From Lucas Johnson’s sermon about Work and Success

I spent my formative years working alongside my dad and both grandfathers—manual labor that taught me life lessons I’d never forget. My dad inadvertently taught me I never wanted to be a plumber after we crawled under my aunt’s double-wide to fix a bathtub leak. Picture this: a dirty bathwater bubble trapped in vinyl underneath the trailer that we had to pop. I was convinced I’d drown in that mess, and I knew right then that wasn’t how I wanted to make a living.

My grandfathers taught me about delegation and creative problem-solving—though their methods were… questionable. One had us struggling to move massive tree trunk chunks before casually mentioning his wood splitter could stand upright. The other had me pulling a John Deere horse plow through gravel while he pondered, “How would Abraham Lincoln have done this?”

These experiences shaped how I viewed work, and if you’re from a rural area, you probably have similar stories. Many of us grew up learning that how someone worked defined who they were—their morality, their character, maybe even their eternal destiny.