What To Do When the Work God Gave You Gets Hard

This sermon, part of a series called "The Other Six Days," explores why work -- though created by God as a blessing -- is also a source of deep frustration and toil. Drawing primarily from Genesis 3, Pastor Matt traces the fracture that entered God's good creation when Adam and Eve chose to listen to the serpent's voice over God's, shattering the harmony of shalom across four relational spheres: God, self, others, and the created world. Sin's consequences are not merely spiritual but psychological, social, and physical -- and work bears the full weight of that brokenness. The ground is cursed, thorns and thistles emerge, and labor becomes both fruitful and frustrating. Yet this reality is not meant to produce cynicism or despair. Rather, a clear-eyed "theology of thistles" calls believers to persevere in the work God has assigned them -- in their jobs, marriages, families, and vocations -- while recognizing that the ache of incompleteness in this life is by design, pointing us toward the heavenly Eden that is our true home.