Jen Wilkin (Author of Revelation: Eternal King, Everlasting Kingdom)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back guarantee on this book. I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why? Two reasons. One, this is a different book for me. Right. I know this is a very different biography is what is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because, listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, et cetera, et cetera, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work. But in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right? So that's the first reason this is a risk and I'm gonna de risk this book for you. Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page. And that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9 by filling out that form. You'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5meerchristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as furniture makers, electrical engineers and nannies. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Jen Wilkin, who is on a very, very, very short list of writers who I will read every single thing they ever publish. Jen and I sat down to talk about what she envisions her work looking like on the new how the quote unquote dangerous light inside of you makes every Christian's work sacred, and why it's so significant that you and I will be trampling on gold for all of eternity. Friend, do not miss this great episode with my friend Jen Wilkin. Jen, welcome back to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, man, we were talking for a long time before we started recording. One thing I didn't get to tell you, I don't know if you go through these seasons, but I go through seasons where I feel like I'm in a dry spell in my time in the Word. And when I'm there, I love switching up my Bible study habits and I will frequently pick up one of your studies during those dry spells. And God invariably uses your studies to help me fall back in love with this Word, but more importantly, fall back in love with Him. What does that for you? Do you get dry spells? And if so, what get you out of it?

Well, first of all, thank you. That's super encouraging to hear. I would say that I don't feel like dry spell. This may just be because I'm teaching all the time, but I don't feel like I've had a dry spell. In a while I will have dry spells around, like my feelings. You know, it'll be like, why am I not really feeling it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.

Like connecting the learning to the feeling and the doing. And it probably just means that I need to shift my focus because I think we think that all of scripture is supposed to make us feel a positive emotion all of the time, like whenever we bump into it. And honestly, for me, a lot of what can sort of snap me out of a dry spell is to go to an area of scripture that I am uncomfortable with or feel like it's going to be too hard, like impenetrable. And then to just start digging in and to realize, oh yeah, when we say all scripture is God breathed and profitable, it's really true. I think we have a tendency, like to spend a lot of time in the same books of the Bible. And some of that's because the short ones fit more easily into our calendars and our attention spans. And when I push myself to go somewhere that's less explored, I usually can feel myself coming alive again to the beauty of the Scriptures.

Yeah, that's good. Speaking of, it's a good segue to your new study on Revelation. Not the easiest book to teach, huh?

No.

Why?

For so many reasons.

For so many. For all the reasons. Why now?

Oh, gosh. Well, I actually had to have someone else point out to me why now? And that is because I had spent so much time in Genesis and Exodus and so basically had spent years savoring and meditating on the beginning of the story, and, like many people, had no interest in trying to tackle the end of the story because I had childhood baggage. You know, I shared this a few days ago on social media and actually started a therapy group without meaning to, for a whole generation of people who grew up with sort of a cinema version of the book. And I think the book is cinematic, so I don't mean to diminish that, but where we had watched a movie or read a book series that had wrought not encouragement in us, but terror. And so I knew enough to know that the Bible isn't supposed to make us feel terrible, terrified, but I just had never. You know, then there were all of the hurdles of people having strong feelings about how to interpret the book of Revelation. And could I tackle that book the way that I've tackled all of my other studies and take a Bible literacy approach to it? And it turned out that, yes, I actually could.

So, yeah, it's good. It's good. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I want to focus today on Revelation 21 and 22 and really what it means for our work today and for eternity. I want to start here, though. Like so many Christians, I talked about this in the sacredness of secular work have fallen for this half truth that Earth is our temporary home. It's kind of true. Like Earth as we know it is our temporary home. But when we read these final two chapters of Scripture, it makes it abundantly clear that one day Earth will be our perfect and permanent home once again. How have we gotten to this place where our theology of the new Earth is nearly extinct? Right. It feels like that. Like a lot of people haven't thought about this concrete reality of heaven on earth. How do we get here? Have you spent time really studying that and thinking through that?

