Work at Home Matters

When you are a stay at home. Yes, did you ever feel like what you're doing wasn't important, especially coming out of ministry and then deciding to stay at home and I did some stuff part-time, but I just felt like am I really impacting the world for Jesus right now. I did have that time to feel like a lot of moms feel that way, or even stay-at-home dads yeah I think so because it feels so monotonous and mundane. It feels like really have just cleaned up vomit or have changed 20 poopy diapers and I think it feels like is this kingdom work and where you talk about that a little bit welcome to family life today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most and will send Dave Wilson and you can find us@familylifetoday.com or on our family life. This is family life today.

We got Courtney rising with us today and you wrote up book sort of how the you call glory in the ordinary wire work in the home.

Matters to God's were really good. You're with us. Courtney me I just even like the title more like it in the ordinary yeah I mean you're not there.

Your Bible teacher you work with prison motherhood.

You've got four kids, married to a guy from Findlay, Ohio. Yes, our hometown so it sounds like you're not a stay at home mom that just you know, does the ordinary thing you are doing a lot of different things, but you wrote a book about feeling that in fact open the book with a story about sitting beside a businesswoman on a plane and she asked you what you do.

Yeah. Also, I wrote, but I was primarily work in the home and so and I still days I work from home. I always check my has and I like the prairie people because you like the modern prairie people. So are saying you work from home before covert before coming to everybody yeah you did before I started my head in the middle of Comed and I just like freelance writing in his writings, books, and I would start something and I would pull back and I had a lot of flex ability like that aren't right about carotid write an article or do anything. I need a break. My kids are yet younger and I didn't feel right. It wasn't for trucking because before Kevin hasn't traveled a lot right now. We both work from home so we are primarily in the home all the time and your kids at home as well as a school or at school. Okay so I onlywhat is a week so but when I read this book, I had just had my third son when I got the contract for this books. I wrote it throughout his whole first year of life.

So you were in your old twins. I had to two-year-olds and I had a three week old baby. When I got that contract and know when you say I was hands over here like you to know what it is a language they now knows that what is it, well, I had three children to lenders.

I was in diapers three kids in diapers. I had three kids. You are in car seats. There's messaging triple stroller at the time that I knew of and there's no time to yourself not watching my kids 24 hours a day right, making sure they're safe they can't be alone and not really playing on my own. That might yet know, and so you have no time to yourself when you're in the bathroom. The kids are in the back right where you can barely take a shower right my third son was a very easy baby and slept the night pretty quickly that helps. I felt rested as rested as you can feel with small children. What was so hard for me as I knew I had children.

I wanted to stay home with them, but I've never been someone who is what I would call a good housewife has in his house like that me and you be playing overly good homeschool dad like you just a really good he's really good at those types of managing types of things I would read books.

My kids all day if I could but I just don't. I don't like cleaning. I love cooking that's easier for me to get my mind around of like why that matters but the cleaning and organizing and my children matter like my taking care of your children matter like that. I love them deeply when you say the ordinary you're really talking about taking care of the home right now swear just this is hard for me to write a minor MI mattered and what the book was that my has been head transitioned into out of thinking he was going full-time vocational ministry and continue working as a businessman and has continued all this time in doing it so we had to come to terms with. Why does work in general matter, like why is is work. That's not just paid vocational ministry work wise other work matter to the Lord. So both of us on this journey of figuring out why does it matter, why does it matter that you are businessman and house honoring to God. How can we honor the Lord as we had to come to terms with what is it mean to be an image bearer of God and then because Raymond fears of God. We are also called to work in Genesis and so you're not even talking about.

To stay at home mom know about all of our work is writing so ordinary we can bring glory to sink on those you get on an airplane so you know what it make you feel when you're trying to tell her I stay-at-home right side often struggle with. Do I side written a book already arrived prior to that point I didn't write it off there to deal with what kind of author are you on the Christian author and it's like I don't have my Jesus, I honestly mean everyone struggles with that right me in on airplanes like I wanted my ear but didn't want to show what I want talk about the gospel in true confession is all as hard and so for me there's no easy answer.

I either say I'm in some form of Christian ministry. I write a book or I stay home with my children, primarily, but neither of those are respected by women in business seats next to me a.m. as I did struggle with and how to explain what I do all day and then the woman was finding glory in your marriage to be like what is seen love it when I struggle with is that she came to thinking back to me and said I couldn't do that I would get bored all day, and as I'm on board.

