Will You Have To Work In Heaven?

AI Generated Transcript (I only fixed the mis-spelling of my name and added ONE paragraph break - I left the rest of the mess just the way AI delivered it haha):

What are you doing to serve your fellow man? Welcome to Jon's Voice Notes, where I ramble on and on about whatever it is I'm thinking about today, stream of consciousness style. I was so tempted to spend some time thinking through what I wanted to say, but that breaks the rules. I've just got to go for it. I'm in my beautiful little Jon's Voice Notes spot.

The sun is barely cracking through the clouds. It's the morning time, but it is beautiful and refreshing, and I can hear the birds, and there's so much green here. Fills my soul.

But if you're wondering why am I doing this particular exercise, Dream of Consciousness, without allowing myself to plan, this is an exercise I started to overcome kind of a podcasting mental block. I have a podcast at gospelofeverything.com. Kind of got stuck. So I come here and I'm just talking to get it going. Get the juices flowing. Get my mind flowing. So if you're here enjoying this, I hope you're blessed.

But back to the topic at hand, what are you doing to serve your fellow man today? A couple of things that inspired me to think about this. I was just at the gas station in the morning, you know, earlier in the morning getting gas.

And I saw something that I often see if I show up at a gas station in the morning. It's men in their hoodies and their jeans or whatever. And today I saw them, they were refueling their lawnmowers and then pulling them into a truck that had whatever landscaping and snow removal on the side.

And then after they moved along, because they were already there when I got there, I saw another guy pull up. He just had kind of a rusty old white van with a ladder on it. He was clearly dressed to work, though. So many times in the morning at a gas station, I will see this, or you see the guys that are clearly in their going-to-work garb coming out with their cup of coffee and their breakfast sandwich or whatever they got at the gas station.

And when I see this, you know what I feel? Inspired. Men who work. Men who get up in the morning and they go out and do work to serve their fellow man. I was particularly moved by the guys doing the lawn mowing and whatever the guy with the ladder is up to. Because I'm in a group called Entree Pastors.

And it's all people who are pastors or were pastors who have started side businesses, or in some cases, full-on gone into business, trying to get pastors to break out of poverty mentality and be willing to be an example to the flock by doing some sort of work. I think I've talked about them before, but at least a couple of them, the way they are doing it is through what they called service-based business.

Now, of course, all business is actually service-based. You're serving somebody. But they mean very specifically providing like a physical material service, like mowing the lawn or handyman. I know one guy has like a pressure washing business. Someone that has a handyman business is now also starting. They're installing these really expensive, fancy shades, like automatic shades that come down.

And block off your patio if you want them to. But all of this inspires me. What is that guy's name? Michael Rowe. Do I have his name right? Is it something else? Rowe. R-O-W-E. Talks about the dirty jobs. It's inspiring, not discouraging. I think when I was growing up, I would have been told, Jon, you need to go to college so you don't have to do that. Make sure you go to college so you don't have to do that kind of work.

I think we were off there. I think this was off. Now, there's nothing wrong with learning or going to college or doing whatever to advance yourself.

If you have a skill set that needs to be developed that way, if your best way to serve your fellow man is through things that maybe they're higher paying, you know, that are when they require more training, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying that's wrong. But what I am saying is in church, in school, in our lives and how we see the people around me, we should praise, uphold, lift up and be delighted at the men who go to work and they work with their hands.

They work with their bodies. They serve others in these ways. We should pay them well. We should treat them well. We should make sure they keep their chins up. I admire them. I remember when I was younger, I worked a construction job for about six months.

I've had several jobs, all of them before I went into missions, into ministry, where I was working outside, working hard. I worked in the cornfields growing up where we detasseled corn, pulled the tassels off one, two, so these two different rows of corn would crossbreed. I worked for one of those companies and all the young people in our area, many went out and did that.

Cindy Crawford, the supermodel, was famously discovered by someone who saw her out in a cornfield doing this work. She's from the town I was born in. But I had this job working construction with my dad and my uncle. It was kind of like a program for children of iron workers. So I didn't have all the training. I was just a grunt worker. You know, carry this around, do this. And for six months, I watched men who worked really hard

building buildings, putting up corrugated wall buildings is what we were doing. And it was cold. And I went out there in my warm clothes and, you know, break time was sitting in the van with the engine running and drinking our hot coffee, you know, trying to get warm. But this is all good and beautiful. Here's a thought for you. Do you think there would not have been work if there had never been sin in

When Adam and Eve sinned, they ate the fruit they weren't supposed to eat, and that curse was brought on the earth. It made work harder.

But I believe, I don't just believe it, it's right in there. Be fruitful, multiply, take dominion. Before when God was creating the earth, it says there was no man yet to work the ground. Work was always God's plan for us. So even without sin, even in a perfect world, if you think in a perfect world I wouldn't have to work, you don't understand.

In a perfect world, the thorns and the thistles and the certain obstacles will be removed and we'll be able to be more fruitful because some obstacles have been removed from our way. We'll be able to work more and get more beauty, create more beauty. But I believe even before sin, there would have been serving of your fellow man. Maybe there would have been mowing lawns and pressure washing and, um,

Who knows? Who knows exactly? We probably would have advanced technologically where we had such amazing ways to do all these things, but there's still going to be work to do. And the more technologically advanced we get to make things easier, nobody's out there, you know, clipping the grass with scissors.