Yeah, I think some of it is because we're not there yet. And so when we think about, you know, people who've lost loved ones, you want to think about where they are right now. And depending on your view of eternity, you know, there are varying ways to think about that, but most of us are picturing a loved one in some sort of intermediate state or, you know, with angel's wings and a harp somewhere in the sky. And that some of that is just like popular views that have sort of sunk into our thinking. But then if you think about Amazing Grace, the hymn that everybody still knows, you know, we've lost a lot of our hymn knowledge, but we could all, pretty much all sing Amazing Grace together still. It has a verse in it that says, the earth will soon dissolve in fire or flame, the sun forbear to shine. And so there is this idea that it's all going to burn. And it has impacted so many things. It's impacted the way we think about stewardship of the creation. You know, if it's all going to burn, then it's disposable.

We're helping God along. It is planned.

Yeah, we're actually speeding up the process if we just become consumers instead of caretakers. And so it's had such an impact. And then, you know, as I hope and I assume we're going to get to talk about, it's had an impact on the way we think about our labors.

Yeah, let's talk about that, because we've addressed 2nd Peter 3:10 and old translations of this passage that this earth, from what I understand from the scars I've read, God is using fire not to obliterate the earth, but to purify and redeem it. But yeah, let's talk about what that means for work, because we were talking before we started recording. I mean, the very nature of quote unquote secular work is that it is work we do with the material world, where sacred quote unquote work is done with the spiritual work realm. But if this earth is eternal, what does that mean for the purpose that our listeners can find in the seemingly secular work that they do today? Jen?

Yeah, all work is worship. I think it's Elizabeth Elliot who said that it turns your sink, you know, where you're doing the dishes into an altar instead of an aggravation. And I think that we forget, you know, another favorite author who's written on this, who I would imagine has come up on your podcast before, Andy Crouch, who writes about how, you know, so many of us live with a functional Bible that starts in Genesis 3 and ends in Revelation 20. We view our work as a product of the fall, and therefore something that when we think about The New Jerusalem. We think of it as the great vacation or the great retirement party. And work is hard and it is exhausting. If we're doing it right, you know, it should be wearing us out to some degree. Some jobs are wearing us out for unhealthy reasons and others for healthy reasons. But work is not by nature sinful. Work is actually what we were given to do in those first two chapters.

God's first gift to us in Genesis 1.

Yeah, and it is. It does become frustrated when the serpent shows up on the scene. But that doesn't mean that when we think about the New Jerusalem, we should think about labor that is free from the frustrations that sin imputed to it, not work that ceases.

Yeah, that's right. By the way, I loved your piece earlier this year in Christianity Today, where you went deep on one of my favorite passages of scripture we talk about all the time on the podcast Isaiah 65, where God says the new Earth is not this eternal vacation, but an eternal vocation free from the curse. I'm curious, though, like, let's go a level deeper here. Like, can you even begin to imagine what work on the new Earth will be like? What will it look like practically for you to teach, free from the curse of sin? What'll be different if you continue to engage in that craft for billions of years?

