Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 736 | How to Love Your Job & Find Your Calling | Guest: Jordan Raynor

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Today we're joined by Jordan Raynor, author, entrepreneur, and host of the "Mere Christians" podcast, to discuss the biblical perspective on work. We start by discussing what God thinks about work and how work was not a result of the fall, but rather a gift from God before the fall. But how does that truth change the way we work on a day-to-day basis? How can seemingly mundane work such as changing diapers or making a latte bring pleasure to God? We discuss what brings God joy in our work and what work will look like in heaven (yes, we will work in heaven!). Then, we talk about the importance of disciple-making and how it's more important than ever to think of this within the framework of the workplace. We discuss what "calling" means and whether God cares about what work we choose to do. Then, we look at the importance of doing difficult jobs with joy and why we as Christians need to be running into dark places. Jordan's books: The Word Before Work: A Monday-Through-Friday Devotional to Help You Find Eternal Purpose in Your Daily Work Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do The Creator in You --- Timecodes: (01:09) Interview with Jordan begins (04:45) God's purpose for work (08:40) Work in the New Earth (11:28) Seemingly mundane work and bringing God joy (21:34) "Calling" and happiness (27:00) Difficult work and working in dark places --- Today's Sponsors: Dwell — enhance your time in the Word with the read-along experience featuring big, bold text & beautiful background art. Go to DwellApp.io/RELATABLE to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off for life! Birch Gold — protect your future with gold. Text 'ALLIE' to 989898 for a free, zero obligation info kit on diversifying and protecting your savings with gold. StartMail — keep your email private - every email can be encrypted! Go to StartMail.com/ALLIE for 50% off your first year! My Patriot Supply — prepare yourself for anything with long-term emergency food storage. Save $200 off a Three-Month Emergency Food Kit (and free shipping) when you go to PrepareWithAllie.com. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 572 | Mike Rowe: These Are the 3 Steps to Loving Your Work https://apple.co/3ZDwlQr --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV

or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Work. Can't live without it, but sometimes you feel like you can't live with it. Maybe you're discontent in your job. You don't know what God is calling you to do or you just don't know how to honor God and find true and deep fulfillment in your job, whether you're a stay-at-home mom, a publicist, a podcaster, we all as Christians are trying to figure out how to work well in a way that glorifies God. Jordan Rayner, author of the books called to create, and the word before work is an expert on this subject. He is an incredible, refreshing perspective on the theology of work and how we actually apply it to our lives, apply it to our work for the good of others, ourselves, and for the glory of God.

Wow. I was so encouraged by this conversation. I know this is going to be a popular episode. Listen to it multiple times. Share it with your friends. This is a great one for the new year. Without further ado, here's our new friend, Jordan Raynor. Jordan, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah. So, hey, Allie, it's great to be with you. My name is Jordan Raynor. I live in Tampa, Florida. And my mission in life is to help Christians connect their faith with the work that they do 40, 50 hours a week, whether that's as an entrepreneur, a barista, an accountant, a stay-at-home parent, whatever that work is. Because when we read the scriptures, it's clear that work is of great importance, both now and for eternity to the God of the Bible. And what inspired you to start writing about this? I mean, work has been a fact of

life for all of human existence. And so you decided to kind of approach it, though, in a new way. Why did you do that? Yes, this is really rooted in my personal story. So before I was creating content like this full time, I spent 10 years as a tech entrepreneur. And about halfway through that journey, I was in the process of selling my second company, trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life. And when you sell two companies, like the natural thing is you go, you start a third, right? So that was the plan.

But for a hot minute there, my wife and I were very seriously considering planning a church because, and I think a lot of our listeners will resonate with this, I was just overcome with guilt. How dare I want to go start another business? when there is a need for people to move into mud huts, 5,000 miles away from home to make disciples and plant churches. And so we were really seriously considering plenty of church for a little bit. And by the grace of God alone, I had this godly mentor pull me aside after church one Sunday.

