Ep. 032 - What does it mean to work diligently? Feat. Michael Blue

Episode Transcript

Spencer

Well, greetings. We are really excited today. We have Michael Blue on with us. Michael is a dear friend and mentor to Austin and I. He is the director of discipleship for Ron Blue Institute. He's also an attorney and has had a lot of different experiences as one of kind of thought leaders around stewardship and how we look at this question of God owning it all and how we respond faithfully as stewards.

He lives in Austin, Texas, and we got to go through what's called the 9:23 Fellowship last year with Michael and Phil and a few of his teammates and really felt encouraged, inspired and saw our lives way change in some significant ways. And so with that, we had asked Michael to come on with us to be able to talk through a portion of his book, which is called Free to Follow.

We'll be getting into one of the chapters in particular here over the next sessions on the podcast and being able to pick his brain a little bit, hear some stories from him and just get a better idea from someone that we really look to for thoughts that really, I think, align with the heart of the Lord and that we've been inspired by.

So, Michael, with all of that, welcome. We are excited to have you!



Michael

Thanks Spencer and Austin, it is really good to be here and looking forward to the conversation.



Austin

Thanks, Michael. Anything else you want to tell us about yourself before we dive right in?



Michael

You know, I'm married for 23 years, got three, three boys and 18, 17, 14, and then that's mainly it. I'm living in Austin with you guys, living in Knoxville. It's kind of the opposite UT that we we live near and they're opposite in many ways, I think. But no, that's that's it. It's good to be with you guys.



Austin

You know, our UT likes to say that the other UT has stolen many things from us, but we won't go into that. We don't. This is not a podcast on theft of logos. It's a it's a podcast on stewardship. So we'll keep it to that today.Michael, we're again, like Spencer said, we're really thankful that you are joining us.

And for listeners of the podcast, like Spencer said, we have we've talked about free to follow before. We've quoted a couple of lines from the book, but just to kind of give some context for today and for our next couple of episodes, really, we're going to be diving into the penultimate chapter from Michael's book and really to understand where we've gotten to today.

It really helps to kind of know that these are really application points built on the eight chapters that lead up to this point in the book. And so really, we highly recommend picking up a copy of Free to Follow. We'll leave a link to it in the show notes. But today we're going to be talking about is this idea of working diligently in the next episode we're going to cover living simply and we're going to finish off with an episode on giving sacrificially.

So we really hope that this conversation with Michael that you guys enjoy it. And if you've got questions, you can always reach out to us. So really what we want to do first off is just kind of unpack chapters one through eight.

And one of the things that you write in chapter one, Michael, was “The counter-cultural call to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus. It isn’t that we have failed to teach this truth, it’s that we have taught the exact opposite.” So when you think about that, when you think about that line that you've wrote, what are those things that you think are being taught in terms of this idea of taking up our cross and following Jesus?



Michael

I always love when when you write in absolutes, because nothing is obviously that absolute. It is not that everyone is taught the exact opposite of it. But I think that generally speaking kind of in the West that oftentimes are teaching about about grace removes the transformative work of God. I mean, and so it's it's almost as if we've taken it for granted and then we teach that, you know, kind of the opposite, not the we teach something very different as to what we're called and following after Jesus with our whole lives.

And so as I think about it, I think Grace, when I understand it, caused me to die to myself completely. This isn't an earning of salvation, which I think is the is the reason that we react against this and we sometimes push back against this. It's not about earning the salvation, it's responding to salvation. So it's an understanding of grace and how I respond to it.

And so the way I think that we teach the opposite is we try to we imply that the gospel is the way to this comfortable, easy life. Now it's a call to a much more joyful and peaceful and contented life. But that does that's not the same thing as, hey, everything's all of a sudden going to start going well for you if you follow these things, you're not going to have any trouble in your life.

And so we kind of almost it feels like a bait and switch in some ways of, hey, just raise your hand and do this and everything's good, and then we expect nothing from people. And then they get frustrated that Christianity or following Jesus doesn't do anything for them. Well, that's because they haven't actually tried to follow Jesus and our churches of what?

Let them sit and kind of sit comfortably thinking that they're okay with God when in fact they may have never really received the grace that was offered to them.



Austin

Well, I think, you know, as we think about working diligently, there's almost this twofold nature where it's a call to the actual vocation. But working within a body of believers and being a part of something that's bigger than myself. It just like you're saying, I have to be a part of it. I have to lay down my cross.