I think that we get foretastes of what it will be like in this life. I think that when we ask the Lord, you know, that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, that what we're asking him to do is not just help us to embody something that is going to be true, but also to help us experience a little of something that's going to be true so that we can long properly for that day. And so when I try to imagine what will it be like to. To teach in. In the new Jerusalem, I think about the very best day I've had of teaching here on the earth. You know, like, what did it feel like? What was it that was so satisfying about it? Seeing people come alive to an idea, seeing recognition dawn, seeing them connect the dots. And I think, you know, we think, well, gosh, in heaven, will. Will teachers still be needed? And, you know, of course I want to make the argument, yes, because I am one, but I think that when we think about what is true about God, and I would argue that the end of all good teaching is to show what is true about God, you could probably even make that argument about teaching that is not based, you know, that it's not Christian based, that is. And any learning that we do, science teacher, is revealing something about God, is telling something that's true about God. The number of things that are true about God are infinite because he is an infinite being. So, you know, between the covers of the Bible, we have sufficient knowledge of what is true about God to keep us plenty busy for the 70 or 80 years that we will have on this earth. Which is why I always crack up a little when people will say, I'm just waiting for a fresh word from the Lord, because I'm like, oh, did you get done with the ones we already had? You know, those are. I feel like I'm still trying to fight my way through those. And in the New Jerusalem, we will be free from the constraint of time. We will be free from the murkiness that sin introduces into our communion with God. And so therefore our learning will be like the most positive. For the person who's not a teacher but is more of a learner, we all have some teaching role. But for the person who sees himself as more of a learner, think about the very best day you ever had studying something or discovering something. And it can be that for eternity, as we increasingly grow in our understanding of the manifold attributes of our holy and glorious God.

That's good. All right, so that's Future tense. Isaiah 65. Long Enjoy the work of our hands. We will not labor in vain. There is no curse, there is no pain. How does that vision of work on the north, how should it shape our work practically today, right now?

Yeah, well, the cultural mandate given to us, you know, back in Genesis 1, is telling us that we are invited into the work that God begins in the early days of creation, which is bringing order out of chaos. And so the cultural mandate is to continue to bring order out of chaos until those who are going to be formed in the image of Christ have been formed in his image to the ends of the earth. And so, you know, in Genesis we see it as be fruitful and multiply. So in a very literal sense, Adam and Eve are going to make image bearers. You carry it forward to the Great Commission where it's re articulated in spiritual terms, where we are called to go and make image bearers to the ends of the earth. And that work of making image bearers happens through the work of our hands as much as through the words that we speak. Speak. And so say more about that.

Say more about that. What do you mean?

Yeah, whatever your context is, let's say that you are Working as an engineer, your work is to bring order out of chaos. And insofar as you do that, you are bearing the image of a creative God who brings order out of chaos and you're bearing witness to something that is true about him and then showing others who may not have union with Christ yet and saying, do you know why you love doing your job? It's because you are doing what you were made to do every time you establish order. Where there was disorder before. I have this distinct memory of being a stay at home mom with four kids, four and under. And we lived in a house that had three bathrooms and I was the only one who had the motor skills to clean them. And I remember picking up that toilet brush and saying, cleaning toilets today to the glory of God, like, I'm going to bring some order out of chaos. Every time we picked up the toys and I put those kids down for a nap and order was re established, I'm bearing the image of God. And those seem like tiny little acts, but what they actually are are expressions of what we were made to do.

Yeah, talk to the engineer. You mentioned an engineer. Let's go. By the way, do you have a kid who's an engineer? You brought this up before we started recording too.

I do, yes. I have a son who has a PhD in materials science and an undergraduate in nuclear engineering.

That's fascinating.

Yes.

Okay. All right, so let's talk to your son for a minute. Let's give some encouragement to your son. Your son's like, all right, great, Mom. I'm bringing order out of chaos. I am discovering the world's greatest mysteries. But it's rare that I get a chance Monday through Friday to articulate and explicitly point my co workers back to the God who created me to do that work. Does his work matter when he's not explicitly pointing back to His Creator? And if so, how?

Absolutely. The work has value in and of itself. If you think about the order in which we come to have right relationship with others, it doesn't start by having right relationship with others. It starts by having right relationship with God. It starts with the vertical. And that's why the scriptures speak about whatever you do, labor is unto the Lord. It matters that he shows up for work and he does his work as unto the Lord in an unselfconscious way that he's not trying to proselytize by doing a good job. He does a good job because to do a good job is to do. Do what he was created to do. But what ends up happening is that people around him wonder why his motive for doing a good job does not seem to line up with their motives for doing a good job. He seems to do a good job just because you should, not because it brings him glory, even though it may. And, you know, in the case of my kids, it's funny, none of them are in ministry. So there's my, you know, everybody wants to buy my parenting book now, but.