He's like, hey, I hear you think about planning a church. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm thinking this guy's going to like pat me on the back, maybe write me my first check. And I'll never forget, you just look me like square in the eyes. He's like, Jordan, yeah, that just sounds like really dumb for you. for you personally. He's like, Jordan, you're a talented entrepreneur. You have served your investors and your teams through the Ministry of Excellence. Why do you think you have to go plan to church in order to do ministry? Don't you get that your work is ministry? Yeah. I was like, I have no idea what

you're talking about. And so he told me, he's like, hey, listen, in light of this conversation, go back to your Bible, read Genesis 1 and 2 that you probably read 100 times in light of this conversation and tell me what you find. And what I found changed my life forever. I found that before God tells us that he is loving or holy or omnipotent, he tells us that he is a God who works. Created as the first verb in the Bible and pretty much the only thing we know about God through this first couple of chapters of Genesis. And then I saw that long before the great commission comes onto the scene where Jesus tells us to make disciples of all nations, Right there in Genesis 1 is the first commission to humankind, to fill the earth, to subdue it, to rule it in line with God's character and his law.

And that transformed my perspective about work. Work is not a means to an end. Work is not the curse of sin. Work is God's first gift to humanity. And it's the only gift that never really ends because we're going to be work. forever in eternity with Jesus by our side. So that message changed my life. I was like, I got to go all in on this.

Yes, I remember hearing a few years ago the truth that to work is not a result of the fall, but as you said, it predates the fall that Adam was placed in the garden to what, to sit there and enjoy the fruit? No, to work and to keep it. And so that was before sin entered the world. So that does disrupt kind of our idea of work being a necessary evil, just something that you do to get to Friday. So how does that tangibly change then how we work as an accountant, as a barista, as a stay-at-home mom? Because, I mean, a lot of people feel like their work is just kind of purposeless outside of making themselves and maybe making their boss money.

Maybe they don't like it. Maybe it's really mundane. But how does that reality that work predates the fall, that it's not a necessary evil, how does that tangibly change how we work on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, it's a great question. So number one, I think it helps us look for the inherent goodness of our work, right? As you pointed out, Ali, Paradise, contrary to what we think about the Garden of Eden, paradise wasn't a vacation.

It was a vocation that human beings had, right? And so that allows us to see, okay, yes, my work is difficult today because we live on the other side of Genesis 3, but there's something inherently good about this thing because this is the very thing that God made me to do in this world, right? So that's number one. Number two, I think practically, I think we can lament over what's hard about our work, what's difficult about our work, right? And just cry out to God. You know, we forget the Exodus, the second book of the Bible. The whole impetus for the Exodus was slavish labor, was people crying out to God and saying, hey, this work is too hard, and he came and saved the people. So I think we can lament to our.

over the hard things about our work. And then third, we can look forward expectantly to the day in which work will be perfect once again. And I think we can get glimpses of that now, but we're not going to see it in full until Jesus brings heaven to earth where heaven will ultimately be. And then we have such distorted theology around heaven. We think of it as this glorified retirement home in the clouds. That is an unbiblical lie from the pit of hell that steals our hope. and anticipation for the future. Isaiah 65 says God's chosen people will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain. On the new earth, we will have good, perfect work to do. And if that doesn't fuel your hope and anticipation for eternity, man, I don't know what does.

That gets me fired up. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you

about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. So the curse of work is not the work itself or even that it's strenuous. The curse came that you will work and sometimes produce nothing. That's exactly right. Sometimes our work will be futile. That's right.

Yes. And they're redeemed in the renewed world, though, that curse is reversed. And we are no longer laboring in vain. So tell me about that because, you know, we were talking about work on yesterday's episode. and I almost said, you know, we are going to be working and the new heaven and the new earth, but I wasn't sure that I was exactly right. I knew that work came before the fall, but I hadn't thought about it quite enough.

And then I heard you say on another podcast and that's true. So tell me, tell me about that because honestly, like, I like working. That excites me. So tell me the scriptural basis for that and what that looks like. Yeah. So there's a couple of scriptures I would point you to. Number one, we already talked about Genesis 1 and 2, right? Because work existed prior to the fall of Genesis 3,

we can know that work and not just our physical bodies and souls will be redeemed. Jesus came to make all things new, not just human beings. He came to win back everything Satan stole in Genesis 3. So if Jesus' victory is going to be total and complete, we believe it will be, that's got to include the world of war. That's number one. Number two, Revelation 22-5, right? We think of Revelation is kind of the end of this narrative.