There's still going to be work. Work without obstacles. In heaven, there's probably going to be work. Although, I don't 100% know what life is like after this life. But maybe. Like, sometimes you've been taught that money is this kind of unnecessary evil. Or, I'm sorry, necessary evil. It's evil, but we've got to deal with it. I don't believe that. Money is just a means of trading wealth. Wealth is created by work and by serving each other. This is what creates wealth.

I believe before sin, there would have been this creation of wealth through work and serving one another. And they probably would have developed a means just for trading it. A useful, just a practical, useful means for, you know, you could just go over and say, here's my, I grew some corn. Can I trade a whole bunch, you know, a year's worth of corn for one of your goats? I don't know. I don't know.

But whatever it was, as the economy got bigger, there probably would have come a point at some time where that would just be so impractical that someone would have come up with, or maybe God would have just told them about money. I'm going to trade this corn in and get some money, and I'm going to go over and buy the goat. It's just a means. That's all it is. Money is not immoral.

I used to say it was amoral, but I'm not sure that even that is correct. I think it might be beautiful and good in a creation and design of God. But what I'm getting at is the things that you're looking at, or maybe you're looking at as evil or sinful or bad, work, money, economy, having to go serve somebody, are actually good and beautiful things to be delighted in.

And to be honored. I've heard it said, I don't know if I've ever seen it done, that when a missionary comes to the church, we honor them. We put them up front, we have them speak, and we honor them. I wonder what it would be like to actually have some service-based type workers come up and share how their business is going. And tell a little bit of their story of how they started and why they're doing what they're doing.

I don't know. Is that in place? Pastors? Tell me. I don't know. But if nothing else, it would be a great example for the next generation, for the young people, to see that people who work with their hands are also given a place of honor with everyone else. Because they should be. And I don't mean, oh, it's too bad they have to do that. I guess we better give them some honor. No, I mean it's actually worthy of it. It's actually worthy of honor and praise.

I love listening to the guys in my Andre Pastors group when they share about how they did a project. They overcame. It was hard, but they did it, and they got paid well.

And they're delighted. They're delighted in getting paid and they're delighted in the work itself. This is beautiful and good and should inspire us all. Whatever you're doing, whether you're working with computers or working on the internet or even if you're trading on the stock market or if you're a doctor or if you're a musician or a magician or anything. On and on. Working in a factory or

Ultimately, you're serving your fellow man in some way, even if you don't see it. So first of all, the Bible tells us, work is unto the Lord. Work is a service to our King. Love God. That's the first of the commandments, is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So as you're repeatedly putting that thing on at the factory, can you do that out of love to the Lord your God? I believe you can. You can be grateful.

Can you do it out of love for your fellow man? It's hard to see the end user, the end where whoever is receiving. A whole bunch of people are receiving benefit from your labor.

Your bosses, the owners of the company, the people who buy the product, the people who are just greatly benefited by it, even if it's something simple. Like I think I mentioned before, I had a job once where I was sitting in a cereal packaging factory. One of the jobs I did was put cereal boxes in a cardboard case, like all day. They were coming down the line, and at first, a newbie would smash the cereal box

You know, cornflakes flying all over the place, destroyed cereal box, because it's hard to stick them in the cart, you know, to grab six cereal boxes and stick them in a cardboard box that they fit perfectly in fast because they're still coming down the line.

But I got good at it. Everybody that does it, you get good at it. It looks effortless. If you watch, it looks like they're just kind of throwing these boxes right in the cardboard cases. No problem. Work worthy of being done. It probably can be done by machines now, and that's okay. Now we've got to just find another way to serve our fellow man. But working to serve God as a glory to God because he deserves our labor...

and working to love and serve our fellow man, even when it's hard to see the exact fellow man that's benefiting or is drudgery. Try gratitude instead of complaining about the drudgery. I believe if you are called to do something else, a higher paying job or whatever than your drudgery job, if you will take on an attitude of gratitude to the Lord, serving the Lord to the best of your ability at your mundane task,

serving your fellow man to the best of your ability at your mundane task, what's going to happen? If you're content with that, that's okay. But if you're not, God is going to take your faithfulness and lead you to the next place, lead you to the next level that he has for you, whatever that is. So this is why I started with, what have you done to serve your fellow man today? Everything you're doing is about serving God and serving man, including work.

And I love it. I don't know if you ever watched the TV show Luke Cage. I watched a little bit of it. I eventually got lost and forgot about it. But I remember at the beginning, Luke Cage, who's the superhero to be, is working in a barber shop. And he's literally sweeping up the hair or whatever. And he's got his overalls on. And at some point...

I don't remember if it was a lady. I don't remember who it was, but at some point said, this is exactly what young men need to see is a man who puts his overalls on and goes to work.

So if you're doing a service-based business, if you are doing a physical work business, if you're working with your hands, or if you're doing anything, anything at all, with gratitude and delight before the Lord, with a heart to serve your fellow man, I honor you. I praise you. And I say that what you are doing is worth doing. And I hope God encourages you greatly and causes you to flourish in everything your hand touches. And I hope you are blessed and

And I also hope you're advanced to every level that God wants to advance you to. But thank you for listening to my ramble today. 

Jon Davis and Jon's Voice Notes signing off.