Hey, welcome to Venture. We're glad to have all of you at all of our campuses. And I want to say a word about all the people that are out in the parking lot that are directing you in the frigid tundra, and all the people at these doors when they open it up, it's like a pneumonia hole, and all the people that make Venture happen. It's not the preachers, okay. Our job is easy compared to a person that has to be here early and make sure the water is warm in the baptistry and, you know, make sure that like everything is said. And I got here this morning, it was 17 degrees. And all of our volunteers that are on the stage that leads you in worship, these are people that, you know, they're real people, and they do this because they love Jesus. And at all of our campuses, if you didn't serve, we'd have to shut down. I mean, you can get another preacher, but I mean, getting all these volunteers, it's unbelievable. So can we give them a hand at all of our campuses? And online, because online is filled with people all over the place, all over the state, that are on the chat with you. And if you don't have the Venture app, you need to go and download it. Don't go to YouTube, okay? I mean, you can, but, or Facebook, or whatever. Just go online with our people. Vince and his whole pastoral team will know about you, they'll know about your concerns, they will pray for you during the week, they will send you stuff, you'll be connected as best you can be and not be present in the room.

Now we're in 21 Days of Prayer, and I hope you've taken this seriously. We have one more week. If you haven't done anything, you can do it for a week, okay? And then next time we do it, you'll be kind of tuned up to know what to do. And so you need a plan, okay? I don't know what your plan is, but you need a plan. And it may be just going online and kind of getting the Bible passage for the day, or it may be that you're going to fast intermittently, or you're going to fast from social media, or whatever it is. And you need to process. Because here's the thing: if you have a better relationship with Jesus, you'll have a better life. Now, that's just a word, you may tweet that if you want to. But it's just the truth. And I know this because I love God, okay? And I've fluctuated like a lot of people where I've been closer to God than other times, and every time I've kind of waned a little bit from God, my life has not been as full. Like the highs have not been as high as they could have been, and the lows were way too low because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't close to God. I mean, not that I wasn't saved, I just got lazy, you know. I kind of let some junk come into my life. I kind of like, "Hey, I deserve to lay down, you know, I'm older, I deserve, you know, like." And you get in that mode, and really it takes away from the value that you could have if you just understood God loves you, he's got a plan for you. He's not out to kill all your fun. Matter of fact, he is there to amplify your life so that you can flourish.

So let me catch you up on this whole nother sermon series. Let me catch you up on Daniel. Daniel teaches us how to live in Babylon. That is a place that focuses on comfort and pleasure. And that's America. That's our culture. That's all of us. We all like comfort and pleasure. And he shows us how to live. And so I kind of laid it out for you the first week. I said, "Hey, this, we need to have a strategy of multiplication." Like, it's no longer okay just to go, "Hey, I just want to go personally, I want to get closer to God, I want to know more books of the Bible, I want to win the sword drill." You know, the idea is, we're a church for the young church, and when you get to know him, you begin to bring people to know Christ. If you go to heaven and you just know a lot of verses and nobody got to heaven because of you, I'd be humiliated. I mean, just personally, I know that's probably too strong, but the idea that the goal of Christianity is just to make your life better and you know more knowledgeable of the Bible and you kind of try to live, you know, sin management, and then you get to heaven and, you know, what you do with the gospel you had, what did you do with the life you had, what'd you do the opportunity you had, what'd you do with all the people around you to speak to them? And you didn't do anything because you're just trying to like grow. "I don't know enough, I don't know enough." Well, if he saved your life, that's all you need to know and share. So anyway, that's a whole nother sermon series.

We live with humility because everything we have is a gift from God. I mean, I don't know if you had a coat today, but that's a gift from God. Saying, "No, I went down there." No, no, no, you did with the money God gave you, the car God gave you, the body God gave you. If you don't have a coat, let us know, we'll get you a coat. If you have somebody you know that doesn't have a coat, you let us know and we'll get you a coat, okay? We live with confidence because we know this world is not our home. I just need to let you in on a little secret: you're going to be here for a period of time, you know? The actuarial table says maybe 78 to 82, depending if you're a man or woman, depending on a lot of things. But you know, if you get past 80, and that's where Daniel is today, you know, you're kind of living in the red zone, you know, and two-minute warning, because you know it's coming. And the reality is, if something gets stolen from you or somebody mistreats you, I mean, it's bad, and we'll put a hit out on them, but you just realize you're moving through. I'm just playing. You're moving through this life, you're moving to the future.