Heaven is the end. Revelation 22 is just the beginning because Revelation 22-5 tells us that we, you and me as human beings, will reign forever and ever with Christ on the new earth, which makes sense because that's exactly what we were created to do in Genesis 1. God's never wanted to do his work in this world on his own. He's always wanted to do it in partnership with. other human beings. And the third passage I would point you to how is what I just mentioned, Isaiah 65, go read the whole chapter. It's incredible, this incredible vision. It says that we are going

to build houses on the new earth. We're going to plant vineyards and long enjoy the work of our hands. Our labor will not be in fame, right? So here's the deal. This is what's exciting to me in the present. We can get a taste of that right now. That not in vain language, that might sound familiar to a lot of our listeners. It's from a very famous verse in first Corinthians. First. Corinthians 1558, where Paul says that any labor we do in the Lord today, in the Lord, basically meaning for his purposes and his glory and not our own, is not in vain. Somehow, making a latte, not for my glory, but for the glory of God and the good of others, is somehow not in vain, somehow is going to contribute in shape our eternal future with God. That's mind-boggling.

Yes. Let's talk about that a little more because I've heard you say that one of the reasons why the seemingly mundane and the seemingly meaningless. So the diaper changes or the crunchy numbers for a client or the waiting tables. One of the reasons that that is eternal, that that shapes eternity, that that matters in eternity is because it brings pleasure to God and God's pleasure is eternal. So talk a little bit more about that. Oh, man, I would love to. Thank you for giving me a chance to. So one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. Let me back up for a second. I think a lot of times in our modern context,

Christians think that the only way we can bring pleasure to God is by going on a mission trip. We're sharing the gospel with our co-workers. We're giving money to our church. Psalm 3723 says that's a lie. It says that God delights in, quote, every detail, end quote, of the lives of the godly, it goes on to say.

Every single detail, right? So now I can bring God pleasure when I'm making a latte or change in a diaper. Five quick ways we can bring God eternal pleasure in the mundane alley. Number one, we bring him pleasure when we obey his commands, right? It's exactly what 1st John 322 says. We keep his commands and give him pleasure when he sees what we are doing. So if you make that latte without trying to exploit a customer, change that diaper, not begrudgingly, but thankfully that God is giving you this child,

that contributes to God's eternal. pleasure. Number two, we bring him pleasure when we pursue excellence in all things. This is the whole point of the parable of the talents, right? Come and share the master's happiness. Number three, we bring him pleasure. I think by doing work that brings us pleasure. Because remember, Genesis one, work was a gift he gave to us, right? And when I give gifts to my kids, I don't want them to play with them begrudgingly. I want them to enjoy them. So, Ali, you love your work. When you do your work and find joy in it and give praise to God for giving you that work, brings him eternal pleasure. Two more quick ones. Number four, we bring him eternal pleasure by

working with him and not just for him, right? Not being so obsessed with God's mission in the world that we forget God himself and praying to him and being with him throughout the day. And then finally, I think we bring God eternal pleasure by just taking time to wonder at his work while we work. Wonder at the coincidences that helped us to land that deal. Wonder at the creative connections that God is making for us, wonder at the raw materials he's given us. Like, I keep coming back to a latte. I don't know why, right? Like the almonds that he's given me to make that latte as we take time to wonder at those things, it brings him pleasure because he sees every detail of our lives and delights in the lives of the god. So doing your job, no matter what that job is, as long as it is not sin.

Correct. With joy, with excellence, with gratitude, with integrity, all of these things. bring God pleasure. God's pleasure is eternal and therefore doing our job well and in a way that honors the Lord is somehow in some kind of mysterious way eternal. It shapes eternity. So every little thing we do, as you mentioned, every detail of the lives of the godly actually matters not just in the here and the now, but forever. That's like that's really significant. That's, it's mind. I can summarize it real tightly like this. Anything you do with excellence and love and in accordance with God's commands will shape the eternal pleasure of God.

And what does that look like practically? I don't know. Here's one guess. We already talked about we know there's going to be work on the new earth, right? We're going to be with Jesus literally on the new earth. I don't think it's crazy that one of the ways this will manifest itself physically is you're going to be working at your vocation on the new earth. Allie, what do you want to do in the New Earth?

