Introduction The story of Howard Hughes is as famous for its ending as it is his life. Successful in aviation, in business, and with women, and even in Hollywood, Hughes had literally everything. Yet he spent his final years in physical and emotional pain - watching movies over and over again, eating chicken and chocolate, his personal hygiene nonexistent, miserable, alone. The story of Hughes tells us that a man can have $10 and be happy, or miserable, and a man with a $1 million can be happy or miserable. And all of that turns on what we do and who we are, before we ever sit down at a desk or a lathe to do our work and make money. The common denominator is ME, and you. So today I want to briefly give three truths we must remember BEFORE we set ourselves to our tasks in life. Three remembrances we must sink our feet down into, in order to be rightly grounded, in our work. Now, I’m going to talk like an uncle to our graduates and near-graduates, but really, I’m talking to all of us. For God has already prepared work for ALL of us to do. 1. Remember Who your God is. I take this from the passage in Genesis that I just read, Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The lie that the dragon successfully passed on in the Garden is that this God is stingy, Eve. He’s holding out on you. But the reality is that, in the Garden of Eden, there was only ONE no, and everything else was YES. Adam and Eve were to enjoy literally everything else. Which is a reflection of the character of God. This is a GENEROUS God. God wanted Adam and Eve to enjoy life by enjoying His generosity. And His generosity is embedded in the very fabric of creation. God has custom-designed this earth to be suitable for mankind to FILL IT and subdue it, and have dominion over it. To fill it with lots of babies; to subdue it means to tame its wildness, the way a horse trainer tames a wild stallion; and to have dominion over it means to control it as its master, unlocking its riches and blessings. Now if this sounds like a BIG TASK, well, the text says that God has BLESSED mankind - including YOU - specifically for this purpose. To go forth and explore this world, and gain a deeper and deeper KNOWLEDGE of this world. Now, to be clear, by “world” I don’t mean the way John means it - the lusts and the pride and dark desires of this world. Not at all. But the world itself, as created by God. God has already blessed you with His image, which means you already have it in you to do it. Now, Adam and Eve could only enjoy the things of earth IF they did it God’s way, according to God’s Word. Or according to WISDOM. But they didn’t, and now sin gets in the way. Now it takes hard work to unlock this world’s treasures. But sin has not destroyed the fact that God has so designed his world to REWARD those who unlock it according to God’s WISDOM. So here is a fundamental truth, that you must understand: if you pursue REWARD as an end in itself, you will NOT get it. That’s not how God has designed His world. By REWARD I mean, a good job that doesn’t wear you out, a cool spouse, six kids, a home out in the country, a good retirement, lots of pleasures. If you pursue pleasure as an end in itself, you will not get it . . . But if you pursue KNOWLEDGE and WISDOM - that deep understanding about how God made this world - you WILL find it, for God has blessed you to find it. God HAS BLESSED you to do this. There is so much more to you than you realize, or even your parents realize. And then WITH that wisdom, you WILL receive all these other rewards. This world is designed by a generous God to unlock its many blessings to those who search not for those blessings, but for God’s wisdom. 2. Remember who you are in Christ. I’m assuming here that I am talking to Christians. I’m not one for big emotional pleas, so I will only say - if you’re not a Christian, you CAN become one, and you should. You must. For there is another elemental truth that you must come to, and it only comes by being a Christian - in other words, someone who has trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, and who is walking with him as their king. And that truth is this: God has custom-designed His creation to unlock itself to those who not only acquire wisdom and knowledge, but who pair that wisdom and knowledge with LOVE. And who then, when they sit down at their desk at the bank, or their lathe at the foundry, or their delivery truck in the warehouse, or the diaper changing station at home, do all that they do IN LOVE - love for the customer, love for their fellow employees, love for the boss and even the shareholders. But this requires FIRST finding your identity in something OTHER than your work. This requires, before you ever sit down at that desk, establishing who you are. And the only identity that FREES a person to LOVE is the identity that we find in Christ. To be loved, with an everlasting love, one that is PROVEN to us, when God put Jesus on that cross. No wonder Paul said that literally nothing, not even death nor heaven itself could break this love. To be promised and assured of a glorious inheritance. One day God says He will literally give us ALL THINGS. So when a person believes this love, and is grounded in it, then I don’t need to find another identity for myself, in my work, my title, the size of my office, my sales ranking, my possessions. So when I sit down at that desk, I’m free - free to not pursue my own self-interests, but that of others. I’m free to love, as I have been loved. But again, this must be established beforehand, because the pull to establish your identity in something else can be incredibly strong. C.S. Lewis wrote about this in his essay, the inner ring. To summarize it, he says that there will always be inner rings of people. You’ve seen this already. That friend group, the proverbial cool kids’ table. Trust me there’s adult versions of this - the gang that hangs out with the boss after work. And Lewis says that, if you don’t ground your identity beforehand, you will be drawn like bugs to light to inner rings. And you will find yourself doing things you NEVER thought would be YOU, to get into that inner rings. And then, when you get there, you’ll find, as Howard Hughes did, that there’s nothing there. It was all a mirage. So we must remember who God is. And we must remember who WE are, in Christ. And then thirdly, 3. Determine what you are doing. I get this from the words of the mother of King Lemuel, in Proverbs 31. Many people associate Proverbs 31 with the woman described at the end, but it begins with a mother’s advice to her son the king. And it is very striking, for she simply asks him, in v. 2 What are you doing, my son? What are you doing, son of my womb? What are you doing, son of my vows? Three times - What are you doing? If she were talking to today, she would say, in v. 3 Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, Don’t give your strength to digital women, and don’t be addicted to anything else. To generalize this - there are countless parasites out there who would love to suck you dry to feed their own business model. They have studied you closely; they know you, and they have a plan for your life. Plans to use you up, and not for good, to take away your future and blind you from your hope. But as creepy as this sounds, the solution is really quite simple. Determine what you are doing. Choose your own path, by faith - allowing God to be One who informs your steps. You won’t always be right, but it will be better than letting big tech and big medicine and big government and big everything else determine your steps. And besides, God is already perfect, so He’s not a perfectionist. When you choose the wrong path, He will guide you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. So determine your steps. If you are letting God inform you - guess what - what you decide will be pretty good. As the old saying goes, if YOU don’t determine your steps, someone will do it for you. But your mistaken plans will always be better than their successful plans. And determine your steps by faith in this generous God, working itself out in LOVE, LOVE to three groups of people: • Your church • Your family • And your county, wherever you live. For we live today in the wreckage of much chaos, chaos basically handed to you by previous generations. You’ve been lied to, over and over again. And yet now is YOUR time, and you CAN build something new, out of the wreckage. God hides His powerful tools in humble packaging. A man who loves his God and his woman and who works his tail off for her and the kids, who is seeking to love the world through his work, and who doesn’t let anybody but his God determine who he is - it seems so basic, so pedestrian. And yet it’s upon the backs of such men and women that the new world WILL be built. Conclusion For that reason, I stand very optimistic about the future. The world is full of chaos, but . . . It’s you guys. Your generation has seen many troubles, but if you have Christ, you have already overcome them. It’s just a matter of going and just doing stuff. There’s much chaos, but it’s you guys. And God in you. Thus the new civilization that the world needs WILL be built, on your backs, through YOUR hard work, • Of pursuing the wisdom of God above all else • In remembering who you are in Christ, and finding your identity in Him • And setting your steps, to love the people God, your own people, and those of your community. So go and slay your dragons and build that world. The world is waiting, and God is smiling.