The Word Before Work – Details, episodes & analysis

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Series: God's Will for Your Work
Devotional: 4 of 4

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. (Psalm 37:23-24)

We’ve been in a series exploring biblical truths for discerning God’s will for your work. Here’s the fourth and final I’ll share:

Truth #4: Some Christians need to spend less time discerning God’s will and more time doing God’s will.

Now, notice that I didn’t say “spend no time discerning God’s will.” That would be unbiblical and foolish as the wisdom of seeking wisdom from the Lord is everywhere in Scripture (see Proverbs 3:5-6, James 1:5, etc.).

The problem is that many of us spend so much time worrying about God’s will for the future that we never get around to doing his will in the present. 

This stands in stark contrast to the example of Christ’s followers in Scripture. Take Paul as an example. Yes there were times when Paul waited on the Lord in prayer (see Acts 13:1-2, Acts 16:6-10, etc.). But as pastor Jerry Sittser explains, the New Testament offers no hint that Paul agonized about the will of God as it pertained to the future…If we sense any agony in the heroes of Scripture, it is not in discovering the will of God but in doing it.”

Now I hear what you’re thinking: OK Jordan, so long as I am seeking to obey God, I have lots of freedom in the decisions I make at work. I get it. But I still have a decision to make! So how do I choose? Let me suggest 3 practices that put the truths we’ve learned in this series into practice.

#1: Pray and ask God for wisdom. But as I mentioned before, don’t be surprised if his answer is, “you choose.” 

#2: Seek wisdom from Christians who understand your work. This could be a small group in your church, a Christian Employee Resource Group at your company, or my own Mere Christians Community (which is open for enrollment this week).

#3: Flip a coin. Absent an exceptionally clear answer from God or others, choose whichever option you want. Still can’t decide? Flip a coin. As music producer Rick Rubin explains, “When the coin is spinning in the air, you’ll likely notice a quiet preference or wish for one of the two to come up. Which are you rooting for? This is the option to go with.”

God’s will for your work is that you would work with him and be obedient to his commands. That gives you tonsof freedom to make decisions today. Maybe you need to stop asking God about his will and start doing his will. Because as Saint Francis de Sales once said, “Deeds give God far more glory than any amount of time wasted in trying to discriminate between good and better.”

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Series: God's Will for Your Work
Devotional: 3 of 4

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

The hardest decision I’ve ever made professionally was to step down as CEO of Threshold 360 six years ago. I loved leading that fast growing tech startup. And I also loved creating faith and work content like these devotionals. But I was convinced that I had to put all my professional eggs in one of those two baskets.

I knew neither path was a “higher calling”—I could follow Jesus fully in either role. But I still spent months paralyzed, desperate to discern God’s will for my work.

Part of what freed me was today’s passage, knowing that regardless of which path I chose, as long as my heart was submissive to God today, he would make my paths straight tomorrow. 

As we’ve already seen in this series, Scripture says very little about God’s will for you tomorrow, but a lot about God’s will for you today—namely that he wills us to obey him and walk in the way of The Way, Jesus Christ (see 1 Thessalonians 4:3).

So long as you’re doing that, there’s no such thing as a “wrong” decision. As Tim Keller once said, “for a Christian, there is no ‘plan B.’” Because God’s purposes will always prevail (see Proverbs 19:21). That brings me to the third biblical truth for discerning God’s will for your work… 

Truth #3: There is no wrong way if you are following The Way.

Here’s how pastor Jerry Sittser articulated this idea: “If we seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness…then whatever choices we make concerning the future become the will of God for our lives. There are many pathways we could follow…As long as we are seeking God, all of them can be God’s will for our lives, although only one—the path we choose—actually becomes his will.”

In other words, it is impossible to seek the kingdom of God and miss the will of God. There is no wrong way if you are following The Way.

What decision are you agonizing over at work? Should you stay or leave your job? Go back to school? Say yes or no to a big project? If none of your options violate God’s commands, relax. Pray for wisdom. And unless you hear a clear answer, choose freely and confidently—knowing the Lord will make your path straight.