They, my listeners actually do, by the way.

They're often these vocations where they do end up having opportunities to talk about their why. In particular, you know, like Matt, the son I was mentioning, to be a man of science and a man of faith. Those two things don't always overlap, you know, and so he's had a lot of opportunities to talk to people who are in his field about his motivations for what he's doing. And he also did have to wrestle down, particularly, you know, in his days in college with the Christian subculture that said, the only kind of work that's meaningful is explicitly ministry related.

Yeah, I'm sure he had a wrestle with that, especially growing up as Jen Wilkins. Son. Come on, come on. Now, you mentioned this before kind of in passing, but I think it's important to go deeper on you. You mentioned you're going to that coworker who loves their job and does not yet have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and be like, hey, you know why you love that thing? Because God made you to love that thing. What's been interesting this month, we're coming up on six months after the release of my book the Sacredness of Secular Work. And I've heard from a lot of readers who have said, man, Jordan, once I caught this vision for eternal work without the curse, I was so much more fired up to share my faith. Right. I was so much more excited to tell others about the hope I have in Christ because if I'm honest and I can resonate with this personally, I grew up dreading the idea of heaven. Yes, I love Jesus. Yes, I wanted to be with Jesus more than anything else. But it seemed like loving Jesus necessitated that I give up all the things that I and oh, by the way, Jesus himself loved during his time on earth. Good work, good wine, good food, good mountains and beauty. And so do you think that this proper understanding of revelation, that this proper understanding of the new earth and eternal work can be fuel for the evangelism of mere Christians in the workplace?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think if we, you know, imagine if you gotten the Hobbit and read just the beginning and you never read the end. You would not think about the message of the book the same way. And I think because we have a generation of people who believe that the 66th book of the Bible is. Yeah, it's probably important, but I'm not sure how to read it. So I'm just gonna. It is all scriptures, God breathed and profitable, but that one is weird. And I E. Need an expert to tell me what it means or, you know, if I do know what it means, it's going to terrify me. We're operating sort of like someone who's only read the beginning or the first 2/3 of the Hobbit and never heard the end of it. And the Hobbit, it's a classic. One of the reasons that it endures is because the structure that it follows is the most ancient and reliable structure for good storytelling. It's a full circle story. The subtitle for the Hobbit, do you know what it is? As a good Christian, you have to.

I should know this. It's There and Back again. Something like that.

There and back again. Yeah. Do you hear it? He starts in the shire, he goes on many adventures and then he comes back to the shire. But when he comes back to the shire, it is not the same and he is not the same. And the reason that that story is so sticky for us is because that is the shape of the biblical story. And so when we think about the significance of revelation and understanding all matters of life and godliness, but certainly our need it. We need to understand that work is something that will be done with delight and joy and great satisfaction for all eternity to help us begin to live toward that now. So we don't see work as just an obligation. And, you know, I'm sure you guys talk about this all the time. Some jobs that need to be done are not glamorous, but they are glorious in the sense that they are pointing us toward who we are meant to be. And the less glamorous the job, the more likely that you're doing the good work in obscurity is imaging Christ who did the best work. And it was not recognized as being, you know, it was deemed worthy of destroying him, the perfect image bearer. And so when we labor in obscurity, I think we are never more like Christ who did the best labor in obscurity to the point that his own destination disciples didn't even realize its significance in the moment.

That's really good. How do you deal with that? As a very public personality I wrestle with this. Right. I do look at the example of Christ and working in obscurity for 80% of his adult life. How do you reconcile that? Is it just an issue of calling and God has called you to this very public Persona. How do you think about this? Do you ever wish you were working in labor and in obscurity?

Well, I think the thing is, is that I am. I think people don't see.

Yeah, yeah.

The work that I'm doing.

Yeah, that's good.