I got a little bored sometimes it was a good reminder to me that there reason why we do work on this hidden work to work in the VCs, but the work that upholds the society as a result we do is hit and work is not because maybe we all aspire to love it like some people love organizing and cleaning and I'm so I'm friends with them, but we do this work because it brings glory to the Lord, and he created us as image bearers and as image bearers of God. We are called to bring order out of chaos and to exercise dominion of the world is made.

If you don't take the sheets off the bed after the kid throws up on them or he's the dad on them and watch them then Elma spreads at the house and you think prior to learning what hygiene was in like the modern world. People routinely died from things that could have been prevented just because him and didn't clean, and these things that we do every day are actually not only imaging God, but our sustaining life and caring for people, so when I make mac & cheese for my boys when asking if they we make mac & cheese for lunch and I radically marriage like his weight easier and they ask for that I'm feeling hungry, but I'm not. Only thing image bearer, who showing them a God is like and that God gives good things and God gives us to things like mac & cheese and mac & cheese. I know I really wish I didn't like the mac & cheese only Ozzie mac & cheese. It is time you take us back to Genesis 3, yes, about how God gives us work right in the garden, God created Adam and Eve and he gave him a job to do. He says God came mounting on sentiment and image of God he created them and then goes on to explain the creation mandate, which is good, be fruitful and multiply.

X-rays demand and bring order chaos and fill the earth is only in the form of like marriage, like having children, which is a good exclamation of that but also God gave them jobs to do NEC throughout Scripture elsewhere in creation, God created out of nothing and we don't do that. We always are creating with raw materials that God created this image bearers as the ones who are telling a story.

What he is like. We take the things of this world, that he is created, and then go make more things to bring glory to him and also to love the world that he has made and I love the story in Exodus where I don't have holy avenues that a guy can say that has the be and they are the ones who are creating the things to go in the tabernacle and it says the Lord gave them skill and then give them joy in the lease. Yes with skill to create things that they were artists and yeah so there's just so much in our work that brings glory and honor to him.

So whether you're in the home doing laundry for your mowing the grass for your cleaning out the refrigerator. The mold that grows in the refrigerator because people can get your loving other image bearers in your heart. You are like my husband who works in the medical industry of selling operating room equipment selling lifesaving equipment to the people's lives can be sustained. This work brings glory and honor to the Lord and tells the world that he is like as Christians are in whatever sphere that they find themselves in its good work. And even if it's hidden work so my work looks so different now that I work part time, but most my kids are in school and are like physics are different. Not in the trenches with little children at home. It's weird now that I have the opposite effect. Now I'm like a home and I am deeply invested in my home and I deeply invested my kids and 20 you are still in the age of your to tell you those are still hard here as they just feel so left heart you know when I got hurt they move into new seasons together. There also was made. I remember my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Four of us and she loved being at home. She loved cooking. She's on cleaning and she always had this attitude. If I get to do this. Yes, remember thinking, are you kidding, it seems like it's doing nothing and yet she would saying she was so happy as we make dinner and she to come and help me this is so fun and then I remember her teaching me how to clean and dust and chose to be the best little duster ever meaning the bathroom when I was four and she still has a good motivation for me to write right. It wasn't. I grew up in a Christian home, but her attitude about work. My dad had it to like we get to do this, you get to learn how to work hard and now when you put a biblical context to that.

This brings glory to God. When our kids were little with three boys growing up our bathrooms.

I'm just saying yes it's very gross. It's gross and I can remember cleaning around the toilet. This is the grossest for all the law and I remember as I'm cleaning and I had this bad attitude like this is just gross and I can't wait for them to get older that there can be cleaning this and then I had this thought like this is worship him which is like. I remember having public weight weird that that's not even true.

And yet when we do it unto the Lord our mundane acts can bring glory to him right because were we can do it for him as branch of worship, especially when no one sees right you were doing it for him. Like Lord, this seems like monotonous light and horrible and yet I'm doing it for you and that has a different meaning to it right and I felt like cheering me like you go girl, yes I could get you cleaning and not run has different like fingers of a cleanliness might desire that my husband feels deeply loved when things are likely no really so is associate. Oh yeah, and he feels really relaxed and it's clean is that pressure like the queen to see that our marriage and maybe Mike are you getting the right thing. I'm not or are you using I dislike you guys want to do something helpful. He likes to clean, but it has helped me session when he was would travel a lot to think in terms of the rest become some of its clean. I can live with a little bit more mass than he can clutter than he can but it's funny as we morphed into married long enough, we start a more from the same person is more cleanliness than being married to him than I used to prefer so you know that one of my favorite passages in Scripture it's just a simple passage and I think it's so powerful to me because when I was came to Christ. In college I was a college athlete football player in the guy who led me to Christ while the first things he did when he discipled Maisy said, let me give you a perspective on how you play football, resilient, then this guy was an athlete, so I was like looking at Bill like Woody and he goes so Colossians 323 had memorized it years ago. It's like, whatever you do your work heartily as for the Lord not knowing that from the Lord, you will receive a reward and memorability to me what you do on a football field. Matters from a glory standpoint what you write a title glory in your nerves.

