The Word Before Work

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. (Colossians 4:3-4)In this series, we’re looking at five simple ways to prepare to share the gospel with those we work with. We’ve already explored three:Be so good they can’t ignore youBe a friendIdentify yourself as a ChristianOnce you’ve done those things, let me encourage you to pray that God would open doors to move from the Surface, to the Serious, to the Spiritual. I think a lot of us feel like it is up to us to pry open doors to share the gospel with others. But that wasn’t the Apostle Paul’s approach. Hear his words in Colossians 4:3: “Pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ.”God alone can make people receptive to the gospel. We pray to that end, and then we must look for opportunities to move conversations with unbelievers from the Surface, to the Serious, to the Spiritual (all credit for this helpful framework goes to Matt Chandler).I’ll share an example of one of the few times I have done this well. I was chatting with a co-worker we’ll call Jill, and our conversation went something like this.First, I started on the Surface, asking Jill how her kids’ soccer game went on Saturday. “Great,” Jill said, “but I was just so exhausted from the week.”Sensing an opportunity to move from the Surface to the Serious, I replied, “Yeah, I’ve noticed you’ve been on Slack super late the past few weeks. You’re working way harder than the rest of your team. Why?” Jill said something to this effect: “Well, I love the work! But it’s also because I grew up pretty poor. And so I guess I’ve always seen my work as a way of proving I’m not like my parents.”Now we were moving from the Serious to the Spiritual. I said, “I’ve been there! For a long time, I used my work to prove something to my parents and my friends. But a few years ago, I realized that no amount of professional success would ever be enough. I know it might sound weird, but it was my Christian faith that got me off that exhausting hamster wheel.”Of course, the dialogue wasn’t that polished. But that was the gist of the conversation. And by God’s grace, it opened up an opportunity to share the gospel with Jill. Before you head off to work today, pray that God would do for you what he did for me and Jill. Pray that he would open doors to move from the Surface, to the Serious, to the Spiritual in your conversations with those you work with. And then, be on the lookout for how God moves to that end!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God. (John 12:42-43)We’re in a series walking through 5 simple things all of us can do to put ourselves in a better position to share the gospel with those we work with. We’ve already explored the first two: Be so good they can’t ignore you and be a friend. But those things clearly aren’t enough. At some point, you have to identify yourself as a Christian!A few years ago, I stepped down as the CEO of a tech startup to focus full-time on creating content like these devotionals. Given the nature of my new work, I naturally started talking about my faith much more publicly on social media. In response to those posts, more than a couple of customers and co-workers from my past tech startup life messaged me and said, “Oh wow, I had no idea you were a Christian!” How tragic. Here’s the deal: We shouldn’t expect to have opportunities to share the gospel with our co-workers if we have yet to raise our hands and say “I’m a follower of Jesus!” What does this look like practically? How can you identify yourself as Christians in a natural, non-threatening way that doesn’t cause your co-workers to avoid making eye contact with you? Here are 3 simple ideas:Ask everyone you come in contact with today, “How was your weekend?” And when they inevitably ask how your weekend was, talk about the incredible time of worship you participated in at your church.Ask your co-workers what they’re reading. And again, when they reciprocate the question, talk about a book you’ve recently read about the Christian faith.Add something to your LinkedIn or Instagram bio that makes it explicitly clear that you’re a follower of Jesus.None of these things, in and of themselves, are likely to lead someone to faith in Christ. But they are certainly steps in that direction! If you’re a good friend and exceptionally good at what you do, the people you work with will care about what you believe about Jesus. But first, you have to tell them that you believe!May we not be like the Pharisees who believed in Jesus but refused to “openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out” of their social circles. Find small ways to acknowledge your faith in Christ today!