But today I want to talk about how to live with purpose because we work for God and not for humans. Now, remember, take some notes on this, because we weren't going to preach on this a lot, but whatever you're doing employment wise, you're not doing it for the person you're working for. If you're a believer, you're doing it for God. Now say that because Daniel is working really hard. Matter of fact, he's amazing. And he's a prisoner. You say, "Well, that sounds like my job. I mean, I got, you know, I clock in today, you under prison, and at 12 we get to go out to the yard and smoke, and then from one to five, you know, we get parole for the night, and then we come back and do it all again." He said, "Oh, now this is going to relate to me. Well, that's my job. I feel like a prisoner in my job. It's terrible." Well, that's where Daniel was. And so we're going to learn some things from Daniel. Matter of fact, he just really, man, did done something for me, because we're gonna talk about the four-letter word that, you know, you usually don't talk about in church. Okay, so if you're young, you'll love this. We're gonna talk about the dirty word called work. Because you're going to spend 10 full years working, I mean, like non-stop, if you're 25 to 65 just 40 hours a week, that's 10 full years working. And the question is, why? Well, you got to eat. But why? I mean, like, what do I get out of it? Well, we're going to talk about that today in Daniel chapter 6. And you're going to find how the pit or the prison you're in can be turned into a platform for God to use you and do some powerful things through you, because that is your worship.

So Daniel chapter six. Daniel's been through three kings, all three kings have tried to kill him. And so you thought your boss is bad. He says, "I got a bad boss." Was he trying to throw you to the lions? I mean, he's 80 years old, and they're going to throw him to the lions. Oh, anybody done that to you? "So well, my co-workers." We're going to talk about that too. Well, I want you to see what Daniel does, because you can learn from Daniel. And if you don't like your job and you don't like your boss, you can find out how to move up into another area, maybe even in your company. If you don't like your finances and your paycheck, what you're going to learn from Daniel is there's a way to move into another region so that you can begin to move forward financially and socially and all the things that you had going for you that you've dreamed of.

In Daniel chapter six verse one: "It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps"—they're like rulers, like general managers—"to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel." Now, here's an 80-year-old Jew, and he is over like the kingdom. He's like one of the three people running everything. "And the satraps were made accountable to them so the king did not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps that by his exceptional qualities, the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom." He said, "I'm going to put you over the whole king." "Well, how many years? I don't care about your whole king, because you—" "Well, you know, I'm a Jew, I don't care of the whole kingdom, because man, you're doing this well." "At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him." Boy, that'd be nice to be able to say in America, okay? I'm sorry, that's another sermon. "Because he was trustworthy, neither corrupt nor negligent. And finally these men said, 'We will never find any basis of charges against this man unless it has something to do with the law of God.'"

Now skip down to verse 10. They made a decree, they're trying to catch Daniel, they're trying to get him kicked. Any co-workers, they've done that to you? Set up a trap for you? They're setting up a trap for them. Like, he's, you know, you can only bow for 30 days, one month, you can only worship Darius. And Daniel hears it, and Daniel says, "This is what I'm going to do." He learned the decree had been published, so he went home in the upstairs room, the windows were open toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees and he prayed, giving thanks to God just as he had done before. Then these men went out as a group and they found Daniel praying, asking God for help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about this royal decree. "Did not you publish a decree that during the next 30 days, anyone who prays to any other god or human except you, your majesty, should be thrown into the lion's den?" You think it's going to be rough at your work? You got the lions waiting on him. It's not the Detroit Lions. The king answered, "The decree stands accordance with the law of the Medes and the Persians, that cannot be repealed." So they took Daniel—because he's 80, if he threw him in there, would kill him—so they let him down slowly. And the idea was, he's the—the lions would eat him on the way down, you know. And so they let him down.