You want to be podcasting? Oh, I don't know about that. I don't know if I would have be podcasting. You know, I don't know because I don't know exactly what it'll be like. Will I have a different gift? Well, I finally be able to sing. Who knows? Who knows?

All right. So let's say you're singing on the New Earth, right? And Jesus comes up to you. Hebrew 610 tells us he remembers everything that we do, right? Jesus comes up as he said, hey, Ali, I remember in the former age when you had an opportunity to embellish the truth in order to achieve goal, X, Y, or Z, and you didn't do that. I saw that. I remember that act of faithfulness, and that brought the father great pleasure, right?

Like, that's not out of the realm of possibility. I think we could use our biblically formed imaginations to assume that that's one of the ways that this will literally shape eternity and our interactions with the risen Christ, right? Like that should motivate us in the present to store up as many of those moments, those eternal moments as we possibly can just by being faithful and excellent and loving in the present. And, you know, one thing we have a lot on this podcast or one thing we talk about a lot is testimony. So we have people who used to be atheists, used to have all different kinds of faith backgrounds and they come to Christ. And one commonality that I find is that there was some moment that they interacted with someone. the other person who was a Christian or who played a role in this, it was a very commonplace or mundane thing for them to do.

They placed a C.S. Lewis book on a table and left it there and didn't think about it. They looked in someone's eyes and said their name. There's all kinds of these examples that I can think of that that person was simply doing the next right thing. And typically it was a part of their job or being a student or something like that. And so I do also think, Bipically informed imagination that when we get to heaven, we will get to see all of those things that we did that we don't remember, typically.

We just talked to a stranger. We just asked someone how their day was going. We just took the time to like really listen to them in our job or whatever it was. And we will be able to see how God used that in the constellation of someone's testimony to be a step towards them coming to Christ. And so, I mean, and our work is a part of that. Every detail is a part of that. I would argue our work is one of the primary ways that that happened.

So we already talked to, I think Christians can assume the only way that work matters for eternity is when they make disciples. That's not true. We just saw that our work in and of itself brings God pleasure. But it certainly does matter to make disciples of all nations, to contribute to who is in heaven with us for eternity. I just read this fascinating study by Dr. Michael Green that found that. in the first three centuries of church history,

when Christianity was exploding throughout the world, 80% of convergence to Christianity were not driven by a pastor. We're not driven by a full-time missionary. 80% were led by what I call near Christians, going to work as tentmakers and shepherds and mothers talking around the drinking will in their towns. That's how it happens. And that was true in the first three centuries.

It's even more true today, I would argue. When we are living in this increasingly quote unquote post-Christian cultural moment, right, our unbelieving friends are not going to walk into the four walls of a church to learn about Jesus for the first time. So where are they going to hear about him? By working shoulder to shoulder with you, listener, as you go to work and just faithfully represent your king. doesn't mean leaving Bible tracks all over your office necessarily, right? It's just doing your work with excellence and love so excellent and so loving that people have to ask the question, what makes you different?

To which the only answer is Jesus Christ. Yeah. You know, these days with so many options on the table, especially if you're graduating from college and you think that you have to have a high paying job that also fulfills all of your goals and your passions and also what you. are uniquely good at. And that's kind of how we define calling. And if we don't find something that meets that, we constantly feel like we're settling and we feel like, well, we can't truly glorify God. We can't truly be happy until we find that one unique thing. And it breeds, I think, a lot of

discontentment, a lot of anxiety in people when they haven't found that calling and they feel like they're just constantly in the waiting room of their own life. Talk to us about that, about what calling is vocationally from a biblical perspective. Yeah, this is a great question. I don't see a whole lot of evidence that calling is a noun. I think it's more of an adjective. Let me explain what I mean by that. I think we have turned calling.

The church treats calling the way Hollywood treats marriage, right? Mr. Wright, as if we are in a wild goose chase to find the one thing that God designed us to do. Here's the deal. I don't think God particularly cares what you choose to do for. work in this life so long as it's not out of line with his commands. I think he cares a lot about your heart as you discern what that thing is, right? But I don't think he's too concerned about the choice itself because guess what?