I can't know it matters to people like sports or maybe college and it does pay for my education. He sent to the Lord and it wasn't coming touchdowns. You throw or score it was how you do what he's given you to do and so it elevated like to get rid of the secular spiritual. You know dichotomy.

It was like everything spiritual, right, you know, so if you understand the Lord is give you gifts and put you in this role do it for the Lord for measuring plan for this university.

I used to teach Detroit Lions to follow depression a plan for unknown or no plan for the fans of Detroit you're actually plan for the Lord. So whether you're watching film weathers Monday and you're practicing or it's Sunday and you're playing because you know we elevate the game to like the right most important so everything you do right actually really really matters.

And when you have that perspective will stay at home mom, a plumber, a medical salesman or teacher, you name it right yes – changes your perspective right. All I do this unto the Lord, right, and it's a gift from God to build a work right curse know it's a blessing right. I love what you say Courtney say everyone want to revolution right nobody wants to do the dishes. It's what you're saying Dave like you want to game day practice that feels Monday night. Ordinary faithfulness in the ordinary that is actually eventually leads to greatness, not making the world's eyes died after our faithfulness and is after our obedience and whether that's on of writing a book or discipline my kids and having a hard conversation about an attitude or something.

Those things are are honoring to him because people matter to him because are created in his image, and so whether it's one person or 5000 people all matter to him and II love I may think of that of the Eric little quote where he said run.

I feel his pleasure. I just finished reading his biography to my boys biography I read him about transcendence was go through like the ethnographies yeah and whether he was on the mission field whether he was on a track he was. His heart was always to honor the Lord and be faithful to the Lord and that's I hope my boys learn and that's why I want to model for them is that my work is valuable.

We are trying to instill in them a cleaning now where is I went to the time of the motives that were all contributors that we are all contribute to the work at home and so whether you're three or your almost 41 has a job to do so, you're part of this is a member of this home. Sometimes you don't like it worked as feels really boring and hard and still good work that is so a lot of our work is monotonous. I remember when we started our church in 1990 long time ago never walking in a restaurant like the second year in the city where we have certain ups and downs. I don't think you after a while, the owner of the restaurant came over to hear you tableside really goes to have a word with you from Sweetser walks out of the school hallway and omicron my beautiful like I'm in trouble and he goes hey, one of the guys that works for me. He's actually a busboy at the restaurant goes to your church might know what's he going to say you know what is negative. Yeah, I thought, what is the sky do so soon. Okay because let me take some I've never seen a kid work like this. He's like 17 years old. He shows up early.

He stays laid.

He helps everybody key so kind. He does his work with excellence. Just amazing and I'm looking to buy okay that's great YC. I don't know was a kid. In general, and he looks amigos are all the people your church like that and never forget her cousin why that's how Christian should work no more people are like Marvel but I don't know this kid open that he's a Colossians 323 I like whatever I do them from a busboy from going to school whatever it is is like I am reflecting God the Bible that I'm to work as though my boss is not this year.

Restaurant he's got so I thought what a beautiful thing if that would be said about people in the church and the also don't as you name it right. My goodness people become to church. They will want to set yeah I remember writing my journal one day and I share this. I think I read this at the weekend. Remember how it was just one of those days with five boys under five had an ear infection and he had a cold. It's just your grinding it out day feels like it goes on for a million years and I wrote in there.

I'm so tired of the mundane and then a few days later I was reading, and all of a sudden it I write this. CJ said can we keep praying for Austin who is only three and I said what he want to pray. He said I just pray that he gets into heaven. All because we had explained the guy explained the need for a Savior in separation and he said I just don't want Austin to be an old guy all his life succeed. We need to pray mom so we can all get to heaven all and I just wrote in my journal that day like among the mundane comes the miraculous.

And I think that's true for every day we may be grinding it out and God is seen like sometimes I wonder if he's waiting to see our faithfulness in them ordinary before he gives us the revolution right right right now. How can I trust them right with this incredible call and sometimes it takes that just doing the things nobody sees which Dave reminds me of you in the hands of locker room. I'm thinking about you helping all the trainers rip off the jerseys at the end of the game printers with equipment that is realize in their job is dirty, thankless job.