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Series: Christmas Vocations Part III
Devotional: 3 of 4

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham…Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. (Matthew 1:1,17)

Matthew has many vocations in the gospels. But in the first chapter of his gospel, we see him playing the role of a genealogist who takes his readers all the way back to Abraham to trace Jesus’s family tree, so that we can be confident he is the Messiah. 

I’d encourage you to read Matthew’s genealogical work in full in Matthew 1:1-17. But there are two profound insights we can glean just from the excerpt I shared above. 

First, God is always faithful, but he is rarely fast—at least by human standards. The Jewish people had been waiting thousands of years for God’s promised Messiah. Some had surely given up hope. But Matthew goes through painstaking genealogical detail to show God’s faithfulness over time.

Commenting on today’s passage, pastor Tim Keller once said this: “[God] may seem to be working very slowly or even to be forgetting his promises, but when his promises come true (and they will come true), they always burst the banks of what you imagined.”

What promise does God appear to be slow to keeping in your work? Maybe you’re still waiting for God’s promise of “wisdom” (James 1:5), “peace…which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), or “good” to come from your layoff (Romans 8:28-29). Whatever it is, Christmas reminds you that God will always keep his promises, even if it takes far longer than you’d like.

Here’s the second insight I want you to glean from today’s passage: Jesus is the “seventh seven” that brings about ultimate rest in your work. Matthew highlights six groups of seven generations from Abraham to Jesus, marking Christ as the beginning of the “seventh seven.” This echoes Leviticus 25, where the seventh seven—a jubilee year—freed slaves, forgave debts, and provided rest for all.

As Keller explains, “The seventh seven, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, was a foretaste of the final rest that all will have when God renews the earth. Matthew is telling us that [true] rest will come to us only through Jesus Christ….In Jesus you stop having to prove yourself because you know it doesn’t really matter in the end whether you are a failure or a king. All you need is God’s grace, and you can have it, in spite of your failures.”

Maybe you would call 2024 a huge “success.” Or maybe it was a massive “failure” by the world’s standards. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. In victory or defeat, you can say “it is well with my soul” because the seventh seven has come to set you free from sin and death and to adopt you into the family of God. Rest in his love this week!

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Series: Easter Vocations
Devotional: 2 of 4

“I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. (John 21:3-6)

Today’s passage shows us “the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead” that first Easter Sunday (see John 21:14). Commenting on this scene, St. Augustine once wrote admiringly that after Jesus had “risen from the grave, after seeing the marks of His wounds, after receiving, by means of His breathing, the Holy Ghost, all at once [these disciples] become what they were before, fishers, not of men, but of fishes.”

But not everyone shares Augustine’s glowing view of the disciples. I’ve heard many pastors preach this text and call the disciples “backsliding” Christians because they went back to their vocations as fishermen instead of “following Jesus fully” as “full-time missionaries.” 

Let me share three reasons why that’s a poor interpretation of this text.

First, Jesus never said that fishing for men and fishing for food were mutually exclusive. In Matthew 4:19, he said, “follow me…and I will send you out to fish for people.” He didn’t say, “I will send you out to fish for people and you will never fish for food or income again.”

Second, Jesus could have reprimanded his disciples for fishing, but he didn’t. And it’s not like it was beyond the resurrected Christ to reprimand his followers (see Luke 24:13-25).

Finally, Jesus blessed the work of his disciples’ hands with a miraculous catch of fish! Why would he have done that if he was not pleased with their decision to go back to their work of fishing? 

In this scene, we see a theme that is reiterated throughout the gospels—namely, that Jesus frequently smiles upon the choices his followers make to go back to the vocations they had prior to following him. 

We see it here with these bi-vocational fishermen/disciples in John 21. We see it with the Roman centurion in Matthew 8, who Jesus could have easily called away from his vocation, but didn’t. And we see it with Zaccheus in Luke 19 who, upon choosing to follow Jesus, appears to have gone back to his vocation as a tax collector with Jesus’s blessing.