In verse 19: "The first light of dawn, the king got up and he heard that the lions stand, and when he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, 'Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to rescue from the lions?' And Daniel answered him, 'May the king live forever.'" And I would have said that—I said some other things. "'My God, my God sent his angel and shut the mouth of the lions. They haven't hurt me, because I was found innocent in their sight, nor have I ever done anything wrong before you, your majesty.' And the king was overjoyed. He gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den, and when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him because he had trusted in the Lord his God." But his coworkers got thrown to the lions and eaten. And I love that part, which is sad, you know, for me, that I love that, like, your coworker's gonna get it, you know, like, it's okay, they're gonna get eaten, you know, so just relax.

You're saying, like, "What does all this mean?" Well, there's two pits that you've got to watch out for in your work, wherever you work. And the first is the pit of difficult circumstances. And some of you work in places that it's just, they're just difficult. And Daniel gets you. I mean, he was taken hostage at 12. He was taken into a country he didn't speak the language. He was taught a language, he was prepared for a career that he didn't ask for, he was placed in a job that he didn't sign up for. I mean, everything about this, you're going, "Man, that's crazy." And on top of that, his bosses tried to kill him. You said, "Well, that's my boss. My boss is trying to kill me. I mean, it gives me more working dude than pay me, like, well." Daniel gets you. But you know the difference in Daniel and me? Daniel never complained in all of his years in working for these yahoo kings. He never once complained. Now, I've been here 36 years, and I'm gonna tell you, I've complained for 36 years. I mean, I just get whiny, I get soft, I get weak, I get tired. I'm like, "Well, why don't I have to go through this? Why can't I get someone else to do this one? Why no brother preach me appreciates me, I don't get paid enough." Anybody else do that? Were you just like Negative Nancy? Thank you, thank you, thank you. The rest of you never complained. I'm so proud of you. You're godly people. I want to be you when I grow up.

Because it is so easy to complain about your job, where you feel like your job is a dead end. How many of you, when it gets to Friday, you're like, "TGIF, you know, let's go, it's five o'clock somewhere"? "That's my job." How many of you are like that? I mean, if you get near some of the parking lots at places where you clock out at five o'clock, you will get run over and killed. I mean, people are in a three-point stance, 4:58, 4:59, 5 o'clock. I mean, how do you do that? I mean, you just hate your job. Like, "You're ready to get out of here, man, this is crazy. I don't like my job." Where the stats are, millennials—I love millennials, so millennials are our whole staff, they just turn 40 this year—and millennials will have four jobs by the time they're 30. But Generation Z, which is the other part of our employees, they will have five jobs by the time they're 30. You see a trend here? I mean, it's the idea, "I don't like my job, so I'm going to jump to another job. Oh, I don't like my co-workers, I'm going to jump to another job. You know, I don't like my pay, I'm going to jump to another job."

He said, "What's wrong with that?" You're missing opportunities, you're missing a chance to grow, you're missing a chance to invest. I see this all the time with our staff. It's a reason we don't post our staff online, because people try to poach them. And this is what they do, other churches. Man, churches of business, bro, don't you know that? I mean, they're like, "Oh, hey, over your adventure, okay, we'll get you. We'll pay you ten thousand dollars more to come over here." And I try to keep telling our staff, "Oh, they gonna pay you ten thousand more, but that's all you gonna get, bro. If you stay here, you know what the ladder is, you know how you can move forward, you're going to be relationships, you can make a difference. Don't go to that dead-end church, they're terrible people." And so I find that—a way how much you ever done that with employees you didn't want to lose. I don't lose any of our employees. And when people come for them, other churches, I try to find a way to, you know, destroy them.

God designs you to work. Now I know you don't think it's a good thing, but Genesis 2:15, God put Adam in the garden to work and care for it. This is before Genesis 3, it's before the curse. The reality is, God works, Jesus works, the Holy Spirit works. You're never more like God than when you're working. I mean, I want you to get that. It's so important. I mean, how many of you feel this way? You're like, "I love—I know I'm honoring God and worshiping God by going to work." And it's hard. And it's a difficult place. I mean, I talked about different institutions like hospitals, and man, right now, so hard to work at a hospital. It was hard before. And I talked to people in different industries, man, it is so hard. "I don't like it, I don't want to do it." Listen, that is your worship to God. You say, "Well, Jeff, you don't understand. I mean, you work one day a week, and sometimes you ain't worked that day. Welcome to church, you're not even here." I mean, you know, if I had your job, where all I had to do is pop out, you know, and talk and tell some jokes, I would love that too. And get maybe—well, I may not understand, but God understands. God understands you, he loves you, and he understands you have difficult circumstances.

