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WISDOM AS WORK ETHIC - PROVERBS 6:1-19

I want to talk to you today about wisdom as work ethic.

There are people that work really hard and then there are people that don't. So you want to make sure that you're aligning with the people that work hard, not the people that are lazy. Now I have four close friends and they are the hardest working people that I know.

One is Mark Bell. He sold us home, invested all of his money into his own business. Now he has four coffee shops and about 40 employees. And then there's Adam Watts who's a three-stripe black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and has had a successful Jiu-Jitsu studios. He's also now business partners with Mark in their coffee shop. Very hard working. Then there's Bobby Ramsey who was the chief of police, city of Fontana, graduated from the FBI Academy, led courageously over 300 officers in his police department. Hard working. And then there's Kurt Johnston who has a bachelor's, a master's. He's written 20 books and served faithfully for 26 years at Saddleback.

So little life rule, if you surround yourselves with the eight idiots, you will be the ninth idiot. But if you surround yourself with humble, hard working friends, you will end up as a humble, hard working friend.

So what are we talking about here in Proverbs chapter 6? Well, it says, verse 6, go to the ant you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer, gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, poverty will come on you like a thief and an armed man. Okay, so pretty strong words. We are encouraged to pursue a work ethic. So what is a work ethic? Well, it's a few things.

The first thing that it is, is you tell yourself to work. Now this is the difference between a follower. Now a follower gets told when to work. I'm going to repeat that. A follower gets told when to work. Now a leader, they do this. You tell yourself to work. Now you're probably wondering why I'm teaching this and the reason is because I want you to be successful. In order to be successful, you are going to need to tell yourself to work. So no one tells me when to get up. I tell myself when to get up at four o'clock every single day. So first thing you got to do is quit expecting other people to tell you when to work and you tell yourself when to work.

Now in order to practice this, you probably want to get this habit going if you're working for someone else because a little bit presumptuous to pray that you'll get to tell yourself to work if you won't do it when you're working for someone else. That's a character problem. So you want to make sure to tell yourself when to work.

The second thing is you want to tell yourself to outwork everyone. So who is the competition? Well the answer is everyone. And so that puts you in the driver's seat because what you can do is you can decide to outwork everybody. And so what I have seen in my life is that most people want the freedom of working when they want.

Problem is that you need personal discipline that outweighs the personal freedom that you have. Every time you have more personal responsibility than you do personal freedom, you'll find yourself in a really good spot. Every time your personal freedom outweighs your personal responsibility, you're going to find yourself getting into trouble.

So you tell yourself to work, you tell yourself to outwork everybody, and then you tell yourself to store up for down times. And so life ebbs and flows, ups and downs, highs and lows. So you learn when you have the energy, then you want to store up for times of depletion or times when you're not going to have any energy. And so what you want to do is just a quick review.

You tell yourself to work, tell yourself to outwork everyone, and then tell yourself to store up for down times. Now if you do that, that is really the lesson of the ant that we're looking at here in problems. And so may God help us show our wisdom by our work ethic. Thanks so much for joining me. Until next time, have a beautiful day.