Regardless of what you choose, his purposes will not be thwarted, see Job 42. He doesn't need you to take any particular job. He will find whoever he can to do whatever work needs to get done for the building of his kingdom. You and I just get to be grateful participants, right? I think that's incredibly freeing, right? Now I could just make a choice, and I would argue, you know, the barometer for that shouldn't be our short-term happiness and our passions, quote unquote, before we start the work, but our giftings, right? Because the entire Christian life isn't about my happiness. It's about bringing happiness to others.

And how do you do that? You do that through the ministry of excellence. right we have fallen al you and i are millennials every well-intentioned adult in our lives told us growing up do whatever makes you happy follow your passions follow your dreams and we had more opportunity to do that than any generation before us and yet gallop tells us we're the least happy generation at work it's almost as if jesus knew what he was talking about when he said hey serve first don't seek to be sir prioritize others happiness above your own and when we do when we get really, really, really good at something.

That's when I think that we find sustainable vocational joy for ourselves. And just because there are so many words today that have been misconstrued and not in alignment with how scripture defines things, of course, when we say happiness, we don't necessarily just mean making people feel good, although that can be good, but sometimes people feel good in a way that is, you know, not honoring to the Lord. So when we say bring others happiness, we are talking to. about seeking their well-being as God defines it. Very often that does involve happiness,

but of course we as Christians are concerned about wholeness and holiness even before happiness. But your point absolutely stands. I talk about this a lot, how in this age of self-love, we're constantly told to find yourself, to seek yourself, and to seek only your own happiness and everything else will fall into place.

We seem really miserable. Like we seem to be wrong in anxiety. And like you said, it's almost like, knew that actually we're not good gods for ourselves. When we worship ourselves, we actually end up really sad. Check this out. There's this brilliant researcher out of Yale. No idea whether or not she's a Christian. Her name is Amy Resneski. She spent her whole career trying to understand what leads people to describe their work as a calling as opposed to a career or merely a job.

And she studied it with doctors, computer programmers, administrative assistants, a bunch of different populations. And consistently, the number one predictor of someone describing their work as a calling is not whether or not they were excited about the work and passionate about the work before they started it. It's the number of years they have spent practicing the craft, right? In other words, you get to love what you do by getting really, really good at it and serving other people. first. And again, they should not come as a surprise to Christ followers who model our lives after the one who came to serve and not to be served. But to your point, Allie, thank you for drawing out that nuance. It's not happiness necessarily that we're cultivating in others, right? Because that could be shallow, it could be unbiblical. It is service. The guiding principle is

what work can I do best in order to love my neighbor as myself? That's the guiding principle. Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And what if, what if someone is a part of a job where they're the only Christian there? And they're just in an unfair, iniquitable workspace. And their boss, their coworkers are constantly making things difficult, but say, you know, they don't have another option. It's not a sinful job. It's just a really difficult job to do with joy. How does a Christian navigate that?

If that's where God has placed them right there. I mean, how did they do that to the glory of God? Oh, man, this is a phenomenal question. I would encourage you. Now, listen, as you point, if the job's causing you to sin, non-starter, you got to leave. I think those are like those instances are very few and far between, right? And we kind of know them. Yeah.

We kind of know them. Those are pretty easy, right? But man, if you're working in a dark place, I would encourage you to stay there, right? Because Jesus called us to be light. And where does light shine brightest in really, really dark places? It's why we need more Christians in politics, more Christians in Hollywood, not retreating to build our own Christian subcultures, although I like some of that content. I'm not condemning all that content.

But we need to be running into the dark places because this is exactly what Jesus did, right? Hebrews 13 says that Jesus also suffered outside the city gate. and he's talking about the temple, right? So outside of the temple, outside the city gate. And there's a number of interpretations of this. Here's one that I think is really interesting. I think part of the application of this is Jesus could have had a quote unquote holy job when he came to Earth. It's perfectly within God's power to choose for Jesus to grow up as a priest, maybe a Pharisee,

but instead Jesus worked outside the city gate as. a carpenter working a regular J-O-B where I am sure he had more opportunities to be tempted, more opportunities to cheat out customers. We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses because Jesus worked in dark places outside the city gate. That should lead us to rush into those dark places to be a faithful presence, right? the one source of light and truth and imperfect holiness within that office. Yeah.

