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Faith & Work, Do They Mix?

“Faith and Work, Do They Mix?”
Rev. John Secrest

Introduction:

In Summary this is what I am learning:
Our struggle to integrate faith and work reveals how far we have strayed from God’s design for man. God made man to work, to lead, to bring order and to care for God’s creation. As His image bearers, man was designed to represent God to all of creation to exercise what I call dominion. In a fallen world where God’s design has been distorted and frustrated this dominion is to be expressed and practiced in a way that brings redemption to everything in our sphere of influence (restoring what was lost in the fall). Our struggle is often a result of forgetting why we are here, of why we were made. I hope today that through examples from my own personal story, a look at history, and the teaching of Scripture we will discover, or be reminded of, God’s design for man, God’s design for you and how faith and work not only mix, but how they are, in fact, inseparable! So that’s the big picture, now for the details.

Let me tell you a little about my Story:
I grew up in an educated, middle class, suburban family. Probably not unlike many of you. We attended church fairly regularly. It was the right thing to do, it is what our ancestors did and so it was part of our family tradition. But really it was an anomaly in our lives. We believed in God but frankly He wasn’t relevant to much of what we did. Our lifestyle was respectable but really it was pretty secular in that we didn’t think much about how any kind of faith that we had related to the rest of our lives.

At the age of 20 something happened that flipped that 180 degrees. I began to follow Jesus Christ as my savior and Lord. I was nurtured and encouraged in this new journey by a campus fellowship of students and staff who loved God and who inspired me to follow Jesus Christ and grow in this intimate relationship with God. I am so grateful for how God used those people and that time of my life in...