But on top of that, you have the pit of destructive co-workers. How many of you work in a toxic environment? Would you raise your hand? I mean, you work in a difficult environment. I know you're not raising your hand, like our staff aren't, because your boss is here. But like you work for Lucifer and you're working with his girlfriends, one of your co-workers, the devil. I mean, you know, it's so tough sometimes. And if it's not the co-worker, it's your customers. I mean, how many of you have clients, and you're like, "Man, it might y'all be great if I didn't have to work with them, if I didn't have to sell to them, if I didn't have to entertain them?" And there's a bunch of yays. "I don't like them, I wouldn't have to do that." You know, I get it. God gets you.

The other day, I was in Starbucks. I was just waiting in line to get coffee, and man, people are so whacked out right now. That lady in front of me was possessed by demons. I have father Tommy's, you know, I almost called him, like, "Can you get out and throw some water on that, let's cast out something?" I mean, it was unbelievable. And she, you know, she finally gets through ordering, and the little girl behind there—I know a lot of those people at this coffee shop—and just withered, and the lady said, "What name do I put on the cup?" She said, "Annie." And I said, "Say Tani is her name." It was unbelievable. I'm like, "Are you kidding me?" And, you know, the reality, man, like, the people that are working when you drive through the drive-through, man, they're the ones working. Don't take out your frustrations on them. Take it out on people like just start laying down. A few years ago, we owed some medical bills, and I was trying to pay it. I don't know if you know this, but, like, sometimes, you know, you can't pay the whole thing, and so I was not paying it. This really happened, month by month I was doing the best I could. And so I was getting closer to the end, I was getting excited about it, and I get a call. I didn't recognize the call, but I took it—what you don't ever do that—because on the other end was a lady, and she was talking about my bills. "Yeah, I'm paying it off." And she started working me, like, I could tell she was like putting the pressure on me. I'm thinking, "Lady, you don't want this, you don't want a piece of this, okay, you don't want it, you don't want it." And I said, "Dad gum it," or "a dog on it," or whatever. She goes, "Oh, I got me a cussing preacher." I said, "Honey, you hadn't heard cussing." And then I pulled back, pulled back. She caught—I was afraid—I pulled myself back. And she went off. Finally I said, "Look"—this really happened—"can I speak to your supervisor?" And the supervisor on the phone, "Yes sir." I said, "I want to pay my bill in full, and I want to give ten percent of my bill, I'm putting on my card to this lady." And I'm thinking, "So she can finish witch school and get a new broom." That's a true story. And you know the bottom line, the story is, if you're a witch, be a good one. And I mean, like, I wanted to pay her. It's hard to learn to be a witch like that. But Daniel's cold y'all, okay, calm down.

Daniel's co-workers were terrible. They set him up to kill him. Can I tell you a little secret? That if you really work hard and you kind of, like, you're different, and you begin to get promoted, people gonna hate you. People gonna set you up for failure. Oh, they'll talk good to your face, okay, but when they see you on the Facebook, or they see you on Instagram, or the Snapchat, and they're gonna go, "Man, look at them, look at them, look at them, look at them." If you work hard to succeed, other people are going to be jealous.

You say, "Then what do I do?" Well, Paul said in Colossians 3:23, and I want you to get this, this could be a theme verse. If you don't have a tattoo and want one, you could put this on your body. Because this one is one you never want to forget. That's what Paul says. He says, "Whatever you do"—whatever you do, I don't know what you do—"whatever you do well." "I'd work in the drive-through at McDonald's." Whatever you do well. "I work at the car wash." Well, whatever you do, he says, whatever you do, do it with all your hearts. Have you ever been to a place where you ordered and you weren't sure the person was going to actually make it over to your order, and just like, you know, they didn't want to be there, you didn't blame them, but— "Whatever you do, work out with all your heart, as you're working for the Lord and not for humans. Why? Since you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward, because it is the Lord Christ you're serving." You're serving Jesus, man, it is your worship. It is your testimony. They may have the title, but you got the testimony.