Following Jesus means that all of us will now “fish for people.” But it doesn’t mean that all of us will lay down our trades. Deep in your soul, you, like Jesus’s fishermen friends, know that God put you on this earth to fish, write, build homes, start businesses, or create spreadsheets. Meeting the resurrected Christ doesn’t necessitate you abandoning that work. You can bring Jesus great pleasure by staying exactly where you are fishing for people and food for the glory of God and the good of others.

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Series: Easter Vocations
Devotional: 2 of 4

Joseph of Arimathea…was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took [Jesus’] body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen….At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb…they laid Jesus there. (John 19:38-42)

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had a lot in common. Both were members of the Sanhedrin—the religious governing body that had just played a role in crucifying Jesus (see Mark 14:53-65). Both men, most scholars agree, were likely very wealthy. And both men were secret followers of Jesus…up until Good Friday, that is.

Something about Jesus’s death compelled these two men to go public with their faith, specifically by giving Jesus a proper burial. 

As pastor Daniel Darling explains in his book, The Characters of Easter, “Typically a criminal would be dumped into an empty grave or pauper’s field, buried ignominiously under a pile of rocks.” But Nicodemus and Joseph refused to allow Jesus to suffer that fate. While their fellow members of the Sanhedrin may have killed Jesus like a criminal, these men were intent on burying Jesus like a king.

And they made at least three enormous sacrifices to do so.

First, money. Joseph gave up his costly tomb (see Matthew 27:60) and Nicodemus offered “seventy-five pounds” of “myrrh and aloes” for embalming, which one scholar says would have cost “an extraordinary amount.”

Second, these men sacrificed their priorities. As Ken Costa points out in his book, Joseph of Arimathea, Joseph and Nicodemus “fully knew the embalming” of Jesus “would make them ritually impure at the start of the Passover feast.” This was an unthinkable act for religious professionals used to adhering to the letter of the law! And yet they prioritized honoring Christ above honoring the traditions of their professions.

Finally, by burying Jesus, Joseph and Nicodemus would have seriously risked their reputations. Their peers had just murdered Jesus! And here they were honoring him. At a minimum, this act would have cost them their stature. But it could have cost them their jobs—maybe even their lives.

The faith of Joseph and Nicodemus cost them a lot. How much is your Christianity costing you? If your honest answer is “not much,” I pray that the example of these two men would inspire you to be even bolder for Christ in your workplace today. 

That could take a lot of different shapes. Here’s just one I would challenge you with this morning: Acknowledge your faith in Christ to one co-worker who may not know you’re a Christian. In doing so, you’ll be paying a small tribute to Joseph and Nicodemus. But more importantly, you’ll be offering up a small display of worship to the One who gave up everything for you and me!

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Series: Easter Vocations
Devotional: 1 of 4

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane…and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” (Matthew 26:36-38)

Peter and “the two sons of Zebedee” (James and John) had a broad vocation to follow Jesus. But on the night before their rabbi’s crucifixion, they were given a more specific job: Simply to stay awake while Jesus went away to pray.

As they were all walking into the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus “began to be sorrowful and troubled.” He was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

What’s going on here? In his phenomenal sermon The Dark Garden, Tim Keller explained Jesus’s sorrow this way: “Jesus…got all of his power…and his love from his relationship with the Father, and therefore...as he was walking to [Gethsemane], he would have started praying….In his heart, he would have turned to the Father, the way he constantly does…and that’s when it hit him. Because when he turned in his soul toward the Father, there was nothing there.”

Jesus was experiencing a first sip from the “cup” of God’s wrath due to humankind’s sin (see Matthew 26:39). He was catching a preview of what he would drink in full the next day: Total separation from his Heavenly Father.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Jesus’s disciples were (literally) falling down on the job. Three times Jesus asked them to do the easiest job in the world while he went off to consider whether or not he would do the hardest—dying for these men who couldn’t even stay awake.