Nobody even sees him doing it right in helping them out, and what those equipment guys were never interested in coming to chapel the little sermon I give before the game until I started serving beside them and they never expected a guy that has a different job to do their job right, right.

Just volunteered you to start doing register doing it and they actually look to me want to start doing it like to what he do it and then the new day became my friends and their friends again. It's what you're saying there's the ordinary things that happen everyday and jobs in the mundane.

You can step back and get God's heart on it.

There's really glory in this, I got to the story of never forgotten a preacher preach this, a buddy of his was a contractor on his house so there build his house and he said he talked his buddy I think his name was Bob and he said dude I'm sitting on your front slab you know and it's going terrible and things are shown up goes on literally have a pity party I'm sitting on the front slab and I'm hate my job in Geiser inside try to get things done but it's just the bad day and I'm not enjoying this and I'm really upset because all of a sudden this pickup truck rolled right out in front of your house. You know your jet is just dirt and he goes this loud music split and this dude gets out of his pickup truck and he's like who is this guy and he starts walking right toward him sit on the funny super happy that is happy sitting in the loud music.

He had tattoos on his arm. He goes who is this guy we have and we don't expect anybody show up helplessly and he walks up, goes where his reported job here it's in the back. He was on the porch on cleaner.

I'll see you in a minute okay guy goes back there he goes, we get all the workers like washes guy because he was full. His joy he goes and goes sees banging around in the he's in there longer day by severed that he comes out and he looked he goes. He looks amigos however used to clean the porta potty did a really bad job. Let me tell you to take care you from now on is going to be perfect and Bob said I looked to as good as he turned to go to his truck and turn around he goes because I work for the Lord is trying that he says as he blares away. He hears worship music blared out of his truck and Bob said he told this preacher goes. He goes through there. I am certain there. You know complain about my life because contractor and things are short and there's a guy who's up portage who probably at his high school graduation did not think you know.

But there is in. He saw glory in the Utah by the ordinary that's very generous and why do I tell you sort of never forgotten that the illustration of Mike and I complain every day you diapers or toys. I have an opportunity right in front of us is very ordinary may be very hard and he says whatever you do, do your work for me, not from I can bring something into the writer mess so thanks for your book. It's a reminder that I think some the challenges all to say what we do matters exactly.

So the next time you're opening a box of mac & cheese or waiting in the carpool line or going through the mundane of keeping the family together. This keep in mind that what you're doing has an eternal purpose God is using those moments to shape not only your life, the lives of your children. There is glory in the ordinary that's the name of Courtney Rush six book. It's a book that we got in our family life today resource Center. It helps remind us of the value of all that we do that God is present in those moments he's at work in all of life. You can get a copy of Courtney's book order from our website go to family life today.com and order there or call if you'd like to order a copy part number is one 800 FL today again Courtney Rush six book is called glory in the ordinary you can order it online@familylifetothe.com call to order at 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life and in the word today.

You know her family life. There are the voices you hear every day. Dave and I am Wilson.

There are the people who work behind the scenes here at family life to make this daily program.

This podcast available and then there's a whole group of people who are ultimately responsible for all of us being able to listen to the conversation with Dave Lamb and Courtney have today and that would be those of you who contribute to the ongoing work of this ministry, especially our legacy partners.

Those of you who give monthly to ensure the family life today is able to continue in our mission.

We are so grateful for all of you who his listeners have joined the team and are helping us reach more people more often because of your financial support, helping us effectively develop godly marriages and families.

If you have never joined the team. If you've never made a donation to support the ongoing work of family life today. And if God has used family life to the in your life in any kind of a significant way. I challenge you to go online, make a donation or call one 800 FL today to donate be part of paying it forward help others with the same kind of help you've received. If you can do that this week would love to send you a copy of a book by Krugman wax book we talked about earlier. It's all about rethinking the idea of self. What's the foundation of our identity and how can we live authentically before God's great book for parents and teens to read through together and it's our gift to you. When you make a donation this week to support the ministry of family life to the you can donate online@familylifetoday.com or call one 800 FL today to donate. Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks in advance for partnering with us here in the ongoing work of family life today, tomorrow, working to hear from Dave Wilson about what it is that defines him as a godly and how an understanding of that can reshape who he is as a husband is a the importance of looking vertical. Before we look anywhere else. As men they will talk about that tomorrow with the screwed up on behalf of our hosts David and Wilson on bopping back next time for another edition of family life today helping you pursue the relationships matter most