And the work that I have done. Yeah. And like now, you know, I'll have very well intentioned women in particular say, I really want to do what you do. Where do I start? And I want to say what you see me doing now is the cumulative effect of 25 years. You know, I couldn't have done what I'm doing now 25 years ago. And I'm not even talking about platform. I'm talking about like just the mechanics of what I'm doing. You know, platform is accidental people who are, or at least I think it, hopefully it should be. If you have to build it, then you're not going to be able to sleep at night. And so platform is neither here nor there. But it's the living rooms, you know, that I was in for years. It's the rooms of five women that I was in for years. And I would have done that forever. That was satisfying. And there are some ways in which a room full of thousands is never going to be as satisfying or enriching for me, the teacher, as the living room space was. There's a real cost to the living room space not happening with the frequency that it used to 25 years ago. Now I have other, you know, other unseen ways of making sure that I still have those kinds of interactions. But, you know, if that had been all that it ever was because I was doing the work that the Lord created me to do, and I knew it because I loved it so much, then the number of people listening just becomes an afterthought.

You didn't think about that.

It's a gift.

You didn't think intentionally about growing the platform. You were just like, listen, I know God's made me to teach. I'm going to teach as well as I can. And the results are in the Lord's hands.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah.

Hey, I loved your Hobbit bit. This full circle moment. And you touched on this little detail in your study on Revelation that I never hear anybody talk about. It's one of my all time favorite Details in Scripture, the gold, gems and pearls in the second to last chapter of Scripture, Revelation 21, which we also see in the second chapter of Scripture, Genesis 2. Can you break down the parallel for our listeners who might not be familiar with this detail?

Well, you know, it's funny. We talk about the pearly gates and we talk about walking the streets of gold. And our first impression of that is that the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, will be one of the incredible grandeur. And on the one hand, that's an accurate way to think about it. I mean, that was the purpose of Solomon's temple being so glorious and even the tabernacle, its predecessor, being made with so many precious items. But I think the other thing that we can miss is that when you get to the New Jerusalem, these precious gems and expensive materials are being used for the most common purposes. In other words, I don't think we always think about the symbolic richness that gold will be trodden under our feet in the New Jerusalem, because in this life, we have not treaded it down, we have elevated it to the ultimate goal. But the things that we view as the spoils of success will now be trodden under feet in the New Jerusalem. Everything that would have set itself up in opposition to the worship of Yahweh will be in its proper place. You know, Jesus famously says in the Sermon on the Mount, you cannot serve both God and money. And it's an oversimplification to see what's happening in the New Jerusalem of the fine building materials to be only a statement against mammon, but it is at least a statement against mammon that the things that were meant to bring glory to God in this life that we use to bring glory to ourselves will now finally and fully submit themselves to his glory.

That's good. It's really good. Did you happen to read Art and Faith by Makoto Fujimura?

I did not. No.

Phenomenal book. I think it won Christianity Today's Book of the Year, like, five, six years ago. But he says in this, he's commenting on the gold, gems and pearls in Revelation 21, Genesis 2, and he conjectures that, quote, these materials were beneath the ground to be discovered by Adam and Eve or by their descendants for the construction of what would become the City of God, end quote. Right. Do you agree with that?

