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)
Weâre 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. Weâve already explored the first two: Be so good they canât ignore you and be a friend. But those things clearly arenât 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, âOh wow, I had no idea you were a ...
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)
Weâre 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 canât 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 âby thisââby loving others well, by being a good friendâthey âwill knowâ we are his disciples.
So simple. Yet so profound.Â
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.
Iâll be honest: Iâm not great at this. Todayâs devotional is as ...
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 Iâve 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 Jesusâs command to âGo and make disciples of all nationsâ (Matthew 28:19).Â
Now, Jesus is not saying in this verse that you have to change your vocation or location to participate in his âGreat Commission.â The Greek word poreuthentes that we translate âgoâ in âgo and make disciplesâ is whatâs called an aorist tense passive participle. What in the world does that mean for you? It means that a far more accurate translation of Jesusâs words is, âHaving goneâŚmake disciples.âÂ
The going was assumed. Jesus was saying that his disciples had already âgoneâ as fishermen, tax collectors, mothers,...
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 TwelveâŚ.[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, â[Jesus] never came off hurried.â Pastor Kevin DeYoung put it this way: â[Jesus] was busy, but never in a way that made him frantic, anxious, irritable, proud, envious, or distracted by lesser things.âÂ
So, whatâs the difference between busyness and hurry?Â
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.Â
Busyness is having a lot of err...
Then he said to them, âThe Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.â (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 Emigrantâs Guide to California published in 1849, it was the gold-rushers who rested mostâspecifically by observing the Sabbathâthat reached their destination the quickest. As the guide shares, âThose who [laid] by on the Sabbath, resting themselves and their teams,â reached gold country â20 days sooner than those who traveled seven days a week.â
The gold rushersâ example illustrates a fascinating paradox: Oftentimes rest is the most productive thing we can do.Â
And not just Sabbath rest! As the scientific community now understands, bi-hourly breaks throughout the workday and an eight-hour âsleep opportunityâ every night are essential to doing our most exceptional work.
Throughout the gospels, we see Jesus embodying these three rhyt...
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, âYour mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.â He replied to him, âWho is my mother, and who are my brothers?â Pointing to his disciples, he said, âHere are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.â (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 itâs just thatâan illusion. You know how I know? Because weâre 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 Jesusâs feet as he was walking (see Mark 10:17). A woman touched his cloak, distracting Jesus with the kno...
Let us go somewhere elseâto the nearby villagesâso 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, âUnder all his gentleness there is a purpose harder than steel.â 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 Peterâs mother-in-law and a bunch of her neighbors. Understandably, the townâs 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 peopleâs request for more of his time, Jesus said, âLet us go somewhere elseâto the nearby villagesâso I can preach...
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. Lewisâs devil Screwtape called âthe Kingdom of Noise.â And Iâm 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. Iâm primarily referring to what all that external noise createsânamely 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 âa solitary placeâ is staggering. In the third gospel alone, Luke mentions Jesusâs love of âlonely placesâ three times in just one and a half chapters (see Luke 4:42, 5:15, and 6:12).Â
My favorite mention of Jesusâs pursuit of solitude is when he âwithdrew by boat pri...
âBut let your âYesâ be âYes,â and your âNo,â âNo.â For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.â (Matthew 5:37)
Why is it that the worst songs are some of the hardest to get out of our heads? Is it because theyâre uniquely catchy? That might be part of it. But thereâs actually a scientific answer to this question.Â
Dr. Roy Baumeister explains that if you âlisten to a randomly chosen song and shut it off halfway throughâŚthe 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 businessâŚ.And thatâs why this kind of ear worm is so often an awful tune rather than a pleasant one. Weâre more likely to turn off the bad one in midsong, so itâs the one that returns to haunt us.â
Neurologists will tell you that itâs not just unfinished songs that our minds keep reminding us of. It is also unfinished tasks and unfulfilled commitment...
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
âIâm swamped.â Iâve said it, youâve said it, weâve all said it at one overwhelmed point or another.
The Bible tells us that Jesusâs disciples were once âswampedâ in a different way. As they sailed across the Sea of Galilee âa squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great dangerâ (Luke 8:23). You know the rest of the story: Jesus âgot up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calmâ (Luke 8:24).
This passage perfectly illustrates the core premise of this devotional seriesânamely that the solution to the disciples being swamped by the wind and waves is the exact same solution to our being swamped by our to-do lists and hurried schedules. The solution is found in Jesus Christ. How? In two ways.
First, Jesus offers you peace before you do anything. Nearly every time ...