Facing The Giants
And Other Tasks in a Man's Life

by Ryan Garth

In all my life, having grown up in church,
I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on the subject of work.
I have heard the topic mentioned in other sermons, but it is usually done so with a lot of generality. “In everything you do, do for the glory of God.” However, I have never heard an entire sermon devoted to the subject.

According to what I have read, the Puritans, known for their work ethic, took the subject of choosing a vocation very seriously and had many sermons on the topic. I have never been able to find these sermons, however.

Before we can delve into this subject, we must first, understand that a man’s work is very important to him. A man needs to feel useful and productive, and he needs to feel that his work is significant and appreciated. Perhaps this is why the consequence of Adam’s sin (Gen 3:17-19) was so devastating to him. Eve’s curse dealt mostly with childbearing, and Adam’s curse dealt with his work.
One of the more touching moments of the movie, at least for me, occurs when a former customer brings back a car for which she can no longer afford. Jay, now a changed man, forgives the debt and signs over the title to the car. His son is watching all this, and when Jay leaves the room, the woman says to his son, “Your daddy is a good man.”
Men long to hear these words. They long to have their work appreciated by the people they serve, especially by their family.
In the movie, Fireproof, the same theme resounds. Early in this story, we get the idea that the marriage between Caleb and Katherine has been disintegrating for a long time. Both the husband and wife have their laundry lists of grievances against each other. Katherine’s main complaint is that Caleb will do nothing for her around the house. She says he has a job that gives him a lot of time off and yet he will not do any work for her. Caleb counters with the argument that his job is dangerous and stressful and that he does important things like save lives. Later in the movie, he complains to a friend that his wife does not respect him for what he does.

At one point, Caleb becomes a hero for rescuing a girl from a fire. In the following scene, he’s telling his dad on the phone, “I’m a hero to everyone but my wife.” This is not to say that Caleb had no problems of his own. In fact, probably most of the blame for the troubled marriage fell on him. However, his wife’s lack of respect for his work, was definitely a source of tension in his life, giving Caleb a sense that his wife is against him.
In the course of the movie, Caleb makes the changes in his own life by allowing God to make them in his heart, resulting in a saved marriage. When Katherine decided to come back, the first thing she said to him was, “If I’ve never told you you’re a good man, you are.”
Caleb’s selfishness caused Katherine to focus only on her own unmet needs. So much so, that she could not see anything in Caleb other than his faults. Thus, she was not able to give him what he needed. What did he need? He needed to know that she saw him as a good man and valued him as such. It leaves a hole in a man’s life when he is not highly esteemed by his wife, even if he is needed by the whole world. All this contributed further to the downward spiral of the marriage.

In Facing the Giants, we do not have a troubled marriage. However, we do have another story of a man struggling in his life because he is struggling in his work. Grant Taylor is a football coach struggling to turn the team around. Everywhere he looks, things seem to be falling apart. His income is sparse, so he can’t afford to make the necessary improvements to his car and his house. To compound matters further, he and his wife are struggling to have children.
The low point for Grant came when he overheard the school board discussing plans to replace him as coach. The words they speak about his performance are devastating to him. He tells his wife, “They said I wasn’t capable of winning; they said I was dead weight. They’ve just lost confidence in me. I was so sure I could turn this program around. I’ve just sunk it lower. I’ve tried so hard. Why can’t I win? I can’t provide you with a decent home. I can’t provide you with a decent car. I’m a losing coach with a losing record.” What does all this do to Grant? It drives him to seek God both in prayer and in the scriptures. The outcome is a new team philosophy—“honor God by giving Him our all in practice, and leave the results up to Him. In his own words, “if we win, we praise Him. If we lose, we praise Him.”
Perhaps this is where we men go wrong. We replace a healthy work ethic with raw ambition.
I don’t think the problem is necessarily that we put too much identity in our work. A man’s work is a huge part of his identity. Moreover, our work is important to God. It is one of the tools we use to honor Him.
As Grant Taylor told his team, “Football is one of the tools we use to honor God.” When asked by one of his players whether God cared about Football, he replied, “He cares about your faith. He cares about where your heart is. If you can live your faith out on the football field, then, yes, God cares about football because he cares about you. He sent his son Jesus to die for us so we could live for him.” This is such an amazing thought that I must repeat it! This is the key to finding meaning in your work!
Now, to say it again, I believe that the biggest problem for men is not work, but ambition. Our work is just our activity that we perform in our service to God. Ambition is when we desire the glory for what we produce. I heard Ravi Zacharias once say, “I am convinced that ambition in mortal men is almost always sinful, and that ambition in the Christian is always sinful, and ambition in ministers of the Gospel is most sinful.” When ambition blinds the eyes of a man, nothing but success, as they view it, will do.
If men are not successful by some worldly standard, they will feel like failures. However, when a man surrenders his life to God, work almost becomes an end in itself, because our work glorifies God. And the results, whether “success” or “failure”, belong to Him.
In summary, a man has a need to be doing meaningful work. A man that is not working is a man that is miserable. In fact, God has called us to work (Eph 2:10). Through our work we glorify God. We need to be careful not to think of our work as our own, and in so doing put undue pressure on ourselves to produce the results. The results are up to Him. Our job is to be faithful and let him exalt our work.


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