Absolutely. Well, I mean, if you think about the parallel to the Exodus story. Right. Where do they get the fine building materials that they use for the tabernacle? Well, they're the spoils of Egypt. Like, they're pried out of the hands of idol worshipers. And what is the first thing they do with them? They form them into an idol. So, you know, there's a theme all the way through Scripture of the way that we relate. And then you get to the Wisdom tradition, and what do we find is true about wisdom? It's described in those terms. And I think that's also a significant thing for us to understand about the New Jerusalem, because in the Wisdom tradition, so in Proverbs, you know, we're told that we're supposed to seek wisdom, dig for it like rich treasure, like gold, that it will be a jewel for us. And so all of that language is embedded there, no pun intended. And then you get to the New Jerusalem. Well, if you think about what Proverbs does, is it shows us two women. It shows us Lady Wisdom, who is actually arrayed in all of these items. And then there's Lady Folly, who is the prostitute. She's calling out. She's trying to drag the wayward into her grips. So fast forward to Revelation and what do we see? Oh, interesting. There we have a prostitute and a bride. Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is pictured for us as a bride. And so the bride, the prostitute, is seated on the beast. And she's Babylon. She's the City of Folly. She's Folly embodied. Those who have chased after the riches of this world and everything that it has to offer now watch the city of Folly go to its destruction. And then what do we see? We see the City of Wisdom descend as a bride, and she's adorned. So the imagery holds together beautifully. But the adornment piece is a piece of what we see when we see all of those things mentioned again. And we in this life are to adorn ourselves with true riches, the true riches of the wisdom. And that causes us to walk in the fear of the Lord, to labor in the fear of the Lord, in other words, to work as unto the Lord.

It's good. It's really good. Jen, four questions we wrap up every show with, and you've already touched on and answered the first one. But what job would you love for God to give you on the new Earth? Is there anything you want to do other than teach? I'm really curious.

Garden. I want a garden. Yeah.

You want a garden?

Yeah. Right now it's like 100 plus in Texas, and I am watering twice a day and sending up prayers of supplication for my plants. And. Yeah. And so I'm like, that's the oldest vocation we've got right. If we're going to be literalists, I want to garden as I was meant to garden. Because watching things grow is for me worshipful. And it makes me feel small in a way that is really, really good. And I wonder, I think about the joy of an eternal practice in which I'm constantly reminded of the transcendence of God and my place in his. In his universe. I think that will be another beautiful function of work in the. In the New Jerusalem.

It's really good.

That and teaching.

And teaching. I love it. Which I'd be shocked if we're not continuing to learn.

Oh, I think we will. Yeah.

Speaking of books, if we open up your Amazon order history right now, which books would we see you purchasing over and over and over again to give away to people?

I am always giving away A.W. tozer's the knowledge of the Holy. It was my introduction to the attributes of God through a pastoral lens. I mean there were things that I had encountered in passing that were in like a systematic theology text. But he put poetry to it for me. So that's probably my number one thing that I hand out to people to sort of set them on the path of, hey, you've only begun to meditate on the riches of God's character.

Is that what eventually led to your books? None like him and in his image?

Yes, absolutely. I can't remember what study I was putting together and I bumped into a quote which this will tell you about my theological training, which was zero at that point. It was James Montgomery Boice and he said the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand. There is no true knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of God. And it was years before I knew that he was actually quoting John Calvin in the opening to the Institutes. So I just quoted Boyce all over the place and thought he was a genius. And. But then to pair that with what is true about God and then to really delight in what is true about God. We live in such a self centered age that we read the Bible. We would say the Bible is a book about God up and down. You know, I read the Bible because it's a book about God. But the problem is that many of us have been trained into a way of reading it that actually makes it a book about us. We're looking first for the knowledge of self. And so to bump into Tozer in the midst of this process and to be given a vision of God high and lifted up and I found him in the footnotes of another really Good book, which is the Holiness of God by R.C. sproul.

Yeah, it's good. It's a really good one. Hey, who would you most want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences the work that mere Christians do in the world? Maybe one of your kids. Does Matt Wilkin need to come on the show? No.

Trust me, he does not want more exposure. But I do think it'd be fascinating to. And maybe you've done this already. I am always fascinated to hear men of science talk about their faith.

Yeah, we had Dr. Francis Collins on about a year ago. We need to have him back on now that he's fighting a new crusade. And he's incredible. We've had a lot of men and women of science, great astronomers and scientists.

