Sheltered, undisturbed plants may grow fast and even tall, but the result is a weak, fragile, and easily uprooted plant. By contrast, plants exposed to rain, wind, and the occasional disturbance grow strong, stable, and sturdy.

Your soul works the same way.

In this opening sermon of our summer series through the letter of James, we walk through James 1:1–18 and the old wisdom he himself leans into: that the trials we face are not meant to destroy us, but to activate and strengthen what has been given to us. We consider why the testing of faith produces steadfastness, what it means to ask God for wisdom without a divided soul, why the life resourced by appearances withers like grass, and the crucial difference between a trial and a temptation — one external, one a heart unsubmitted. Faith does its work not in one dramatic moment but over many ordinary ones, completing us — maturing us toward our purposed end — because what God starts in history and in us, he finishes in history through us.

Questions for Reflection:

• James contends that the disturbances of life help ensure our maturation and completion. Where in your daily relations and responsibilities might God be activating and purifying your faith right now?
• When something hard hits, is your first instinct to face it as a trial that strengthens, or to read it as God against you? What would it look like to "count it all joy"?
• Where are you living divided — "double-souled" — tossed between believing and not believing? What wisdom do you need to ask God for, without doubting?

Scripture References: James 1:1–18; Psalm 63:1–8; Proverbs 24:16; Acts 2:36; 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; Psalm 1:3

Voices/Quotes: Douglas Moo Commentary on James; John Calvin Commentary on the Catholic Epistles; Keith McCurdy Raising Sturdy Kids; Jonathan Haidt The Anxious Generation

Sermon Notes & Liturgy | James: Faith at Work

Christ City Church gathers every Sunday at 10:10 AM at 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218; in the chapel at LHB. 
Come rest in Jesus. Learn more at christcity.life

What if work was never the thing to survive on the way to your real life — but the very medium through which you offer yourself to God?

In the finale of our "Get(ing) Out of Work" series we consider a few of the ancient, yet ever new, practices that the church has used to help God's people stay in step with the Spirit during the daily rhythms of work and rest, rest and work.

Drawing on Irenaeus and Hans Urs von Balthasar, the message recovers an old picture of the human being: not merely shaped clay, body and soul, but body and soul and spirit together — the complete person, bearing not just the image but the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). To be spiritual is "by definition to be moved by the Spirit of the Logos," Christ our Beginning, our Salvation, our End.

This reframes work entirely. With Dorothy Sayers, work is "not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do… the medium in which one offers oneself to God." We do not offer our work to God; following Paul in Romans 12, we offer our whole selves — as a living sacrifice — through it. So we stop striving to get out of work the identity, prosperity, and purpose it was never meant to supply, and instead receive from it the life we're made for: the good work God "got ready for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).

Then the practical question: how? The answer is ancient and unglamorous — habits. As Annie Dillard wrote, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives… A schedule defends from chaos and whim. They are a net for catching days." Three habits to structure an ordinary day:

• Enter the day with the Lord's Prayer for Work — before the phone, before the lunches, perhaps before you're out of bed: "I give my whole self to you through the work you have given me this day."
• Recollect yourself midday with a centering prayer from Psalm 139 — breathing in, "I am…"; breathing out, "…still with you."
• Exit the day through the Examen — asking the Spirit where your work was out of step with Jesus, where it was in rhythm, and letting him lead you into rest.

How we start matters. How we stay centered matters. And how we exit our labors into the rest of the night, made new, matters just as much.

Reflection: Where was your work out of step with Jesus today, and where was it in rhythm with him?

Scripture: Acts 2:1-3, 38-39 · Psalm 104:23-30 · Genesis 1:26 · Romans 12:1 · Ephesians 2:9-10 · 1 Thessalonians 5:23

Voices/Quotes: Annie Dillard, The Writing Life · Dorothy Sayers · Tom Nelson, Work Matters · Irenaeus of Lyons · Hans Urs von Balthasar

Christ City Church is a small faith family following Jesus together in east Dallas. We gather Sundays at 10:10 AM at 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218, in the chapel @ LHB.

What if the burden of your work isn't that there's too much to do — but that there's an anxiousness in your soul that no productivity system can fix?

This Sunday we looked at Matthew 11:25-30, sitting with the weight of Jesus' invitation to all who are "heavy laden." The Greek word for burden, notably, carries with it not just the image of an animal loaded past its capacity — but the idea of spiritual anxiety, an unsettledness beneath the labor. The problem isn't the workload. It's the heart beneath it.

The sermon names what modern marketing has always known: the heart is the most manipulable part of the soul. It longs, aspires, loves — and in a world of unlimited options, it is constantly being pulled toward someone else's end. We pile on not just more work, but more expectations, more routines, more rituals, more rumors of wisdom. We have become a society of excess baggage. And so the work that was meant to free us buries us instead.

The answer, Jesus says, is not less work. It's a different heart. "Take my yoke upon you… for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." The yoke is a joining — two laboring together. Not handing off, but sharing.

Thus, when our hearts are shaped by and fused with Christ's, the work doesn't merely become easier — it becomes transfigured as rest-full. Work, then, properly received, is itself a way to rest. Spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction — not in spite of the labor, but through it.

Reflection Questions

1. What labor and loads have you taken on that are not shared with Christ?
2. Conversely, what labor and loads have you tried to give up that were yours to carry in Christ?
3. In what labor and loads has your soul experienced rest?