Listen to Daniel 6:3. It says that Daniel, he distinguished himself among all the other people because he had unique qualities. And listen, if you do that, not only will you get a reward in heaven, your boss will notice. You want to get promoted? Your boss will notice when you stand out and you are different. They may have the title, but listen, you've got the testimony. And you ask the question, it's not, "What can I get out of my work?" but "What more can I give to my work?" So if you want to go to another level, if you want to really worship God at your work no matter what you do, there are four questions you need to ask. You may want to write these down. If you work in HR, you may want to give these to your people, or, you know, if you're a younger person, it's okay, because this may be something you need to understand, because you can move forward, you can move up. I mean, you can start—I have known people that started working in the wind at McDonald's who now own McDonald's, like different franchises. I know a guy that started off listening to it. I'm not playing with you, I know, I got younger. I see these young, they're so creative, like our people we have on our team. You wouldn't believe how hard they work when they understand they're working for the Lord and not for men. I know a guy was pumping gas at a gas station. Now he owns gas stations everywhere because he separated himself.

Ask these four questions. Number one: how can I exceed expectations? Not how can I make it to five o'clock. "If I make it five o'clock, we're going down to the Hog, and it's gonna be amazing." No, no, no, no, no. How can you see—you know, one way you can see expectations, it's not really that hard. Put your phone down. It's hard to do, man. Like, I was in a meeting, we have a meeting, and sometimes like I'm ADD, and I'm thinking, you know, I'll get my computer out and act like I'm looking at the agenda when I'm looking at the Facebook. You know, anybody else ever done that? You're acting like you're working and man, you're looking Instagram and you, you know, Snapchat, and you're fine because you're thinking, "Man, if I don't—if I'm not careful, like, you know, I'll say something I shouldn't say, so I'm going to say here like a knot on a log, and I'm not going to look at anything other than my Facebook." Take initiative, ask questions, show that you have some interest in what's going on around you. We had a guy years ago, man, he was one of the smartest guys, and we're trying to do all the things that we're doing now, and I was pouring out my heart to our team. Pouring it out, I mean, all these young innovative geniuses, they're geniuses, and I kept pouring it out and pouring it out. And finally, after an hour and a half, one of the guys says, "I just went to a conference on that." I blacked out. I said, "Well, why didn't you tell me?" He said, "Because you did not ask me." We gave him a chance to bloom somewhere else. And the reality is that if you don't get involved, if they don't know that you're excited, man, why would they want you to work there?

Number two: how can I be more positive at work? For every negative person, it takes three positive people just to bring it to the baseline. How can I be more positive at work? Listen, know the difference between joy and happiness. You know, "I'm not happy with my job. Man, I'm not having my job." I mean, in terms of happiness, like feeling like it—like this morning, I mean, I promise you, I told Alicia, you know, she was snuggling and all that—maybe too much information—but she was snuggling, it was warm, I knew how cold it was, and I laid there and I said, "Baby, I'm not going today, I'm serious." I said, "I'm not going in today." She goes, "Honey, you got to, you're preaching." She rolled back over and I had to come in. I wasn't happy about it, but I chose joy. Listen, joy is a choice that you make. It's not that you always feel like doing the right thing. Know the difference between joy. Now, one of our core values is joy. We value the privilege to participate in what God is doing.

You want to go to another level? Be positive. Know the vision and mission and strategy and core values of where you work. And when your boss says something and you spout one of those, I don't think that gets my ear. When one of our teams says one of our core values, I'm going like that. When I see one of my team members that is moving out—you know that for me everybody's got permission to do ministry—when I see them moving out, I'm like, "Man, we need to keep them, we need to work." Listen, you can't control what comes into your email, you can't control your co-workers, you can't control your boss, but you can control your attitude. You really can, especially if you're growing spiritually.

Number three: how do I maximize my testimony at work? You know how you maximize your testimony at work? It's not by bringing a coffee cup with "We know the deer painted for the water brooks," and everybody's time to do your work. That's not a testimony. You want a great testimony at work? Get your work done, do it with pride, stay to your finished. Martin Luther King said this and I love it. He said, "If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well." Because your work is your worship. And whatever it is, you fix air conditioners, fix them good. You do plumbing, study, you got it right. You're a carpenter, man, you do—you're a salesman, man, get out there and get after. You've been turned down nine times, this is it, number ten, because God is watching you, he's for you.

