Can you believe that it is already Thanksgiving? Time is just going by so quickly that I thought Iíd do a few calculations to find out how Iím spending my life.

If you live to 70 years old, hereís a list of how you would have spent your life:

• 23 years sleeping
• 7.5 years watching TV
• 11.6 years eating
• 330 days (24 hour days) studying
• 2.7 years waiting in lines and in traffic
• 248 full days in the bathroom
• 216 days in church on the weekends
• 10.7 years at work

Though we may be intrigued by these statistics, letís focus our interest on the 10.7 years we will spend at work. However, before we launch into that, it is important to mention that the 216 days you spend in church on weekends may not be that much, but they are extremely critical because it will nourish your hearts and affect everything in your life. Additionally, as important as it is to listen to Godís word and what it says to us, the litmus test of the time we spend at our New Hope services will be when we leave this auditorium and choose to apply what we learned.

So letís take a look at how to live our faith in an everyday fashion, especially at work. We will set a benchmark right from the beginning and it might be an interesting awakening for you and me as we find out who weíre really working for.

"Work hard" speaks about your competence and "cheerfully" speaks about the spirit at which you work.

The following are three main points that will indeed help us to take our faith to the workplace in a practical way so that we can affect not only this life but also, those who are considering the life to come.

God calls us to be a people with a spirit of excellence in all that we do. God wants us to be an excellent people because Psalms says this: "Oh Lord our Lord, how excellent is your name", which simply means that God is named excellent. Therefore, we serve an excellent God and since He created us in His image, we need to develop that spirit of excellence in everything.

Sometimes people feel (especially in church activities) excellence is more slick than spiritual.

But the Creator of the world lives in us and thus the most creative places should be in His house of worship. May we be people after His image so that when people see us they will see the creative sparkle of our God, whom we represent.

Letís read these next two scriptures and youíll see what I mean.

"The righteous is a guide to his neighborÖ" (Pr. 12:26 NASB)

"The righteous is more excellent than his neighbor". (Pr. 12:26 KJV)

That is not an attempt to get you to compare or stir up a motivation to compete. Instead, it is reminding us of our calling to be someone who is an example, someone who is a leader, and someone who sets the tone in the workplace. Heís saying, when someone is going astray you are to be a guide, not a follower.

Someone once said to me, "Wayne, if you are going to be used by God, you need to learn to be a thermostat instead of a thermometer". A thermometer just sits on the wall and will reflect whatever the temperature of the room is. On the other hand, a thermostat is plugged in to a greater source and it not only reflects the temperature, it sets it or regulates it. You too are plugged in to a greater source, Jesus Christ.

Some will say, "Wayne, youíre just talking about performance. Isnít it true that God looks at the heart, not the performance." I say, "Absolutely! But if your heart is a heart of excellence, it will bleed into everything that you do and every activity will sparkle with the heart that you have". So when people say their exterior and not their heart judges them, they are often masking, or covering-up, or justifying a poor heart or complacent lifestyle.

So should we concentrate on increasing our competence? Absolutely! Did you know that 20% more knowledge will enter the workplace every year? If you will improve something about yourself ñ just 1% a day ñ learn something about what you are doing at the workplace and who you are as a person, then in one year you would have improved yourself over 300%. That is a spirit of excellence.

Developing a spirit of excellence will require two things:

• Character
• Competence

"[David] cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands". (Ps. 79:72 NLT)

2.  A living testimony.

A testimony describes what you are known for, what you stand for, the core values that have guided your life, and what things are important to you. Would your testimony include anything about your relationship with God; would it say anything about your faith? The best testimonies will be those that include not only people of quality work but also people of character and integrity.

Their testimony was a living testimony that they were faithful and had a reputation of integrity.

"A good name is to be more desired than great riches, favor is better than silver and gold".  (Pr. 22:1)

Let me give you a great exercise that we found in China. This summer we sent teams to China to teach English and share their faith. Their goal was to communicate that God loves them and that the Bible is relevant to every personís life. However, they had a dilemma. They were not able to speak about God in public because of Communist rule and to do so would place them in danger. So how did they do this?

They took the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control and created classes about each. They taught these children about the fruit of the spirit through skits, song, dance and these children were living the Bible. There was such joy, compassion, excellence, and a heart felt love for these kids. These children had fallen so in love with their teachers, I had never seen so many tears in all my life. They were hanging on to the people of our church not wanting to let them go! Towards the end of the two-week period, these people realized that we were Christians. Although the teachers didnít preach to them, they will remember our missionaries as the nicest, excellent, compassionate, generous, and authentic people they have ever met in their lives. Itís easy to just leave tracks; itís tough to leave a living testimony.

Hereís a way I put it, "Love people until they ask why, and then show them the Father". That will leave a living testimony at your workplace.

Finally the third gear:

"For promotion and power come from nowhere on earth, but only from God. He promotes one and deposes another". (Ps. 75:6 LB)

How do you handle authority? If God gives you a promotion or finances, can you handle that? If He gives you influence, can you handle that? One of the greatest tests that you will face in life will not be poverty; it will be prosperity. Itís not hard when you make $100 to tithe ten percent. But what if God gives you a $100,000, $500,000, what will you do?

Can you steward Godís blessings? Why is this important? God will entrust to you something of purpose and hope so that you can give them out to those in desperate need of a Savior, those living lives without eternity or hope beyond the grave. That is why you were created; so donít miss who you really are!

"If you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?" (Luke 16:11 NLT)

Our faith in the workplace starts with a spirit of excellence ñ it is the force that will attract people to Christ. So be the best you can because excellence honors God. Next, be a living testimony -- live a life of integrity and honesty, and love people until they ask why. And finally steward His blessings and show them the Father. When that happens, youíll understand why the most important thing about these services is when you leave that door. The legacy that God wants you to leave is of eternal quality and value and much of that will be determined by the way you handle temporal blessings.

So, here is your assignment. You have two weeks -- you canít say anything about God but through your character, kindness, love, compassion, genuine authenticity, integrity, care, encouragement, you can show others the Father. And at the end, they will indeed see that God loves them and the Bible is indeed relevant because youíve loved them until they asked why and then showed them the Father. Now that is "Faith @ Work".

Question 5: How will what you learned today impact your life?