I love it. I think the more we can do that, the more we can, because I do think that even as, like, I'm seeing young adults or, you know, high school schoolers head off to college, they don't even necessarily conceive of those as fields that are open to them. And so the more that we can show them. No, no, no. This is a. And we had that. I had that for my kiddos. One of my Sunday school teachers at our previous church in Houston. His name is Gene France. He invented the technology behind what was the Speak and Spell. I don't know if you remember that toy. And he actually got to go to the premiere of ET because they used it in the movie. It was really cool.

That's really cool.

Gene is like a. He's a fellow at Texas Instruments, and he's a person of deep faith. And so my children got to see that, you know, growing up and got to interact with him and see his love of the Lord was channeling through his work. It was not in spite of it or a side element to it.

It's really good. I love it. Jen, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians, very diverse, vocationally. What's one thing you'd want to leave them with before we sign off?

Yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about. I had to give a message. Got to give a message on the theme of light throughout Scripture and about how the light that we see in scripture is dangerous light. In other words, the manifest presence of God is a holy and righteous expression of his character, and people handle it with great care. And so you think about the picture of the burning bush, right? And Moses comes to the manifest presence of God, and when God speaks to him out of this bush that is burning, but not Consumed, he says, take off your shoes because you're standing on holy ground. And so if you trace the theme, in other words, there are certain places you know in this moment that Moses has with the Lord that are more holy, because the manifest presence of God, he's going to call him to a particular work and he's going to empower him to do it. Well, if you carry forward to the New Testament and what happens at Pentecost in a very real time sense, the dangerous light that is the fire that burns the bush that is not consumed now dwells in us. We have this dangerous light in us. And we are not consumed because we have union with Christ. And what that means is that for the Christian wondering, where do I go to do the work of the Lord, all ground is holy ground. All of it. Take off your shoes. Like, understand that wherever the Lord sends you as his witness, you have holy work to do. Not just work to do, but holy work to do. And the dangerous fire that should consume you will not only refine you, it will sharpen you. It will make you more into the image of Christ as you step forward in faithfulness to whatever the vocation is that the Lord has placed you in.

I can't believe you brought this up. This is basically page one of this book I published. This is so great.

So great.

It is not what we do that determines whether or not the work is sacred, but who we do it with. Right. That word secular literally means without God, but we believe that the holy presence of God is with us wherever we go. And so the only thing you have to do to make a quote, unquote secular workplace sacred is walk through the front door.

That's right, show up. I love it.

Jen, man, I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do every day for the glory of God and the good of others. For your just excellent theology of work and just your excellent stewardship of your God given skills as a teacher. Friends, I cannot recommend all of Jen's studies highly enough. I think I've done all of them except for the abide study which is next on my list. But the one we've been talking about today is Revelation. Eternal King, everlasting kingdom. Jen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Oh, thank you so much for the great conversation.

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Hey, if you did, do me a favor and go leave a review of the Mere Christians podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're listening to the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Foreign hey friends, this is your last chance to claim all the amazing pre order bonuses for five mere Christians before they go away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9. I've never offered this many pre order bonuses on a book before, so when you fill out the form@5meerchristians.com Number one, you're going to be entered to win an incredible trip for you and a friend to tour CS Lewis's favorite spots in Oxford, explore Ole Kirk Christensen's former stomping grounds at Lego headquarters in Denmark, and much more. Number two, you'll be invited to join my first ever interactive reading, culminating in a zoom call with me and my co author on this book, Kaylee Cox. Number three, you're going to be getting a money back guarantee to try the book risk free. And number four, you'll also get access to a free course I'm not selling anywhere called how to write a book 10x faster and better with an Affordable co Author. You can claim all these bonuses in just two simple steps. Step 1 Pre order 5 mere Christians in any format you want. It can be hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever and you can order it from wherever. Doesn't matter to me. Step 2 Go to 5Mere Christians.com and fill out the form of that page and that's it. I'll send you all those bonuses. You'll be entered into the sweepstakes with one simple form submission. But hey, don't wait all of these off. All of these offers, all these bonuses. They're going away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9th. So visit 5Mere Christians.com right now to claim your bonuses.