As Keller explains, “Peter, James, and John are the representatives of the human race…Every time [Jesus found them sleeping] it’s like the Father is saying, ‘That’s the human race for you. Swallow hell for them. Take into yourself this spiritual atomic bomb and let it explode for them.’”

And Jesus did! 

What does that mean for you, believer? At least two things.

First, it means that God loves you on your absolute worst day at work. The day that represents your biggest regret. The season of unproductiveness. The time you had a golden opportunity to share the gospel with a co-worker but didn’t. God knows all about it. And because Jesus chose to die for his disciples on their worst day at the office, you can be confident that he loves you on yours.

Second, I hope this scene at Gethsemane reminds you that you are free to risk greatly. Start that business, speak up for the injustice you’ve seen in your office, share your faith boldly. Why? Because even in failure, nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Because Jesus spent three days separated from the love of God, you never will, believer. Don’t take that for granted. May the assuredness of God’s love lead you to be bold for Christ’s sake today!

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Series: The Work Beneath Your Work
Devotional: 4 of 4

 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:28-33)

I began this series by asking you two questions:

1. What is the work beneath your work? 
2. How does the gospel free you from that work? 

We’ve already explored two of the most common answers to that first question: performance and avoidance. Today, we look at one final work beneath our work: fear.

This may be the most universal of all that we’ve explored. Entrepreneurs overwork themselves for fear that if they “don’t put in the work,” they won’t be able to provide for their families and their teams. Employees overwork for fear of losing their income and health insurance.

Now, some of this fear is healthy. 1 Timothy 5:8 says that “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

But fear is terribly unhealthy and sinful if it controls you. If it plagues your thoughts. If it leads you to overwork or not faithfully “stand in for God,” and say hard things when they need to be said to your boss or customers.

How can we be freed from fear—from this work beneath our work? The same way we are freed from performance and avoidance: the person and character of Jesus Christ.

In today’s passage, Jesus promised his followers that if we “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,” he will meet our every need. Why can you trust this promise when your job is on the line? Because God provided for your ultimate need of spiritual redemption even when it cost him the life of his Son. If God kept that promise, surely he will keep his promise to provide you with food and clothing. 

If the work beneath your work is fear, let that truth free you today. But maybe the work beneath your work isn’t fear, avoidance, or performance. Maybe it’s something else that I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know: Until God’s glory and the good of others is the predominant motivation for your work, you will never be satisfied. You will never be able to truly rest. You will never find sustainable fuel for the good works God has called you to do.

So do the hard work of identifying the work beneath your work. And meditate on the gospel of Jesus Christ that frees you to work solely for his glory, the good of others, and your joy.

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Series: The Work Beneath Your Work
Devotional: 3 of 4

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8)

We’re in a four-week series exploring the work beneath our work—in other words, the ultimate why underneath what we do.

Now, if you are subscribed to my devotionals, part of your motivation for your work is undoubtedly to leverage your vocation for the glory of God and the good of others. But if you find yourself consistently overworking—if you find that you’re unable to rest and “turn your brain off” at home—it’s worth asking whether there are deeper motivations for your work that are less than God-honoring.

Last week, we looked at one of those motivations: performance. Today we look at another: avoidance.

I know a lot of Christians who are using their work as a narcotic to avoid dealing with their depression, conflict with a family member, or a sense of inadequacy they feel when they’re at home compared to when they’re at their desk.

It’s a lot easier to work hard at the office than it is to deal with these things. And so we work hard to numb the pain that comes with doing the harder work that awaits us when we step away from our laptops and workbenches.

How do we free ourselves from this work beneath our work? By looking to Christ.

As today’s passage reminds us, Jesus was under no obligation to enter our mess and save us. It was perfectly within his rights to avoid our sin and suffering. And yet, he “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing,” on our behalf (Philippians 2:6-7).