Scripture: Matthew 11:25-30; Psalm 40:1-8; Romans 12:1-2; John 14:31; Colossians 3:23

Voices:

• Dorothy Sayers, Leading Lives That Matter: what we should do and who we should be
• Tom Nelson, Work Matters: connecting Sunday worship to Monday work
• Sirach 6:24-31 (NRSV)
• Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, TPNT

Sermon Notes & Liturgy⁠⁠

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: ⁠⁠Sabbath & Work⁠

Christ City Church is a small faith family following Jesus together in east Dallas. We gather Sundays at 10:10 AM at the Chapel at Lake Highlands Baptist Church, 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218.Learn more at ⁠christcity.life

What would change tomorrow if you forgot about serving others — and simply served the work?
In Week 5 of our post-Easter series, we learn that for work to become a delight and fulfillment, it has to become something we submit to — not a means of getting something, but the medium through which we offer our whole selves to God. And in one of the most counterintuitive moves in the series: serving the work — not the people — is actually the only way to truly serve the people.
Reflection Questions:

1. What would be different if I "forgot the community and served the work" tomorrow?
2. Where have I experienced the goodness of someone who was truly "serving the work"?

Scripture: Colossians 3:15-24, Proverbs 3:6, Romans 12:1, John 6:38, Matthew 6:8-10
Voices:
Dorothy Sayers, Why Work? (1942)
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Sermon Notes & Liturgy⁠

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: ⁠Sabbath & Work
Christ City Church is a small faith family following Jesus together in east Dallas. We gather Sundays at 10:10 AM at the Chapel at Lake Highlands Baptist Church, 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218.
Learn more at christcity.life

What if the good life isn't getting out of work — but getting the good out of work?

A common narrative today is one that says the good life is what waits on the other side of our labor, that progress always means doing less, working less, and somehow still getting more, and that the human ideal is a consumer at leisure. It's a compelling story. And it's one most of us have swallowed whole. But is this really what it means to get the good out of work?

In Week 4 of our post-Easter series, Get(ting) Out of Work, we look at Ephesians 2:1-10, sitting with Paul's quiet but weighty claim that we are "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." We explore what it means to stop bargaining with work and start serving it — and why that small reorientation might be the difference between a diminished life and a flourishing one, with Jesus.

Questions for Reflection

1. Do you believe this? What keeps you from believing that work is the thing you live to do — not just something you do to live?
2. What would be different tomorrow if you entered your work not as something done to make a living, but as something you are living to do?
3. Where have you seen the goodness of someone "serving" work rather than "bargaining" with it?

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 27:4-6, 13-14; Psalm 92:13-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Voices/Quotes:

• Dorothy Sayers, Why Work?
• Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Sermon Notes & Liturgy

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: Sabbath & Work

Christ City Church is a small faith family following Jesus together in east Dallas. We gather Sundays at 10:10 AM in the Chapel at LHBC.

642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218.

Learn more at christcity.life

Sabbath isn't a reward for a productive week. It's a declaration that you're already free.

In week three of Get(ing) Out of Work, we turn to Deuteronomy 5 — where Moses restates the Sabbath command and adds something Exodus doesn't: a reason. Not creation, but liberation. God commands rest because he already got you out. To Sabbath is to remember who freed you, and to refuse — again — the identity of a slave. Sabbathing, it turns out, is a defiant act of freedom.

Questions for Reflection:

• What does your relationship with rest reveal about what you believe God requires of you?
• In what ways does the culture around you function like Egypt — demanding your productivity, time, and identity? How does Sabbath resist that?

Scripture References: Genesis 2:2–3; Exodus 20:8–11; Deuteronomy 5:12–15; Mark 2:27

Voices/Quotes: Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant

Sermon Notes & Liturgy

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: Sabbath & Work This sermonette was a recorded during one of our regular Sabbath meals, where we gather together, around a table, to rest in Jesus,

Christ City Church gathers every Sunday at 10:10 AM at 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218; in the chapel at LHB. 
Come rest in Jesus. Learn more at christcity.life

Work isn't what's broken. We are. And that changes everything about how we show up on Monday.

Tracing the Genesis narrative through the Fall, Noah, and the Noahic covenant, Pastor Jeremy Pace shows that the pain and struggle we experience in work stem from twisted human hearts, not from work itself. Work is our good, not merely a means to good things — it is our specific human contribution to God's ongoing creation and to the common good. The antidote to mis-loving work is Love itself: only when love is put on as our essential nature, not as a feeling or an outcome, can we "work from the soul, as for the Lord."

Questions for Reflection:

What are we missing in our love(lessness) of work?
Where — and from whom — have you witnessed love at work, work from the soul?

Scripture References:

Psalm 90:14–17
Genesis 2:1–3, 15; 3:17–19; 4:22–23; 5:28–29; 6:5–18; 8:20–22; 9:1–17, 20–25
Colossians 3:10, 14, 17, 23

Voices/Quotes: Irenaeus, Augustine, Julian of Norwich, NT Wright, Dorothy Sayers, Tom Nelson

Sermon Notes & Liturgy | Get(ting) Out of Work

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: Sabbath & Work

Christ City Church gathers every Sunday at 10:10 AM at 642 Brookhurst Dr., Dallas, TX 75218; in the chapel at LHB. 
Come rest in Jesus. Learn more at christcity.life

Genesis 2:15; 3:17-19; 5:28-29

Sermon Notes and Liturgy

From the series Get(ing) Out of Work 

Sunday April 12th, 2026

We take a month or so every year to consider, together, the rhythm of creation according to God's design: Sabbath & Work

Christ City Church

Matthew 28:1-10 | Isaiah 54:4-5,9-10 | John 17:20-26

Sermon Notes and Liturgy

From our Easter Sunday gathering.

Sunday April 5th, 2026

Christ City Church

2 Peter 1:3-8

Sermon Notes and Liturgy

From this year's Lent series, The Story of Sin

Sunday March 22nd, 2026

Christ City Church

2 Peter 2:12-22

Sermon Notes and Liturgy

From this year's Lent series, The Story of Sin

Sunday March 15th, 2026

Christ City Church