or aunt to being a co-worker, neighbor, or citizen as being callings from God in which we are meant to use all our gifts;—all of our skills and abilities;—to help and benefit others.

What was revolutionary about this idea of vocation, is that it treated everyone and their callings as valuable regardless of their social class or the visibility of the job they were doing. This meant the mother running her household with six children underfoot was just as valuable as the priest; the blacksmith and baker were just as valuable as the governing princes. The important question was not how your vocations compared to other people’s vocations, but how your gifts could best be used within each of your vocations and whether you were in fact using them.

And where should we be using these gifts? Right where God has already called us to serve. As the theologian Wingren points out, “Vocation means that those who are closest at hand, family and fellow-workers, are given by God: it is one’s neighbor one is to love. Therein vocation points to a world which is not the same for all people. The same course does not fit all circumstances.”

You see, the mundane just isn’t mundane when seen through heaven’s eyes. As Jesus said to His disciples in the Gospel of John so does He say to you now. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” You have been knighted by the king and sent into the world with a heavenly quest to love your neighbor. God has placed you in specific relationships, led you to specific jobs, put you on a specific street, so you can be about the everyday task of loving your neighbor. And in order to do this, He has equipped you with gifts;—with skills, talents, and abilities that you might be able meet their needs. Whatever the need might be;—maybe it is joyfully doing the dishes, or changing a diapers with a good attitude, or mowing your neighbor’s lawn when they cannot, or shoveling their driveway, or baking them cookies to feel welcomed to the neighborhood. Or yes, maybe it is turning in that TPS report on time, meticulously working to be a blessing to people at your work place.

Whatever it is, God has sent you. He chose you; He “knighted” you; He has equipped you with gifts, and sent you on a quest to these people, these neighbors;—be they family, co-workers, or people in your neighborhood. He has called you to love them with His love. He does this, because He loves them. He loves them so much He sent His Son to die for them.

Everyone wants to feel special;—to feel like they stand out in the ground and that the work they are doing is truly making a difference. The truth is you are and it does. The Lord God has called you to the work you are doing. He has placed you in this place for such a time as this. He has redeemed you and placed you in this place at this time to serve Him. What can be more special than being chosen by the Creator of the universe for a task? So whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, or yourself, knowing that you have already received from the Lord the gift of redemption and eternal life. Amen.

Reflections for January 22, 2023

Title: Whatever You Do

Mark Eischer: For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Joining us now here’s Lutheran Hour Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.

Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I’m visiting with Don Everts, the author of the book, Discover Your Gifts. Welcome, Don.

Don Everts: Thanks for having me, Mike. Great to be with you.

Mike Zeigler: Today we heard from Dr. Jason Broge how everyone is called to use their God-given gifts, that whatever we do, we are called to do it for God’s purposes, as Paul talks about in Colossians 3. So Don, as you know, in professional church work, we say that workers are “called,” and that’s maybe the more common way that we use that language. But in the book you talk about how it would be beneficial for us to broaden our celebration of calling. What do you find most compelling about a broadened understanding of calling?

Don Everts: Studying Luther’s words in this area and his teaching has been so refreshing in my own life. When Luther came on the scene, it was a little bit like you described, a binary sense of calling. There’s the religious and they have a calling and then there’s everyone else, right? So you have your priests and your nuns and monks and then everyone else. And if you have a calling, what that meant was a religious calling. And Luther came on the scene, he’s just a fellow who’s reading the Bible. Right? And he’s actually in the Bible, the Bible says we have callings, plural. Right? That we have these different roles and responsibilities in life. And those are all callings. God calls us to these various vocations, and he famously talked about the milkmaid. That’s a calling. And how do you be faithful using your gifts in that role or responsibility?

So Luther’s been so helpful for me, Mike, to think about realities like I am a father, that’s a relationship that I have, and that means that I have a calling as a father. And how do I take that seriously? How do I look at that and evaluate? How am I doing at using my gifts in my vocation as a father? That switch from the people who are called are like the “religious” or the “church professionals,” if you will, to an understanding that every single believer is called to use their gifts and their various vocations. It makes you take yourself more seriously, I think, and with a greater sense of curiosity and wonder. This means that everything I do matters. God notices everything I do. It’s not that, well, when I go to church I’m on and then the rest of the week, whatever; I’m just doing secular stuff. But that in whatever you do, you are called to do it for God. You are called to be mindful of that. So I find that kind of Lutheran take on vocation to be exciting.

Mike Zeigler: One of the startling statistics I saw out of the Barna research was that even among committed Christians, only I think it was only about a quarter of them saw their gifts as being used for God’s purposes.

Don Everts: Yeah.

Mike Zeigler: So what is it that’s limiting us from or keeping us back from this more robust sense of calling? What do you think?

Don Everts: I think it’s a number of things, and I think it varies on people’s context. I honestly feel that there’s teaching that limits our understanding. When people only talk about calling in reference to professional ministry kinds of things, I think that limits us from thinking, “Oh, well that’s where calling is used.” We don’t use that word. The Bible uses the word calling to refer to a lot of different things, but we don’t. So I think that becomes a barrier for us. I think there is a way, I’ll be honest with you, that in my fallenness, I want to be off sometimes. Does that make sense? I want times when it’s like-faithfulness is not a category. I’m just at work. You know what I mean? I’m just getting lunches ready for my kids in the morning. That’s not a category, I just do it. And that’s kind of a fallenness in me that wants to, I think, not take myself as seriously, that actually everything I do matters, and God pays attention to it.

Mike Zeigler: So as you mentioned, just putting a little “s” on that word “calling.”

Don Everts: Yeah.

Mike Zeigler: So callings, it’s not just church workers, but everybody and every person has multiple callings, roles and responsibilities. In the book, you have a little exercise in there called the vocational map to help people discover those various callings. Tell us about how that works.

Don Everts: Yeah. And that really we developed that tool to help people move into and to start living out a kind of biblical understanding of calling. We talk about four different categories: family, church, work, and society. And then we have questions to help people. So take family for example. What are the different roles and relationships that you have in your family? So for me, I’m a son, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a brother because I have siblings. And so we have questions that help people just circle family life to think about the different roles and relationships you have there. And then they could move over to church and think about their church. What roles and relationships do I have in my church? And so maybe one of our listeners is like I’m an usher at my church and I help serve in that way, or I volunteer in the Sunday school; that is a role or relationship. Or I’m really good friends with this other believer and I’m trying to encourage them in their faith. You can be asking those questions. Work is a place to ask that question, too. And then the fourth one is society. So you’re a neighbor; you’re a voter; you are a customer at stores; you know, thinking about the different places even in society where you have roles and relationships. And so using just that simple four-part map can be a simple step people can take to begin to live into this exciting reality that God has called you; He’s shaped you: and He’s called you to use your gifts in these different roles and relationships, and they matter to God. And He’s excited about you leaning into those.

Mike Zeigler: And again, what Don is talking about is an exercise called vocational mapping. It’s in the third chapter of his book titled, Discover Your Gifts. Check it out. You can get it wherever books are sold. Thanks for being with us, Don.

Don Everts: You’re very, very welcome, Mike.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.

“Forth in Thy Name” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.