I can't just live this comfortable lifestyle where I don't have to rub shoulders with my neighbor. I can hide from them. I can not worry about the challenges that are facing my brothers and sisters in Christ, both locally and internationally. And I think that idea of working diligently is a dual verse of, yeah, it's both vocational, but it's also I need to work within the context of my church.



Michael

If you think about the very first converts to Christianity, you know, the thousands that responded to Peter Sermon and acts, even their response to the Gospel changed everything in their lives literally because of, of cultural significance and what it meant in their families and their jobs and standing in society and all of these things.

And so they couldn't say, Yeah, I want to follow this Jesus and have nothing change. It happened naturally just in the circumstance of their life. So, you know, in many ways we can raise their hand, say, Yeah, I want to follow Jesus and have nothing change in those. And that causes a change in how we work with each other.

It causes how we commune with each other, causes us to change in all of these areas, which they would have seen very, very tangibly and we've kind of lost the the benefit of the difficulty, I guess, that they walked into by being able to just say yes without having that tangible change happen to us.



Austin

I think I think it's really exacerbated, especially here in the U.S., where we see a whole lot of cultural Christianity that doesn't demand transformation into, okay, what does it look like to live countercultural? What does the gospel actually call us into? I think there's just a lot I know, especially here in the South, you can kind of just get into that rhythm of comfort and believe that the church teaches that same rhythm of comfort that you can just live into.



Michael

And I'd say, Austin, it doesn't it's not even it doesn't demand transformation. It doesn't expect a transformation.



Austin

No, no. Anytime I read Jesus words, I think he expects us to be transformed and not.



Michael

I think even the idea of the power of God at work in me transforms me. And so the expectation of transformation isn't just like, well, I need to go get my act together. It's the fact that in encountering that I am changed and then that flows out of me. And so we it's like we've missed, we've totally removed the expectation that when I encounter God in this way, it is, it is a radical transformation.

And I think it's why you see these, you know, testimonies of people who did who they were in the gutter and, you know, literally everything changed in their life. And it's so remarkable to us. But really, we all encounter that transformation of our sinful hearts. It's just that have we encountered it? And then when we do, we should expect transformation to happen.



Austin

So let's move on. I think this really plays into when we expect transformation to happen. It needs to transform all of our lives. And we can often approach this idea of working diligently or just work and think, Well, it's just something that I have to do. It's set before me. I need to feed my kids. You've got three boys that are approaching the late teenage years and they need to eat, so you got to go to work.

It's just the next step before we get to retire and play. And so what? You begin the chapter with a discussion on this idea of the difficulty of picking up our cross. And you say "Death is always followed by a resurrection in God’s kingdom.” And I think that's so necessary that, you know, when we expect transformation from the Lord, we expect to interact with the Spirit.



He reveals sin in our hearts. He reveals where we are broken and need redemption. We need to expect that in the same way that he reveals that he's going to move us into being transformed. But also, there is this need to pick up our cross, follow Jesus, and expect that that the death of our sin is around the corner and we need to work through that.

So when we come back and think about work as a necessary evil, where do you think that belief comes from? Where does it stem from?



Michael

That's a big, big question, I think that in many ways this belief comes out of the curse arising from original sin. Work became toil and burden as a result of our rebellion against God. I think what has happened because of that is we have this belief that work is always going to be bad, it is always going to be difficult, it is always going to be a burden to me and its purpose is just so that I can eat, or feed my family.

So, we have removed the enjoyment of it, and the great blessing of work and using our hands and turned it all into toil. And it’s like, I have to toil for this long so that I can eventually be done and rest. So, I would say that it goes all the way back to the very beginning of work when work was, and then work was disconnected from God from the fall.

And lots of people have written lots about the fact that we worked before we sinned, so work isn’t evil in and of itself, it was the difficulty that arose from work. So, we just have an attitude that has risen up out of that curse.



Austin

Thinking about a Christian perspective, a work like, we understand that it's there is toil. But if Christians viewed work in that same context, that it's this necessary evil. Where do you think that leads societally?



Michael

Well, I mean, I think that that we see a lot of discontentment in work, and I've experienced it in my own life. I mean, I think of my own journey of trying to find trying to have work be more than it is for me.

You know, work is such a part of who we are. One of the first questions we ask when we meet somebody is, what do you do? And I immediately can peg you in a lot of different ways and an answer to that question, rightly or wrongly, it's kind of like the question when you're grow up in a town and they say, where'd you go to high school?



You immediately have assumptions about that person because of where they went to high school. And so I think when we when we allow our identity to be tied in that way, it's easy to become discontent because we're either not who we are or people don't realize how great we actually think we are, or, you know, all of these things that that come alongside of that.

