Career vs Mission: Capitalizing on Life’s Opportunities

Today’s sermon at church by Pastor Mike Olsen was quite inspiring. Everyone today seems bored. I must admit, I’ve been feeling somewhat bored lately. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do, but that what I’m doing sometimes loses the excitement it once had, and I’m just working away, hacking and coding all night. What am I working towards, what is my ultimate goal?

Listen to this sermon on the EFCW Podcast.

Is my motivation money? Pastor Olsen had a rich uncle who had everything: cars, houses, expensive dogs, a casino. But he thought it was stupid to follow Jesus Christ. Years later, his partner embezzled money on him, and he lost everything. He had to live in someone’s basement in Kansas. Mike tried to witness to him, and bring him to Christ, but he refused, saying it was too late. Eventually, he died with nothing.

The world says, “You are wasting your life if you’re following Jesus Christ.”

In Mark 8, Jesus tells us that we need to invest our lives somewhere. What’s the best deal that you can make?

Facts of Jesus’s life: Jesus lived with the outcasts of society. He made lots of enemies. But he capitalized on the opportunity given to him by God. That’s what we need to do: capitalize on the opportunities given to us by God.

His disciples didn’t think this. They didn’t understand that to give up their life would be to save it.

It’s about advancing our career, versus advancing our mission. The Bible says nothing about our career. But it has a lot to say about our mission. He illustrates this with an analogy.

Consider your driving attitude. There are two different ways to drive. One we often experience here in Los Angeles, with road rage and clogged freeways. When someone in an adjacent lane turns on their signals, people speed up to close the gap and prevent the person from entering their lane. This would be owning your life. It’s your lane.

On the other hand, you could slow down and share the road. This would be giving your life.