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)We’re in a series exploring 5 simple things all of us can do to put ourselves in a better position to share the gospel with those we work with. Last week, we looked at the first: Be so good they can’t ignore you. This week, we turn to the second: Be a friend.Jesus commanded that we are to love one another as he loved us. And “by this”—by loving others well, by being a good friend—they “will know” we are his disciples.So simple. Yet so profound. We ought to be known as the people in our offices who genuinely love our co-workers, not just the product of their work. We ought to be the ones asking our co-workers about their kids, making time to go to lunch, and delivering meals when a co-worker welcomes a new child into their home.I’ll be honest: I’m not great at this. Today’s devotional is as much for me as it is for you. I can be a very heads-down, get-things-done kind of guy who is so focused on “the work” that I neglect the work of loving people.But in a few instances in which I have done this well, I have seen the Lord use my faithfulness to unlock rich opportunities to share the gospel. One guy (we’ll call him Tim) comes to mind in particular. Tim was one of my direct reports in a tech startup I used to run. And for whatever reason, Tim and I developed a friendship right off the bat. We talked about our kids, played a few games of foosball in the office, and grabbed a beer after work from time to time. Small stuff.Years later, after we both left the company we were working at, Tim called me to say that he had begun wrestling with some of the “big questions” of life and was looking for answers—even if those answers came from the Bible. All because I was a decent (not even a good!) friend, Tim invited me to share the gospel with him. Being a friend. Who knew? Jesus, apparently. Hear his words one more time: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”How can you be a friend to those you work with today? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m praying you’ll answer it, do it, and pray the Lord uses those friendships to bring lost sheep back to their Shepherd.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)As I’ve written about before, sharing the gospel with those we work with is far from the only way our work matters to God. But it is a way. Your job can be a powerful vehicle for following Jesus’s command to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Now, Jesus is not saying in this verse that you have to change your vocation or location to participate in his “Great Commission.” The Greek word poreuthentes that we translate “go” in “go and make disciples” is what’s called an aorist tense passive participle. What in the world does that mean for you? It means that a far more accurate translation of Jesus’s words is, “Having gone…make disciples.” The going was assumed. Jesus was saying that his disciples had already “gone” as fishermen, tax collectors, mothers, and fathers. It wasn’t about how far they went. It was about what they did while they were going. The same is true for you and me.OK, so the Great Commission is for all of us, not just religious professionals. Every Christian is called to be a “full-time missionary.” But how can we effectively make disciples as we go about our work—especially in this “post-Christian” cultural moment? I think we all are wise enough to know that street preaching in front of our offices or adding John 3:16 to our Zoom backgrounds isn’t going to cut it. So what will?In this series, I want to offer 5 simple things we can do to prepare to share the gospel with those we work with. Here’s the first: Be so good they can’t ignore you.In 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, the Apostle Paul writes, “You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”Paul worked—and commanded his readers to work—in ways that would “win the respect of outsiders.” I’d argue that’s incredibly hard to do if you’re mediocre at your job. Mastery, not mediocrity, wins the respect of outsiders. Excellence is what is winsome to a watching world.Be so exceptional at what you do that you win the respect of those around you. That’s the first thing you can do to prepare to share the gospel with your co-workers. Next week, we’ll unpack the second.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve….[The next day, upon] reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. (Mark 11:11,15)The life of Jesus and his disciples was busy (see Mark 3:20-21 and John 11:5-9). But as my friend John Mark Comer has pointed out, “[Jesus] never came off hurried.” Pastor Kevin DeYoung put it this way: “[Jesus] was busy, but never in a way that made him frantic, anxious, irritable, proud, envious, or distracted by lesser things.” So, what’s the difference between busyness and hurry? Busyness is having a lot of meetings on your calendar. Hurry is scheduling those meetings back-to-back forcing you to sprint from one to the next without enough time to think. Busyness is having a lot of errands to run. Hurry is getting mad about choosing the “wrong line” at the grocery store because you have no margin for the thirty seconds you lost by choosing lane 3 instead of 4. Busyness is attending three Bible studies a week. Hurry is not having enough time and stillness to listen to God’s voice in between those studies.How can we be busy without being hurried? We must get good at “counting the cost” of our time.Jesus provides an excellent case study of this in today’s passage. Mark 11:15 tells us that Jesus’s plan all along was to overturn some tables and drive out the vendors who were turning the temple into a “den of robbers” (Mark 11:17). So why not do this the night before? Why wait?Of course, we can’t answer those questions definitively, but given Jesus’s track record as a busy but unhurried guy, here’s my guess: I think Jesus had counted the cost of his time. Look at Mark 11:11: Jesus “went into the temple courts…looked around at everything, but since it was already late” decided not to cram any more activity into what had already been a busy day. You can almost hear him muttering to himself “It can wait.” Could Jesus have squeezed in a little table-flipping before he retired for the night? Sure, but he chose not to. He had counted the cost and knew that adding anything else to his already busy day would have tipped the scales from busy to hurry.Jesus’s example brings us to the seventh and final principle we need to redeem our time: Principle #7ELIMINATE ALL HURRYTo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must embrace productive busyness while ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives.How can we eliminate hurry today? In my book, Redeeming Your Time, I share three practical answers to that question, including six questions to ask to help you say “no” more frequently. Want a glimpse at those six questions? Watch this video.