And so then we try to make work serve our ends. We try to make them to be the means to where we can find satisfaction or we can find this hole in our hearts that we have. And so we work then actually rises to a place that it doesn't belong in our lives. And we find that that at the end of the day, work doesn't actually provide these things to us.

It doesn't provide us the contentment that we hoped for, the security that we hoped for, or at least as much as we thought it would. And so at the end of the day, we as Christians, we look just like the rest of the world in terms of how we approach work and what we feel about work.

And so then it does become one, can I be done with doing this so I can go actually enjoy life



Austin

As I think about that in similar ways, I've looked at different jobs that I've had, whether it's in ministry or working now as an advisor. And there have been seasons where I've really enjoyed my job. I think the last role that I with my previous employer, it was really strange because I enjoyed it, but I also felt this discontentment and wanting to leave.

It was the best role that I had in the organization. But on the same side, there is still this discontentment that I was longing for more. And so I think there's this I think you've touched on something that's really profound, that that work was never meant to be our end satisfaction. We are made to do it.

We're made to participate with God in it. But it's not where we find our identity. It's not where we find really the purpose and meaning our telos in life. It is it is a byproduct of walking with God that we get to participate in work, but it doesn't define who we are.



Michael

The work of our hands and the produce that it comes is in that as a natural result and that's a good thing. And for a lot of life I think sometimes I'm almost in the luxury of I guess the Western world that we live in with lots of choice.

And I don't I'm not given a job that I have to do because it's what all of my ancestors did before me. Some ways I discount just the pure benefit of the fact when I work with my hands, even if I'm not digging in the ground and it produces food for family and friends and community and church and whatnot, that that that necessarily is a helpful thing and a part of living in this world and community. And so I don't even take I miss the even the joy of that simple thing. That's a natural product of work.



Austin

we're going to read a quote from Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10 that you bring up. Paul says, here

“Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

And as I think about that in context of this idea of working diligently, obviously, thus all the night we had believers that were hoping in the resurrection, hoping that the resurrection was coming, that Jesus was coming back really soon.

And so some of them had a proclivity towards idleness that Paul was highlighting here. But, you know, when we think about this, how does it really affect the way that we not only interact with our work, but with our brothers and sisters in Christ as we engage them, as they engage work?



Michael

There's a lot here that I think is underneath this passage that you brought up and I think that, you know, one of the things that we see in Thessalonica is it is a community table that's implied in this passage. So they were still like, we saw an Acts. They were eating together, whether it was daily, like they were in Acts or just regularly, I'm not sure, but they were eating sounds like daily together food.

And there are as a group of people who were eating without working, they weren't they weren't contributing to it because they were waiting for the resurrection. They thought it was coming and so they weren't working. So you have first of all, you have this idea of of a community sharing resources to feed each other, right? And so they were feeding people who weren't contributing, presumably beyond just these people.

But these people had they had the ability to work and were refusing actually to work. And so, you know, this brings up a lot of, okay, so how do we deal with an idle brother who is in our midst and we want to share we want to be we want to be generous with our community, but they're always taking and they're never contributing.

And I because I think God desires all of us to be both givers and receivers at times in our lives. And so, you know, I think in this context Paul is saying, look, you've given him an opportunity to work and they continue to come to the table and they continue to eat and they continue to not provide. And so at this point, you need to cut them off and say enough.

And so you have a really complicated scenario. If we think about it playing out in our own lives, where you have a community of people who are sharing together, they're caring for one another, loving each other, and then you have this group that you're going to have to have a conflict with effectively and say, Hey, look, you don't get to eat anymore because you're not participating in work that you're able to do in this way.

And so it really presents this complicated, messy situation of sharing resources with people and but also not doing it so much to a point where you just let people be lazy. I think is really what they were doing and taking advantage of a group of people who was being diligent.



Austin

Yeah, as I think about that, too. You know, this idea of sharing and having a community table, I think is really foreign to us, especially in the United States. I think there are probably communities that do it better, but many that I've been a part of, there's not that frequency of a community table where you also know you don't just know who truly is needy, but you know those that are almost playing needy and not participating.

So if you've seen ways in which that that plays itself out, where you can actually participate in depth of community in your life or are have you seen communities where that is lived out?



Michael

In part, yes. I mean, I think that it's, you know, in this way that they were living it out. I haven't been a part of. But certainly within our church body, there have been seasons with people, with situations where you really saw the whole church rallying. It's a small church, which I think, you know, So you can see those types of things and, you know, that comes lot come alongside people and help people and in meaningful ways and helpful ways.