And wow, it's getting really hard for Christians. It always has been, of course, to a certain degree. And there are some instances, especially when we're talking about gender and a lot of these issues that have come into the workplace where Christians are basically being called to lie. And of course, I would never condone a Christian lying or doing anything that is opposed to God's word. And I don't think, and you can tell me what you think about this. I don't think it's wrong for Christians to look for new opportunities. But the point is that while you're there, you need to be

there, wherever you are, be all there. That's what Jim Elliott said. And to seek the glory of God there because he might actually have you there, maybe for longer than you would want. And it's not just a waiting period. It's a period in which he is asking you to do work. That's exactly right. In all throughout scripture, we see examples of this, of God choosing people to go work in dark places. Obadiah, essentially chief of staff to this evil king. Why was he there to save the prophets, right? Joseph, going to work for this, what will become a very evil regime in Egypt. Why? To do God's work of saving the people from famine, right? So time and time again, we see God choosing not to, choosing people not to go into safe spaces, right? But to go into dangerous places where his

presence is most desperately needed. But you're right, Ali, if you're listening to this and you're working in a really tough situation, God may be calling you to leave, right? That is a very real possibility. And if he does, you've got to go. But he might just as well be calling you to stay and just serve as a faithful, a faithful ambassador for your king. Okay, we only have a few minutes left. You've got a devotional word before work. Tell us what it looks like in the morning for a Christian to prioritize the word before work and how that can shape what we do. Yeah. So we've explored like a whole lot of truths real quickly in just a few minutes on this podcast.

But it's not enough to learn these truths one time, right? We live at a time where every message is telling us that work is about our happiness and our joy, telling us to build our kingdoms rather than gods, right? And so we have got to be regularly steeping ourselves, renewing our minds with what God's God's word says, but our lives in general, but I would argue our work really specifically. So that's why I wrote the word before work. It's the first Monday through Friday devotional I know of that's narrowly focused on how God's word shapes your work. These are like uber short devotionals, right? You can read each of them in two minutes or listen to the audio book in about two minutes in your

car on your way to work or in your lunch break. And the whole purpose is to renew your mind with what God said about your work and give you something bite-sized and actionable that you can do in a few minutes to help you make a greater eternal impact with the work you're doing today. Wow. That's so good. We did pack a lot into just a few minutes, but you are excellent at explaining all of this, and I can tell it's your passion. So I appreciate that. I want to end with this quote from Elizabeth Elliott. And you can tell me what you think about it, but I think about it from time to time just in the mundane or when I just don't feel like working. Don't feel like doing my job, whether it's my home job, my most important job is a wife and a mom, or whether it's this job.

She said, this job has been given to me to do. Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly if it is to be done for him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God's way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness. I just love that.

And, I mean, that's exactly what you're saying. exactly it i i would never try to say something better than elizabeth elliot so well i would say you're you're right out there you articulated this so well where can people find you how can they buy your mini awesome books oh let me say actually before i answer this let me say i don't know if my producer brey told you this but the reason that you were booked is because she said that your book called to create changed her life um and so you've had an impact on her and then consequently on this show and on lots of people. So tell everyone where they can, yeah, where they can find those books.

Yeah, absolutely. So lots of books and lots of free content as well at Jordan Raynor.com, J-O-R-D-A-N-R-N-O-R-N-R-N-O-R-R. And by the way, I know there's a lot of parents listening. Yes. We didn't talk about this book today, maybe some other time. But we are developing a whole series of children's books to embed these ideas in kids' minds at a very early age. We just launched an award-winning one last year called the Creator in,

you, which helps kids see that the sixth day of Genesis 1 was not the end of creation, contrary to how we typically preach it. It was the beginning because it's when God passed the baton to us and told us to create and work like him. It's been an incredible resource for families that, frankly, I think, has impacted a lot more parents than it has kids in its 387 words. That's another resource. And you can find all that at Jordan Raynor.com.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jordan. and yes, we'll have to have you on again, lots of other things we could talk about. But encourage people to go to Jordan Raynor.com, check out all your books and all the resources you provide. Thank you so much. Thanks, Allie. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political.

They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.