What is our response to Christ’s unfathomable grace and mercy? To “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5) which includes entering into the messes around us rather than using overwork as an anesthetic against hard things.

Is God bringing to mind something you’re trying to avoid with your overwork? Ask him for the Christ-like courage to lean into that hard thing today for his greater glory.

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Series: The Work Underneath Your Work
Devotional: 2 of 4

Then the eyes of [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Genesis 3:7)

Last week, I asked you this: What is the work beneath your work? In other words, why are you working so hard?

Over the next three weeks, we’ll explore three of the most common answers to that question. And while this will be far from an exhaustive list, I’m confident it will be a helpful one.

Here’s the first: Performance, or using your work to earn the respect, love, and acceptance of others.

For the first few years of my career, this was the primary work beneath my work. I wasn’t working primarily for the glory of God and the good of others. I was working to impress you. 

And so I would not-so-subtly name-drop big brands I had worked for and impressive people I knew—not to facilitate great conversation, but to make you think I had the most impressive LinkedIn profile in the room.

Why did I do this? Why do you? For the same reason Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves for themselves in Genesis 3: to cover up the fact that underneath it all, we’re not OK.

Of course, we don’t cover ourselves with literal fig leafs today, but we do with metaphorical ones to be sure. And because professional performance produces one of the thickest fig leaves of our modern era, we can work ourselves to the point of burnout, not because we need to financially, but because we need to spiritually.

This work beneath our work of performance is laid bare in Taylor Swift’s autobiographical song Mastermind. She writes:

No one wanted to play with me as a little kid
So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since
To make them love me and make it seem effortless

Why are Taylor, you, and me working so hard? To perform. To “make them love” us.

What can free us from this exhausting work beneath our work? Christ alone. 

1 John 3:1 says that Christians are to be “called children of God…that is what we are!” Through Christ, I am an adopted child of God. A co-heir with Christ (see Romans 8:17). No amount of professional success will ever give me a loftier title than that!

It is meditation on that truth that God has used to slowly but surely free me from the work beneath my work. The same will be true for you.

But maybe the work beneath your work isn’t performance. Maybe it’s avoidance. It is to that work that we turn to next week.

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Series: The Work Beneath Your Work
Devotional: 1 of 4

Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah….When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” (Genesis 29:30-32)

In today’s passage, we find one of the best biblical case studies for what Tim Keller calls "the work beneath [our] work.” On the surface, Leah’s work was that of childbearing. But her real work—the true why underneath all of her labor—was the exhausting work of winning Jacob’s love. 

After her first son Reuben was born, Leah said, “Surely my husband will love me now” (v. 32).

But evidently, he didn’t, because Leah said the Lord gave her a second child, “Because…I am not loved” (v. 33).

Maybe the third son would be the proverbial charm, Leah must have thought. So she gave birth to Levi and said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” (v. 34). 

Do you hear Leah’s angst? Her striving? Leah was desperately trying to get something from her work that God never designed her work to give her—namely the love and affection of another human being.

But by the time Leah had her fourth son, something had changed. When she gave birth to Judah, Leah didn’t say anything that would connect her work as a mother to her attempts to earn her husband’s favor. She simply said, “This time I will praise the Lord,” and “then she stopped having children” (v. 35).

It was only once Leah found love and acceptance outside of her vocational performance that she could rest her body and soul. It was only when the praise of the Lord was her primary ambition that she was freed from the work beneath her work.

The question, of course, is what is the work beneath your work? And how does the gospel free you from that work? Those are the questions I’m going to challenge you to answer over the next few weeks. 

Now, the reality is that the “why” of your work is always going to be mixed. Some of your motives are likely honoring to God, while others aren’t.

But we’d be wise to discern the primary motives of our hearts. Because until our motivation is predominantly to “praise the Lord” through our work, we will be restless, unsatisfied, and overworked.

Start this morning by praying that God would begin to reveal the work beneath your work. And join me next week as we explore one of the most common ambitions that the gospel can free us from.