Then you ask number four: who can I help today? You don't have to be the sharpest person at work, but you ought to be the most caring. You're to be the hands and feet of Jesus wherever you work. And some of you are put in some of the worst places. Man, listen, the light shines best in darkness. God has put you as a missionary. You're not just a mission, he has put you in a place to make a difference, to change the world.

You say, "I don't believe that." Well, let me ask them, have you went to Disney this year, this past year? How many went to Disney? Yeah. You know, you sold a kidney. You called neighbors, you know, because one of you ought to soak it. "Hey my—hey, you, you mind look come back?" You're kidding. And you go to Disney, and this happens to all of us. You get through with Disney after a week there, you're so broke, you can't eat for a month. And you get home and you're thinking, "I'll never go back again." Then like about a week later, you're like, "When we're going back to Disney?" And they do it for a mouse. Chick-fil-A, why y'all standing in line of Chick-fil-A? Now, I love Chick-fil-A, I love those people. Why are you doing that? It's because of the service and the food, you know, it's always going to be good. They do it for a chicken. How many of you been to Buc-ee's? Raise your hand. Yeah, raise your hand high. Me too. Sometimes I drive down to the coast just to go to Buc-ee's and get a sandwich. Because when I walk in, "Hey, how you doing?" I mean, the lady with him that good looking, "I was like, I'm doing pretty good. How you doing?" It was just encouraging. I mean, if they had an altar, I would have joined. They're doing it for a beaver. What are you thinking? IKEA, they'll keep your kids, man, they're all out. You say, "Why? But for furniture you can't put together?" I mean, listen, here's the thing, you're doing this for God, not for humans.

You say, "Well, nobody's recognizing me." Well, maybe it's going to take a little time. Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures, have you ever seen that movie? Oh, I love that lady. Oh man, the 60s female engineer. Man, it's still hard for female engineers. We got a picture of her. Couldn't even use the bathroom in the same building with the men, yeah. Brilliant, so brilliant. John Glenn said, "Don't you do the calculations on the re-entry, because I don't trust the machines." 60 years later, she has a Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to her and a movie done about her life. Listen, God doesn't always settle accounts in 30 days. And she's working in the shadows, and she's working in the shadows, and she's working in the shadows, and it begins to come to light. You can't work like this for God and it not come to light.

You say, "Well, I work in this, I work in a coffee shop, and satan is up there, say Tani's come back, and she will make there's nowhere else for her to go, and she's crazy as a sprayed roach." And you—she comes up, and you're thinking, you're thinking two things. Number one, "Should I in the cup?" I mean, you're thinking a lot of stuff. Okay, because Say Tandy, you know, she's coming, and you write her name down, and as you're writing her name down, you're thinking, "Say Tani, I'm doing this to get back at Satani, and no, I'm doing it for Jesus Christ. Carama macchiato extra hot for Jesus."

Jesus worked 30 years in obscurity, take care of his family because his dad died. He worked three years to save the world. He worked three days to turn a pit into a platform for you. When Daniel was let down into that lion's den, you know he was down there with him. Jesus. Yeah, Jesus been around a long time. And he shut the mouths of the lions. You know why? Because there was coming a day he would be eaten on Calvary and descend into that pit, into that grave, to turn it into a garden for you. To say, "I know how you feel, and I got you, and I love you, and I'm going to take care of you." For some of you today, man, some of you are looking for work, some of you are broken by work, some of you deserve a raise and your boss is holding out on you, some of you men are putting up with so much stuff you don't think you can go back tomorrow. God says, "I see you, I got you, I'm gonna help you."

Would you bow your heads for just a moment and let me pray for you? You spend so much time at work, so painful, especially when you're starting out to do jobs that are so—feel so meaningless, they pay so poorly. But I'm telling you, if you will distinguish yourself by the unique qualities of loving and following Jesus, your day to be elevated will come. Father, I believe this message with all of my heart. I've seen you do it time and time and time again. But God, there have been days when I doubted deeply that I wasn't just going to be used up and broken and left on the side of the road by my job. And I thank you, Father, I can stand here 36 years later and say every difficult day was worth it. Father, bless the people that are listening this message. Give them courage and strength. Surround them like you did Daniel to protect them from the lions, so that they can be lifted up to turn their pit into a platform. Jesus's name I pray, amen.