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)In the mid-1800s, Americans fled to the West in droves in search of gold and a better life. But according to The Emigrant’s Guide to California published in 1849, it was the gold-rushers who rested most—specifically by observing the Sabbath—that reached their destination the quickest. As the guide shares, “Those who [laid] by on the Sabbath, resting themselves and their teams,” reached gold country “20 days sooner than those who traveled seven days a week.”The gold rushers’ example illustrates a fascinating paradox: Oftentimes rest is the most productive thing we can do. And not just Sabbath rest! As the scientific community now understands, bi-hourly breaks throughout the workday and an eight-hour “sleep opportunity” every night are essential to doing our most exceptional work.Throughout the gospels, we see Jesus embodying these three rhythms of productive rest. He offered restorative breaks to his disciples as they worked (Mark 6:30-32), he fought for sleep (Mark 4:38), and he reaffirmed the goodness of Sabbath (Mark 2:27).Of course, because he is our creator, Jesus knew what centuries of scientific exploration have now empirically proven: That these rhythms of rest are productive as we strive towards our goals. But Jesus also undoubtedly knew something science may never be able to prove: That rest is also productive for our souls.Taking breaks throughout your workday reminds you that God doesn’t need you to finish your to-do list. Getting a full night’s sleep reminds you that God is the only being who neither slumbers nor sleeps and thus doesn’t need you or me to keep the world spinning. Sabbath reminds you that, in the words of N.T. Wright, “all time belongs to God and stands under the renewing lordship of Jesus Christ.” These truths bring us to the sixth principle we need for redeeming our time:Principle #6EMBRACE PRODUCTIVE RESTTo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must embrace the God-designed rhythms of rest which are counterintuitively productive for our goals and our souls.How practically do we incorporate these bi-hourly, nightly, and weekly rhythms of rest into our modern lives? I answer that question at length in my book, Redeeming Your Time. If you want a preview, watch this short video which documents what Sabbath looks like for me and my young family.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)Now more than ever, our world offers the illusion that we can be fully present in more than one place at a time. But it’s just that—an illusion. You know how I know? Because we’re not God and even when God himself came to earth in human form, he traded in his godly omnipresence for the human unipresence you and I experience today.Like us today, Jesus had to deal with frequent distractions that competed for his attention. A man threw himself at Jesus’s feet as he was walking (see Mark 10:17). A woman touched his cloak, distracting Jesus with the knowledge that he had healed her (see Mark 5:27-30). One time, a man literally dropped through the roof over Jesus’s head as he was preaching (see Luke 5:17-20).There were times when Jesus welcomed these distractions. But there were also times when Jesus ignored them in order to focus on the task at hand.My favorite example of this comes from today’s passage. Given that the main point of this passage is Jesus’s words about who is and who is not his family, it can be easy to miss the fascinating “B story.” Jesus is “talking to the crowd,” doing the work the Father sent him to do—namely preaching the gospel. All of a sudden, his family shows up. And Jesus ignores them. When Jesus was told his family was waiting outside, he didn’t say, “That’s all folks. My family’s here. You know the rule: God first, family second, work third!” He continued teaching. At that moment, he was called to work, and he remained fully focused on the task at hand. Conversely, when he was with his family and friends, he was fully focused on them (see Mark 9:30-31). In these and many other encounters in the gospels, Jesus is reminding us that God is omnipresent and we humans are not. When omnipresent God “became flesh,” Jesus embraced the human limitations of being unipresent. If Jesus couldn’t be in two places at the same time, neither can we. That brings us to the fifth principle in this series:Principle #5ACCEPT YOUR UNIPRESENCETo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must accept our unipresence and focus on one important thing at a time.In my book, Redeeming Your Time, I share four practices that will help you live out this principle in the 21st Century. In this video, I share a snippet of one of those practices that will only take you 2 minutes to implement, but will be a total game-changer for your ability to stay focused at work. Seriously, it’s one of the simplest and most effective secrets I’ve ever shared. Watch here.