Jesus & Jiu-Jitsu - Curriculum Development
In November of 2024, what started as a conversation about a weekly devotional quickly snowballed into a conversation about creating a discipleship curriculum that people could use in gyms across the country to disciple those who might never darken the doors of a church but absolutely would join a small group discussion after training. Since then, we’ve published two 24-week devotional books and are in the process of creating a year’s worth of weekly, video-based small group curriculum that anyone can use to disciple those in their local jiu-jitsu gyms.
Here’s a sample of a discussion guide that pairs with the video script below:
Semester 1 | Session 5 - Pressure Passing - Work/Finance // Video Teaching Script
Main Idea: Our job is more than a paycheck; it’s an opportunity to fulfill our purpose and glorify God in the work He’s given us.
Scripture: Gen. 1:26-31, 2:15-17, Eph. 2:10
It’s Monday morning. Again. You spent the entire weekend dreading this moment. Ever since you clocked out on Friday, Monday’s arrival overshadowed each hour of freedom.
As you brush your teeth, get ready, and gather your coffee and breakfast for the commute to work, the forgotten tasks, emails, and meetings all come rushing back into view. Another week will be spent at a job you feel forced into, and because of this, you’ve begun to resent it more with every passing week.
It’s not that you don’t like what you do. It’s not even that you don’t like who you work with. Instead, it’s a gnawing feeling that there has to be more you were meant for.
Surely, you were made for more than endless meetings, emails, and bad breakroom coffee. Surely, your purpose in life is not just to generate an income that allows you and your family to live a moderately comfortable middle-class life. Surely your talents, skills, and abilities have a greater significance than just what they add to some company’s bottom line.
The good news is that you were made for more. Your purpose is more than making a paycheck, and your job isn’t just an opportunity to make ends meet. Your purpose in life is greater than any job, and your job is just a part of God’s purpose for you.
But to get here, to really see our purpose as being more than just a paycheck and to see our lives as more than just the hours spent outside of work, we need to grasp God’s purpose for work and His purpose for us.
So, let’s look at Genesis 1:26-31, where God’s Word records the first week when God created the world:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Before this passage, the earth was formless and void, and by God’s decree, order, life, and meaning were spoken into existence over the void.
Notice the first thing God says when creating man: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Before anything else is said about man—what he’s like, what he’s made for, or any other aspect—this one truth stands above everything else: we were created in God’s image. Meaning: we were made to be like Him, to look like Him, and most importantly, to bear His image. Wherever Adam went, there God’s image was on display for the rest of creation.
Not only did God create man in God’s image, but the purpose that God gives man reflects God’s rule over all things. God places man as a viceroy, or representative, of God’s own rule and authority over the created order, telling him to be fruitful and multiply. As man fulfills his purpose to be fruitful, multiply, and govern creation, God’s image and kingdom spread throughout all of creation, and His glory shines in every place where man is.
In this passage, we see that humanity's ultimate purpose is to glorify God by bearing and multiplying His image throughout creation, expanding Eden and God’s kingdom.
As Adam exercises his dominion by caring for and cultivating creation, God’s kingdom expands through Adam’s work as he shapes the rest of the world to resemble how God created Eden.
Yet, even after the fall, when sin enters and fractures creation through man’s disobedience, God doesn’t change man’s purpose; it simply becomes much harder. In Genesis 3:17-19, God tells Adam what will happen to him now that he’s disobeyed God’s command:
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Our intended purpose was to rule as God’s image bearers over creation, cultivating it to expand His kingdom by multiplying His image. Yet, now that sin has entered the world, that purpose becomes frustrated, and we are left broken by sin’s destructive wake. Work no longer brings the joy it was meant to, and it doesn’t come easily. Work has become tainted by the fall, and Genesis says we will spend our days barely scraping out an existence amongst thorns and thistles.
If you’ve ever been in a dead-end job, you can give a hearty “amen” to this reality. On this side of the fall, this is exactly what work feels like: a broken image and shadow of what we were made for. It’s frustrating, characterized by two steps forward and three steps back. Every success never lasts, and our failures tend to follow us. Sin breaks God’s image within us, and sin breaks our purpose for which we were created.
But God doesn’t let sin have the final word, not in our lives nor in our work.
See what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:1-10 about how God has redeemed us and our purpose in life:
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Paul lays this out clearly: because of the fall and the power of indwelling sin, we find ourselves and our purpose bound up, not as God’s image bearers who live for God’s glory, but as children of wrath living to satisfy the desires of our flesh.
And inserted here is one of the most beautiful phrases in all of Scripture: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loves us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…”
Christ, the new and better Adam, accomplishes what Adam couldn’t and redeems through his life, death, and resurrection what Adam’s sin broke. Because of Christ and God’s great love for us, God lifts the curse of sin and death, raising us up and seating us forever with Christ. Christ succeeds where Adam fails, removing the curse of sin and restoring God’s image in us.
Where Adam’s works failed, Christ’s work prevails. Christ redeems and restores the broken image of God within us through faith, glorifying God and expanding His kingdom by those who turn from their sin to trust in Christ’s finished work for them.
But not only do we see the broken image of God redeemed, but we also see God’s purpose for us restored. Read verse 10 again: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
In Jesus, our sin is removed and our purpose is restored. Meaning, our purpose isn’t tied to our job or our identity. A job was never meant to hold the weight of our purpose or identity.
Without Christ, our default setting is to allow both our purpose and our identity to be tied to our work. We allow successes and failures at work, the extent to which we enjoy or dislike our jobs, and the status we gain from work to replace God’s intended identity and purpose.
Because of the completed work of Christ, which redeems both our purpose and identity, we now get to walk in the good works He’s prepared for us. We get to spend our days living in the fullness of who we were created to be and doing what we were meant to do by glorifying Him and inviting others to have their brokenness restored and redeemed through Christ.
Regardless of our vocation and where we spend our 40 to 60 hours working, as those bought with the blood of Christ, our purpose in Him will always supersede our specific jobs. And yet, through our particular jobs, God has provided us an opportunity to fulfill His purposes, glorifying Him through our work so that in everything we do, we might live in step with His purpose for us.
Wherever we go and whatever we do, we have the opportunity to embrace God’s purpose and identity for us. Our jobs are more than just a paycheck, and our purpose is more than just our 40 hours at work. We were made for God’s glory and for the good works He has prepared for us.
