Growing up, my father would always reinforce the importance of building good work habits. If I was out of a job, I would always hear about why I needed to work harder to find work. A phrase I would often hear from him was, “Make it your job to find job.”

One of the first jobs I had as a young 14-year-old was a paper route. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed this job, but it was bringing in some money until I could land a better job.

Dad was always willing to sacrifice his time to help me with this. I never had a driver’s license, so he would come home from work, and we would go out for a few hours to deliver newspapers. Sometimes it would be a 5 a.m. delivery run on a work day. Dad was devoted to helping me develop a strong work ethic.

One time my dad suggested we use my paper route as a church fundraiser. “But that’s my job,” I said, “and now it will be harder for me to save.” My troubled 14-year-old response led my dad to give me a pithy reality check.

“Son,” he said, “it’s for the Work.”

Although short, that response left me no room to argue. How could I argue that I didn’t want to help the Work? Looking back on this, I can see that developing a strong work ethic goes far beyond saving money. God wants His young people to develop strong work habits to better support His Work.

These fundraisers were a regular occurrence for me growing up. I can remember getting in the car with different members and other teens and delivering thousands of papers over the weekend and sometimes during the week. They were great memories. But every time my dad would sense a bad attitude about sacrificing my job for these fundraisers, I would hear the same phrase every time: “It’s for the Work.” It was concise and said in a way that I simply couldn’t argue with it.

It’s easy as a young person to be shortsighted about sacrifices we need to make, especially if it’s for the Work. We might think, Why do I have to do this? It’s only going to raise a little money. For me, I was not looking beyond losing a few hundred dollars as a way to support the Work. We did work hard, but looking back, those were some of the most rewarding work hours of my teen life. Members including many teens from my congregation came together to support the Work. It was unifying for my congregation.

How much joy does it bring God when he sees His young people come together to work hard for Him? Whether it’s a fundraiser, a dance show, helping out an elderly member of the congregation or a friend, when we sacrifice our time and even money for the Work, God can build in us a love for His Work and that is far more valuable than any income. Young people should cherish the grueling, sweaty, tiring, work that ultimately goes to helping God’s Work.

Consider one biblical example. When Elijah came to the young Elisha to recruit him to help God’s Work (1 Kings 19:19), it required Elisha to sacrifice his own job as a farmer, his own possessions, his own income, and more to support God’s prophet. His response wasn’t, “But what about my job? what about my money? what about my time?” His first response didn’t even come in the form of words. It was simply, “he left his oxen and ran after Elijah” (verse 20). He was wholehearted in his commitment to support God’s Work.

He did say, “Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee.” But then he just went after the opportunity. “And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him” (verse 21). He was so excited to do God’s Work that he even gave up some of his most valuable assets immediately slew his own oxen and cooked them with his plowing. The word “ministered” simply means “served.” Elisha was serving God’s prophet. His work ethic was now going to translate to serving God’s Work.

God records the same type of reaction by Jesus Christ’s disciples. They had faults, of course, but when he came to them, they immediately recognized He was doing the Work, and they dropped everything immediately to minister to Him, learn from Him and do what they could for the Work.

How much can you grow in this “It’s for the Work” mentality? If you are willing to sacrifice like Elisha, like the disciples, you will have an exciting life full of miracles and blessings.

I am grateful for the effort my dad put into helping me develop a stronger work ethic as a teen, and to this day I still remind myself “It’s for the Work,” just like he reminded me.

How can we not love supporting God’s Work? That is why we are here after all. Relish every opportunity you have as a young person to work hard for God’s Work. If you think that you don’t have any opportunities to do this, then ask God to provide them. When they come, run after them. “It’s for the Work!”