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come. (Mark 1:38)When you study the gospel biographies trying to understand how Jesus stewarded his time, one glaring truth jumps off the pages: Jesus was crazy purposeful. In the words of the great Dorothy Sayers, “Under all his gentleness there is a purpose harder than steel.” Nobody in Jerusalem had more things competing for their attention, and yet Jesus always seemed to be able to discern the essential from the noise.No passage of Scripture illustrates this better than Mark 1:29-38. After driving out some evil spirits at the synagogue, Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and a bunch of her neighbors. Understandably, the town’s residents wanted more of Jesus the next day. But Jesus said no. Why? Because he had already committed his time to a bigger yes. In response to the people’s request for more of his time, Jesus said, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come” (Mark 1:38, emphasis mine).Jesus understood his purpose and that allowed him to take the long list of things he could do and prioritize it down to the things he knew he should do to “finish the work the Father gave him to do” (John 17:4). And with his work prioritized, Jesus focused relentlessly.Pastor Kevin DeYoung says that, “Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things he could do were not necessarily the things he ought to do….If Jesus had to live with human limitations, we’d be foolish to think we don’t. The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realized they couldn’t do everything.”Man, that’s good. Yet again, Jesus’s example leads us to a timeless principle for redeeming our time today. Here it is:Principle #4PRIORITIZE YOUR YESESTo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must decide what matters most and allow those choices to prioritize our commitments.But let’s face it: This is easier said than done. We all have so many things on our to-do lists. How do we decide what matters most?In my book, Redeeming Your Time, I share six practices to help you answer that question and model Jesus’s purposefulness. In this video, I share a glimpse at one of those practices, breaking down how bigger goals can help prioritize our yeses and the 5 reasons why Christians ought to set the most epic goals in the world. Watch here.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:15-16)Now more than ever, we are living in what C.S. Lewis’s devil Screwtape called “the Kingdom of Noise.” And I’m not just referring to the obvious increase in external noise created by nonstop news, entertainment, and the buzzing of the devices in our pockets and purses. I’m primarily referring to what all that external noise creates—namely internal noise that blocks our ability to be silent and reflective.Our lack of solitude stands in stark contrast to the way of Jesus. The number of times the gospels mention Jesus withdrawing to “a solitary place” is staggering. In the third gospel alone, Luke mentions Jesus’s love of “lonely places” three times in just one and a half chapters (see Luke 4:42, 5:15, and 6:12). My favorite mention of Jesus’s pursuit of solitude is when he “withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place” to get away from the crowds (Matthew 14:13). So important was silence to Jesus that he would literally just jump into a boat to get away from all the noise to pray, think, and listen to his Father’s voice. And oh by the way, the busier Jesus got, the more it appears he sought out silence. Luke 5:15-16 says that as “the news about him spread all the more…Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”Jesus’s example leads us to the third principle we need to be purposeful, present, and wildly productive:Principle #3DISSENT FROM THE KINGDOM OF NOISETo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must fight to block out noise and create room for silence, stillness, and reflection.If we want to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others, we, like Jesus, must fight for the quiet solitude we need to think, be creative, and listen to God’s voice. How can we do that today? How practically can we dissent from the Kingdom of Noise? In my book, Redeeming Your Time, I share nine practical answers to that question. In this video, I share one of the most life-changing of those practices—”Let Your Friends Curate the News For You.” Watch here.

Sign-up for my free 20 day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your  ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)Why is it that the worst songs are some of the hardest to get out of our heads? Is it because they’re uniquely catchy? That might be part of it. But there’s actually a scientific answer to this question. Dr. Roy Baumeister explains that if you “listen to a randomly chosen song and shut it off halfway through…the song is likely to run through your mind at odd intervals. If you get to the end of the song, the mind checks it off, so to speak. If you stop it in the middle, however, the mind treats the song as unfinished business….And that’s why this kind of ear worm is so often an awful tune rather than a pleasant one. We’re more likely to turn off the bad one in midsong, so it’s the one that returns to haunt us.”Neurologists will tell you that it’s not just unfinished songs that our minds keep reminding us of. It is also unfinished tasks and unfulfilled commitments which our brains are bursting with. That’s a problem, because God didn’t design our brains to store that much information. And because we know we can’t “keep track of it all,” our mental to-do lists often cause Christ-followers a tremendous amount of anxiety. Why? Because we know that Jesus has commanded that our “‘yes’ be  ‘yes’” which brings us to the second principle of this series:Principle #2LET YOUR YES BE YESTo redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must ensure that our “yes” is  “yes” from the smallest to the biggest commitments we make.Our solutions for practicing this principle in our modern context are inadequate to say the least. From trying to keep track of to-dos in our head to storing tasks in starred emails, I think most of us would admit that our “yes” is not always “yes” like Jesus commanded, and thus, we’re more stressed than ever.So what’s the solution? In my book, Redeeming Your Time, I share five practices that answer that question. In this video, I share a glimpse at one of those practices, showing you how to get all of your commitments out of your head and into a trusted, external system. Watch here.