And some of them turned out well and some of them did not turn out well. And I can think of a couple specific examples in both ways. You know, there's and it and there's just there's a lot of grace, I think that you have to give to people along with a willingness to be held accountable and so both parties, I think, have to have it.

I think of a couple that a number of people helped in a church here and who really just got themselves in a horrific debt situation. And we looked at their budgets and they and they legitimately couldn't make ends meet the way they were living because they had so much student debt and lifestyle—Austin's expensive—They were teachers.

Right. That they didn't have that something had to change. You had to get jobs or go get retrained, but it wasn't immediate. And so some people stepped up and helped them take care of, you know, a good, decent chunk of their credit card debt, which you think, well, that's I mean, they totally got themselves in that mess, period.

But until they knocked that out, they had no way of making any meaningful progress towards anything else. Well, so they started working on it. And, you know, living very simply and doing these things. And it was a few months later and I remember talking to this group and they were talking about how they were going to go to Dallas and take their kids on a vacation.

And, you know, I'd looked at my wife. I'm like, they can't go on a vacation. Like, are you kidding me? Like, people just came and did this. And she very quickly chided me and said, Michael, they probably haven't been doing anything like that for eight years or, you know, some really long period of time. Anyway, the story, it was it was a little frustrating, but it worked out and they continued to do it and needed to do that.

Vacation didn't wreck them. And they did that. They actually worked their way out of this situation through help of people, through accountability and through a lot of difficulty.

Likewise, I've seen people get a lot of help. And then when people called them to work and start to contribute, they just disappeared. And they had and they probably left with bad opinions of the people in the church who invited them to do those things.

And that's hard because it might have been communicated imperfectly, but it certainly was communicated, I think, from a heart of helping and accountability and not judgment with them. So it's a messy situation, but it requires you to be in in the proximity to one another regularly for it to have any chance of working.



Spencer

So I'll interject here. You know, Michael in the group, oftentimes we would talk about Acts 2 and then, you know, later other passages talking about believers, sharing, you know, all things and really having this open handed posture in the early church. Is this something as you as you kind of think about where a lot of churches are at, even those that are really that are trying to live in line with the Bible?

Is this an area where you think we can lean in and really see some things happen? You know, if you if you had a group of people that said, you know, we see this in the early church and we don't see this in our lives, you know they have an openness, you know, and they're listening to you and saying, okay, what would be a first step or what would be ways that you would encourage them in taking steps towards maybe seeing something that's a little bit closer to the Acts 2 church? Any any thoughts there?



Michael

Yeah. I mean it's a great question, Spencer. I think that it gets, I think about it a lot and I think that, you know, we have some very natural hurdles within our culture that make it feel overwhelming and impossible, right? I mean, we live far away from each other. Everything. And people get in cars all the time and drive around.

You know, I even think we're talking my wife and I are talking about the Sabbath and how we have a struggle kind of honoring the Sabbath. And you think about what happened on the Sabbath in the Old Testament times. And, you know, they live in small communities where they would commune with each other like it wasn't like they sat in their homes.

Like oftentimes we do and like, well, I can't drive anywhere. I can't go anywhere and no one's around. So I'm by myself reading a book or, you know, sleeping or doing something that's so, you know, even some of those problems arise. The point being, I think that if we want to go into this, I think we have to be willing to sacrifice preferences in our own lives of how we live, where we live.

You know, the time that we have to ourselves, you know, you kind of have to give up some of those things and be more intentionally around people. And the second step that makes it even harder is you have to be around people who aren't all in the exact same socio economic arena. And that doesn't happen very naturally in our world.

And so it's, it's something to fight for and it's something that, you know, whether it's a group of people moving into an area that they want to be with, but it can't be from this savior complex attitude which oftentimes comes in, Hey, I'm moving into this poor area, quote unquote. If you you know, if people could see me, I'm the savior coming in and I'm going to fix all the problems.

Right. It's really actually a community that you're engaging in. And so, you know, the way it looks today, I think, is as we do have meals together regularly, you know, we're consistently going to church together. And I'm not a I don't go haphazardly. It's I'm committed to you. I'm checking in on you regularly and I'm doing everything I can to do life with you.

But it works best if you're around people and in community. You see them in the grocery store, you see them at school, you see them at church, and you have that ability to kind of do life more with them. And I think that's probably the baseline where this has to begin is proximity.